Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born on 9 August 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, into a musically distinguished family; her mother Cissy Houston was an acclaimed gospel and backing vocalist, her cousin was singer Dionne Warwick, and her godmother was Aretha Franklin. Houston began singing in her church choir as a child and by her teens was performing backing vocals professionally alongside her mother, developing the extraordinary vocal technique and range that would later define her career.

Houston was signed to Arista Records in 1983 by label head Clive Davis, who personally oversaw the careful development of her debut album, released in 1985; Whitney Houston became one of the best-selling debut albums in history at the time, producing multiple number-one singles and establishing her as a major new vocal talent capable of crossing effortlessly between pop, R&B and gospel-influenced balladry.

Her 1987 follow-up album, Whitney, made her the first woman to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and she continued a run of commercial and critical dominance through the late 1980s and early 1990s, becoming widely regarded, on the strength of her vocal technique and range, as one of the greatest singers in popular music history — a reputation later formalised when Rolling Stone and other publications repeatedly ranked her among the very best vocalists of all time.

In 1992 Houston starred in the film The Bodyguard, and her recording of 'I Will Always Love You' for the soundtrack became one of the best-selling singles of all time, staying at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for fourteen consecutive weeks, a vocal performance widely regarded as among the most technically extraordinary in popular music recording history. The Bodyguard soundtrack itself became one of the best-selling soundtrack albums ever released.

Houston's career through the 1990s and 2000s became increasingly complicated by publicised struggles with substance abuse and a turbulent marriage to singer Bobby Brown, issues that affected both her health and, at times, her professional reliability, though she continued recording and touring, and her earlier body of work remained enormously commercially successful and critically respected throughout. She sold over 200 million records worldwide across her career, among the best-selling music artists in history.

Houston died on 11 February 2012 in Beverly Hills, California, at age 48, from drowning with contributing factors including heart disease and cocaine use, a death that shocked and deeply saddened fans and the music industry globally. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, and remains widely regarded as one of the most vocally gifted performers in the history of popular music, her technical command and emotional range in songs like 'I Will Always Love You' and 'How Will I Know' continuing to influence generations of vocalists who followed her.