As I'm sure Twitter/Facebook/news crawls have informed you, Whitney Houston died today. And so I'm drinking while watching her sing "I Have Nothing" over and over again. Why the sadness? Whitney was a joke for most of my life. The infamous Barbara Walters interview aired when I was 15, and I was raised to despise oversung, overproduced R and B. But when I heard Whitney's songs, they cut through all of my pretension, and even through her own melodramatic production. That voice had a direct line to my soul. Maybe not the best parts of me, but at least to every cell that cried too much, or fell in love with the wrong guy, or wanted to dance with somebody (when the loneliness calls.) It's powerful and sad, running almost to excess. That's not a criticism. That's the whole point.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
RIP Whitney Houston
As I'm sure Twitter/Facebook/news crawls have informed you, Whitney Houston died today. And so I'm drinking while watching her sing "I Have Nothing" over and over again. Why the sadness? Whitney was a joke for most of my life. The infamous Barbara Walters interview aired when I was 15, and I was raised to despise oversung, overproduced R and B. But when I heard Whitney's songs, they cut through all of my pretension, and even through her own melodramatic production. That voice had a direct line to my soul. Maybe not the best parts of me, but at least to every cell that cried too much, or fell in love with the wrong guy, or wanted to dance with somebody (when the loneliness calls.) It's powerful and sad, running almost to excess. That's not a criticism. That's the whole point.
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