Dorks And Losers

Whit­ney Hous­ton was born to sing. Any­one who has ever heard her ren­di­tion of the “Star-Spangled Ban­ner” at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 won’t disagree.

But what hap­pened to her? It seems like for­ever ago that first time I saw her in The Body­guard with Kevin Cost­ner. The movie didn’t make her a star, but instead shot her to super­star­dom. The kind, best described as celebrity infamy, reserved nowa­days for mak­ers of home­made sex tapes, which can give you instant front page head­lines while dis­plac­ing the lat­est hap­pen­ings of an entire war to page six.

Today, it’s a joke. Back then, super­star­dom meant that every­one in the world — even in those remote parts where Eng­lish might be the fifth or sixth lan­guage — can say your name. Fans fol­lowed you just to catch a brief glimpse of your waves and kisses to the crowd.

Those times are gone. That inno­cence is gone. Some might argue that the con­cept of inno­cence never existed, but at least with Whit­ney every­one wanted to pre­tend it did. Every­one wanted to lose them­selves with the pitches and tones of her voice.

Clive Davis, you lucky bas­tard. Well, lucky then. Genius now.

Mil­lions of albums later, Whit­ney was a very suc­cess­ful artist. Then, it hap­pened. The great­est and worst moment of her career hap­pened with the release of one song: her sin­gle “I Will Always Love You” from the sound­track to her fea­ture film debut The Body­guard. The song dom­i­nated (you might even say oblit­er­ated) the pop charts.

Although I reckon that not many peo­ple can stand the song any­more. Not because peo­ple got sick of lis­ten­ing to it all the time, but because the song sad­dens peo­ple to think of how Houston’s life has changed in fif­teen years since. I won’t talk about the part of her life with Bobby Brown because I do believe there were happy moments.

The most ironic aspect of her sin­gle “I Will Always Love You” is that it’s a cover of a Dolly Par­ton song. The Coun­try Music Tele­vi­sion (CMT) chan­nel ranked Dolly’s ver­sion as the num­ber one great­est coun­try love song. If you’ve ever lis­tened to it, Dolly sings it with such pas­sion that you can actu­ally hear the words. With Hous­ton, her voice and her pres­ence over­shadow the lyrics to the point where the words become almost an after­thought or even a reflex to the listener.

You could say that effect hap­pens to a lot, if not all, of Houston’s music. Simon Cow­ell once scolded Kather­ine McPhee because she sang Whitney’s “I Have Noth­ing.” “By choos­ing that song,” Cow­ell said, “It is like com­ing out here and say­ing I’m as good as Whit­ney Hous­ton, you’re not.”

And the real­ity (for the most part) is that if Whit­ney sings a song, then she’s singing it the best that it can be sung, and it will for­ever be a Whit­ney Hous­ton song.

Such is the tragedy of Whitney’s career. Her voice is one of a kind. And in that respect, she’s wast­ing away singing pop and R&B songs. If you rank her voice with that of other angelic voices, she’d be in the top three with Ella Fitzger­ald and Bil­lie Hol­i­day. Does that give you a hint as to what Whit­ney should be record­ing next?

Appar­ently, Whit­ney is record­ing another album with Clive Davis. Like I said ear­lier in the arti­cle, Clive is a genius. In lis­ten­ing to a recent track “Fam­ily First” recorded with her mother, her daugh­ter, and Dionne War­wick, I thought how unsuc­cess­ful it would be in today’s music land­scape. Let’s just say that “Fam­ily First” wouldn’t sound right between Fergie’s vastly over­played “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” or JoJo’s ver­sion of “Beau­ti­ful Girls.”

Sales expec­ta­tions shouldn’t be too high for Whitney’s next album if it con­tained many tracks like “Fam­ily First.” So if com­mer­cial suc­cess can’t be counted on, the next best thing to increase your artis­tic cred­i­bil­ity and integrity, is to gain crit­i­cal suc­cess. Mak­ing good music is the first step toward re-establishing musi­cal prowess.

And for Whit­ney, you have two options (not includ­ing Clive’s). One, go the Mariah Carey route and cre­ate an alter-ego à la “Mimi” (hence, this article’s title). Two, fol­low in the foot­steps of Fitzger­ald and Hol­i­day. Sing blues and jazz music. Those two gen­res cap­tured true vocals — har­mony, range, and pas­sion — bet­ter than any other. Go on a nation­wide club tour to cap­ture that night­club feel. For­get sta­di­ums. For­get casi­nos. Sing in inti­mate venues to regain your loyal fan­base, to regain the innocence.

With the first option, you’ll get com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess, but to get them you need radio-friendly hits. Carey has been very good about mak­ing music to fit with cur­rent trends, but I doubt that Hous­ton will fol­low her lead (refer to “Fam­ily First”). With the sec­ond option, at least com­par­isons with Fitzger­ald and Hol­i­day might actu­ally be fair.

Blues and jazz have always had a pen­chant for out­last­ing musi­cal trends, hav­ing longevity that goes beyond a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. With longevity comes legacy. She needs to give peo­ple some­thing else to think about other than her rocky mar­riage to Brown or her sup­posed drug abuse. She needs to remind peo­ple that she can sing you to another place. But most impor­tantly, she needs to free her­self from the past.
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*** 8:16 PM PST Update ***

Here’s some­thing you don’t see every often. Two sports teams from one city take on two sports teams from another city, and both sets play in the same city.

That’s prob­a­bly really con­fus­ing. It’s 9/10/07. The San Fran­cisco 49ers are fac­ing the Ari­zona Car­di­nals on ESPN’s “Mon­day Night Foot­ball” at SF’s Can­dle­stick Park, while the San Fran­cisco Giants are fac­ing the Ari­zona Dia­mond­backs on KTVU at SF’s AT&T Park. They’re both open air sta­di­ums, and from what I’m from about five min­utes both SF teams were winning.

Nin­ers, stop turn­ing the ball over!

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