Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
whitney houston The daughter of soul singer Cissy Houston and the niece of pop star Dionne Warwick, she harnessed her vocal gifts and the professional upbringing of her well-connected family to achieve stardom of a type seldom equaled before or since.
Almost unknown before the release of her debut album Whitney Houston, she rose to stardom when her first chart-topping hit, “Saving All My Love For You,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Written by the team of Michael Masser and Gerry Goffin, who had previously teamed up on Diana Ross’s 1975 number one hit “Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)”, the ballad “Saving All My Love For You? It was the second single from Whitney Houston, following “You Give Good Love”, which reached number 3 on the pop charts in July 1985.
When the next two singles from her debut album, “How Will I Know” and “Greatest Love Of All,” also topped the pop charts in early 1986, 23-year-old Whitney Houston established herself as one of the biggest names in music.
Over the course of the next decade, Whitney Houston would sell tens of millions of albums and would go on to score eight more #1 hits, a number eclipsed only by Mariah Carey among solo recording artists.
But only one of Houston’s albums, the 1992 soundtrack by The Bodyguardfeaturing the monumentally successful version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” could match its 25 million-selling debut in terms of commercial impact.
Nearly two years in development under the personal guidance of Arista Records boss Clive Davis, Whitney Houston’s album is among the 40 best sellers of all timeaccording to the Recording Industry Association of America.
It also served to launch the career of a singer who became popular enough to break into the top 20 of pop with “The Star Spangled Banner” not once, but twice: in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, and again 10 years later in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In the late 1990s, Houston’s personal struggles began to overshadow her professional achievementsamid rumors of substance abuse problems and erratic behavior.
On February 11, 2012, the night before the annual Grammy Awards ceremony, Houston, 48, She was found unconscious in her room at the Beverly Hilton hotel. in Los Angeles and was later pronounced dead.
Keep reading: