A Star is Gone

Stunning

I usually don't go online on the weekend until later in the evening, so you can imagine my shock when just about everyone I know on Facebook was posting about the death of Whitney Houston. Much like the death of Michael Jackson, I said to myself "What? No, that can't be right." I immediately went to CNN.com where the site's headline confirmed what I'd read on Facebook: "Whitney Houston Dead at 48."

There is nothing sadder to me than seeing a star fall. In the 80's and 90's, the beautiful Ms Houston had it all. She was a 'star' in every sense of the word. Her voice was nothing less than amazing and while she would never win an Oscar, she could act, too. Her cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" from the movie The Bodyguard was inescapable in 1992. Her marriage to Bobby Brown that same year would lead to her addiction to drugs and eventual downfall.

She played the Fairy Godmother is Disney's 1997 remake of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" and appeared on "Gimme a Break," "Silver Spoons" and "Boston Public." Lately the subject of ridicule on "SNL" and "The Soup," as late as yesterday she was criticized on Joan River's "Fashion Police" for wearing outdated clothing while out with her most recent boyfriend, rapper Ray-J. With seven albums; four films (Sparkle is scheduled for release this coming August) and a record total of 415 career awards, Houston's sad decline seemed about to take a turn for the better, despite an apparently disastrous European tour last year.

Houston was a talent unlike any who came before and will probably remain unlike any who come after. Her performance of the National Anthem at the 1991 Superbowl is undoubtedly the best performance of the infamously difficult-to-sing song, ever. 

Goodbye, Whitney. You will be missed.

More, anon.
Prospero