Whitney Houston: Pop Sensation & Ultimate Tragedy

Whitney Houston is a worldwide superstar.  She reigned for a long time as the Queen of pop and 
RnB, with a voice the likes of which we’ll never see again.  Beautiful and inspiring, her performances were always breath-taking, so much so that she sold multimillions of records.  After 2 decades in the music industry, Whitney was still as strong as ever and her presence and influence will never be eclipsed again.

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What the world didn’t expect was her untimely death in 2012, after dealing with years of an abusive marriage and cocaine use.   She was 48.  

But what exactly caused Whitney’s death?  What was shocking enough to bring her to this fatal ending?  

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• Whitney was born in 1963 in Newark, USA.  She was the daughter of Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who had backed up Aretha Franklin and the cousin of Dionne Warwick.

• In 1977, aged 14, she began to sing backing vocals on chart singles.  A young age to be thrown into the music industry.  She worked with acts including Chaka Khan and the Neville Brothers.

• She was signed after performing in a night club and in 1985 aged 22, her debut single and solo album were released.  We were provided with polished, catchy songs such as ‘How Will I Know’ and ‘The Greatest Love of All’.  People began to remember her voice. 

• Over the next decade her popularity soared. In 1987, her second album ‘Whitney’ became the first album by a woman to enter the Billboard charts at No. 1 and it included four No. 1 singles.

• In 1992 aged 29, Whitney married RnB singer Bobby Brown.  Also in this year, she made her film debut in The Bodyguard.  The soundtrack to this film went onto sell 17 million copies in the United States.

• Whitney and her husband gave birth to Bobbi Kristina in 1993 when Whitney was 30.  

• In 1994 aged 31, she became the first major musician to visit the newly unified and apartheid free South Africa following Nelson Mandela’s winning election.

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• Marijuana was discovered in Whitney and Bobby’s luggage by security at an airport in Hawaii in 2000 when she was 37.  The charges were dropped later.  

• In 2001 aged 38, she signed the biggest record deal in music history with Arista/BMG.

• Aged 39 in 2002, things took a turn for the worse when she admitted to using cocaine on a prime time television interview.

• After what had been described as a passionate and turbulent marriage Whitney filed for divorce from her husband in 2006, when she was 43.  They divorced in 2007.

• In 2009 when Whitney was 46, she admitted on a TV interview that in the late 1990’s, doing drugs was an everyday thing and that she wasn’t happy.

• Aged 47 in 2010, she embarked on her first world tour in 10 years.  But she was met with much criticism and some shows were cancelled due to illness.

• In 2011, aged 48, she enrolled in a rehabilitation centre citing drug and alcohol problem.

• Then in 2012, aged 48 she died in a Californian hotel after drowning in a bath.  This was ruled partly as an accident and the effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.  

• The cocaine found in her body revealed it had been used shortly before her death and toxicology results revealed additional drugs in her system, including marijuana.

Whether it was the drugs, alcohol, family issues or fame, there isn’t one single moment you can say lead to the death of this superstar.  But Whitney Houston is living proof of how shocking some moments in celebrities’ lives can be.  And it isn’t the last tragedy we will see in the world of superstardom.

What do you think caused Whitney Houston’s death?

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