Farewell Whitney

I was watching The Hangover.

It was a snowy night in February. One of those lazy Saturdays where one slowly melts the hours away reading, napping, snacking, and watching movies. Then I decided to check out Facebook and see if others were having an equally exciting weekend. That is when I saw the news.

Whitney Houston was dead.

I turned my TV on to CNN and spent the next few hours watching their admittedly awkward coverage. As unprepared as I was for the news of Whitney’s death, I was even more surprised by my reaction. I am normally somewhat dismissive or at the very least unemotional in a Vulcanic kind of way about celebrity deaths. Michael Jackson is dead?? Ehhh…he was a freak who likely molested little boys. Great songs though. Princess Diana is dead?? Ehhh…her greatest accomplishment was marrying well. And the news coverage was obscenely excessive, especially given that Mother Teresa died the same week. Amy Winehouse?? You didn’t exactly have to be Miss Cleo to see that coming. But this…this is different. At one point, as CNN went to commercial and was playing some of Whitney’s songs, I found that tears were streaming down my grizzled face. Dismissive?? Unemotional?? No…this time, for some odd reason, I was profoundly sad.

I was SO in love with Whitney Houston when I was 14 years old. She, along with Who’s the Boss? star Alyssa Milano, were among my first celebrity crushes. Whitney was beautiful and her songs were awesome. I didn’t necessarily understand it on a conscious level at the time, but I think I was in the early stages of truly understanding talent and developing good taste in music.

Then in the early 90’s, when I was in college and had moved onto other interests and my musical palate was evolving, Whitney Houston married Bobby Brown and the magic was gone. She became a cliché. Domestic violence. Drug abuse. Rehab. Embarrasing appearances. Erratic behavior. Oh there were flashes here & there, but for all intents & purposes her brilliant career ended somewhere around 1997. It’s staggering to think of the music & films the world was robbed of in the past 15 years.

And now there will be no dazzling comeback. That beautiful voice has been silenced forever. We don’t yet know the “official” reason, but of course most have jumped to understandably logical conclusions. However, I come not to bury Whitney but to praise her. The who’s, what’s, and why’s don’t really matter anyway. I will let others assign blame. The fact is that the life of one of the most intensely talented performers in recent memory has been senselessly, needlessly, tragically cut short.

Fortunately, we do have a solid library of music produced by Whitney before Bobby Brown dragged her into the abyss. And that is my purpose here today…to celebrate the life & music of my dearly departed celebrity crush. To Whitney…wherever your soul currently resides…I can only say that I will always love you. So, without further ado, I give you…..

from the home office in Angel City, FL…..

The Superfluous 7 (in no particular order) Favorite Whitney Houston Songs:

One Moment In Time

How Will I Know

So Emotional

Where Do Broken Hearts Go

All At Once

Didn’t We Almost Have It All

I Wanna Dance With Somebody