Whitney Houston: Celebrating a music icon born on Women’s Day
Whitney Houston: Celebrating a music icon born on Women’s Day
Whitney Houston: Celebrating a music icon born on Women’s Day
Gary Oberholzer
Whitney Houston: Celebrating a music icon born on Women’s Day
On Women’s Day, HOT 102.7 celebrates a woman whose extraordinary voice broke records, crossed generations – and once rang out across a newly democratic South Africa.
There are voices you recognise within seconds – and then there was Whitney Houston.
Born on 9 August 1963, Houston would have turned 63 this Women’s Day, giving us the perfect excuse to turn up some of the songs that made her one of popular music’s most unforgettable performers.
Her musical education began at home and in church, under the guidance of her mother, acclaimed gospel singer Cissy Houston. By the mid-1980s, the world had discovered what her family already knew.
Hits including Saving All My Love for You, How Will I Know and Greatest Love of All announced the arrival of a superstar.
Photos: https://www.facebook.com/WhitneyHouston
Then came Whitney in 1987. The album made Houston the first female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, while I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) became another of an extraordinary seven consecutive US number-one singles – a run that surpassed a record previously held by The Beatles.
And then there was The Bodyguard.
Houston’s performance of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You became one of the defining recordings of the 1990s, while the soundtrack earned her the Grammy for Album of the Year.
But South Africans have another reason to remember Whitney.
In 1994, following Nelson Mandela’s election as president, Houston staged three concerts in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town to celebrate the country’s new democracy. More than 200,000 people attended, with the Johannesburg concert at Ellis Park broadcast internationally.
Houston donated proceeds from the concerts to South African children’s charities and causes.
Behind the extraordinary success was also a woman conscious of how female performers were perceived.
“Women, we get this other thing,” she once observed. “We get the diva title. We don’t get the genius title.”
Whitney Houston died in 2012, aged just 48.
But perhaps genius isn’t a bad word for a woman whose voice can still stop you in your tracks more than four decades after the world first heard it.
References
Whitney Houston Official Site – Biography
Whitney Houston Official Site – The Concert for a New South Africa
