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Whitney Houston - I Look to You (Official HD Video)

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Number 1 love song of america

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Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You (Official 4K Video)

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Who Was Whitney Houston?

Whitney Houston released her debut album at age 22 and scored three No. 1 singles. Whitney (1987) delivered four more No. 1s and earned Houston a Grammy, with later albums including I'm Your Baby Tonigh t (1990) and My Love Is Your Love (1998) as well as soundtracks to The Bodyguard (1992) and Waiting to Exhale (1995). With her marriage to singer Bobby Brown in 1992 and ensuing drug use, Houston's career got off track. She eventually made a comeback with 2009's I Look to You and also co-starred in the musical film Sparkle. Houston died from accidental drowning in a hotel on February 11, 2012.

Early Years

Born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, Houston almost seemed destined from birth to become a singer. Her mother and cousin were both legendary figures in American gospel, soul and pop music. Cissy Houston was the choir minister at New Hope Baptist Church, and it was there that a young Houston got her start. Even as a child, Houston was able to wow audiences; she later told Diane Sawyer that a rapturous response from the congregation at New Hope had a powerful effect upon her: "I think I knew then that [my singing ability] was an infectious thing that God had given me."

By the time she turned 15, Houston was performing often with her mother and trying to get a record deal of her own. Around the same time, she was discovered by a photographer who was awed by her natural beauty. She soon became an extremely sought-after teen model, one of the first African American women to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine. But music remained her true love.

When she was 19, Houston was discovered in a nightclub by Arista Records' Clive Davis, who signed her immediately and took the helm of her career as she navigated from gospel to pop stardom. In 1983, Houston made her debut on national television, appearing on The Merv Griffin Show to sing "Home" from the musical The Wiz. She and Davis spent the next two years working on her debut album, finding the best producers and songwriters available to showcase her amazing vocal talent.

Albums and Songs

'Whitney Houston' Album: "Saving All My Love for You," "How Will I Know"

In 1985, the artist released her debut album, Whitney Houston, and almost immediately became a smash pop sensation. Over the next year, her hit singles "Saving All My Love for You" and "How Will I Know" helped the album reach the top of the charts, where it stayed for 14 non-consecutive weeks. Houston won a Grammy in 1986 for "Saving All My Love for You"; the award was presented to the singer by her cousin Dionne Warwick.

'Whitney' Album: "I Wanna Dance With Somebody"

Houston followed the monumental success of her first album with a second release, Whitney, in 1987. That record, too, went platinum many times over and won a Grammy for the single "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)," with a successful world tour following. During this time, the singer also appeared at a concert for Nelson Mandela's birthday and founded the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, a nonprofit organization that funds projects to help needy children over the world.

By 1992, Houston was on top of the world, but her life was about to get very complicated very quickly. That year she married the R&B singer Bobby Brown, formerly of New Edition, after a three-year engagement. At first, the marriage was passionate and loving, but things turned sour as the decade progressed. Both Brown and Houston battled substance abuse and increasingly erratic behavior, with Houston later alluding to emotional abuse from Brown and domestic violence.
READ MORE: Inside Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown's Tumultuous Relationship
'The Bodyguard' Album: 'I Will Always Love You'

In spite of these growing personal troubles, Houston continued to progress in her career, crossing over successfully into acting in 1992 by starring opposite Kevin Costner in the wildly popular movie The Bodyguard. With this project, she set a trend for her films to follow: For each movie she also released hit singles, creating sensational record sales for the soundtracks. Her smash single from The Bodyguard, a cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" from 1974, proved to be Houston's biggest hit ever, spending a record-breaking 14 weeks atop the U.S. charts. The soundtrack album went on to win Houston three Grammys, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Later in the 1990s, Houston also starred in Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife, both accompanied by hit soundtracks as well.

'My Love Is Your Love' Album: 'It's Not Right But It's Okay'

In 1998, Houston released My Love Is Your Love, her first non-soundtrack studio album in many years, and it earned her another Grammy for the single "It's Not Right But It's Okay," The album was not as successful as her previous full-length releases, though her collaboration with Mariah Carey in the animated film The Prince of Egypt produced a hit single, "When You Believe," which won an Academy Award.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Houston's increasingly rocky marriage, struggles with drugs and health problems threatened to derail her career. Several concert cancellations and a notorious TV interview with Sawyer in 2002, in which Houston appeared far too thin and in poor health, led many to speculate that she was on the verge of a breakdown.

'Just Whitney' Album

In 2004, when production began on the TV reality series Being Bobby Brown, Houston received substantial airtime. The show aired during the worst years of the couple's crumbling marriage; drug use, lifestyle excess and bad behavior were all caught on tape and Houston's reputation sunk to new lows. Houston tried to ignore the controversy, charging ahead with her music by releasing Just Whitney... to combat her detractors, but it did not match the success of her earlier works. In spite of her troubled relationship, Houston was still celebrated as a singer, being named the most-awarded female artist of all time by Guinness World Records in 2006.

Over the next few years, Houston attempted to repair her marriage and to break her drug habit, but after several relapses, Cissy had to step in. As Houston explained to Oprah Winfrey in 2009: "[My mother] walks in with the sheriff and she says: 'I have a court injunction here. You do it my way or we're not going to do this at all. You're going to go on TV, and you're going to retire. And say you're going to give this up because it's not worth it.'" Houston took a break from her career, divorced Brown in 2007 and won sole custody of Bobbi Kristina.

'I Look to You' Album

After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life, Houston seemed to be pulling herself together. She released a new album, I Look To You, in 2009. "The songs themselves will speak to you and you'll understand where I am and some of the changes I've gone through for the better," Houston told Entertainment Tonight. The recording received a warm welcome from music fans, making it to the top of album charts. Her live shows, however, garnered mixed reviews, with some complaining about the quality of her voice.

Death

In early 2012, Houston was rumored to be experiencing financial trouble, but she denied this claim. Indeed, the artist seemed poised for a career upswing: Houston worked on the musical film Sparkle with Jordin Sparks, a remake of the 1976 movie about an all-girl musical group similar to The Supremes, and also reportedly had been approached to join the singing competition series The X Factor as a judge. Unfortunately, Houston did not live long enough to see the latest comeback reach fruition.

Houston died at the age of 48 on February 11, 2012, in Los Angeles at a Beverly Hilton hotel where a Grammy party was being held by Davis. Houston had been seen out in the days before her death, including at one of the pre-Grammy parties. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County coroner's office on March 22, 2012, the official cause of her death was an accidental drowning. The effects of heart disease and cocaine found in her system were contributing factors as well.

With her passing, the music world lost one of its most legendary stars. Davis once said that Houston "is in the great tradition of great, great singers, whether it's Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan or Gladys Knight."

Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

Daughter Bobbi Kristina

Daughter Bobbi Kristina dealt with much tumult after the death of her mother. She was hospitalized immediately after the passing of Houston due to emotional trauma but later spoke with Winfrey about returning to her mother's home and feeling her mother's presence. Houston left everything to her daughter, but eventually the singer's sister-in-law Pat Houston became the executor of the estate.

Bobbi Kristina had public conflicts with her grandmother, Cissy, over the publishing of the Houston biography Remembering Whitney. In early 2014, she was reported to have been married to Nick Gordon, who had been taken in by Houston during his childhood and raised with Bobbi Kristina, yet later reports stated that they weren't legally wed. In another confrontation, she made disparaging comments via Twitter about Angela Bassett after the actress/director opted to cast a trained actress in the lead role of a Houston biopic instead of Bobbi Kristina.

On January 31, 2015, nearly three years to the date of her mother's death, Bobbi Kristina was discovered face down in a bathtub in her Roswell, Georgia, home by associate Max Lomas. After being admitted to North Fulton Hospital, she was eventually taken to Emory University Hospital, having been placed into a medically-induced coma.

Her father and grandmother visited her bedside amid calls for public support and prayer, with a candlelight vigil held on February 10 in suburban Atlanta. Bobbi Kristina Brown died on July 26, 2015, at Peachtree Christian Hospice in Duluth, Georgia. She was 22 years old.

Documentary

Backed by the Houston estate, the documentary Whitney was released in July 2018, with Houston's sister-in-law, Pat, serving as executive producer.

"Everyone that has a life has a story. It's her story and it's played out in the documentary," Pat Houston told Good Morning America a few weeks before the film's release. "She narrated a lot of it herself. It's just her life and her story as the family would see it, and the friends, who dealt with it every single day."

The documentary premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. In the doc, it is revealed that her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, sister of Dionne Warwick, allegedly sexually abused the singer. Houston's brother told filmmakers he was abused by Dee Dee and believed his sister was too. The documentary also provided insight into Houston's relationship with drugs - her brother Michael admitted that he gave her marijuana and cocaine as a gift for her 16th birthday - as well as her kinship with fellow pop superstar Michael Jackson.

The following year brought more revelations about the singer's private life with the publication of A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston, by Robyn Crawford. A longtime friend and assistant, Crawford confirmed that the two also had a romantic relationship before Houston became a global superstar.
READ MORE: Inside Whitney Houston's Relationship With Best Friend Robyn Crawford
Posthumous Music, Projects and Honors

'Memories,' 'Higher Love'

In 2016, fans were treated to the release of a new Houston single, "Memories," with Malaysian singer Siti Nurhaliza sharing credit on the track. Houston's vocals had been recorded nearly 35 years earlier. In 2019, another new Houston single surfaced, this one a cover of Steve Winwood's 1986 hit "Higher Love." Houston had recorded a version that was originally meant for her 1990 album I'm Your Baby Tonight, before it was remixed for a posthumous release by Norwegian DJ and producer Kygo.

Hologram Tour

In 2019, it was announced that Houston's hologram would be going on tour the following year. The production was being developed by BASE Holograms, which had already debuted shows featuring the likenesses of Greek opera diva Maria Callas and American rock 'n' roll great Roy Orbison.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

On January 15, 2020, it was announced that Houston had been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

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Whitney Houston released her debut album at age 22 and scored three No. 1 singles. Whitney (1987) delivered four more No. 1s and earned Houston a Grammy, with later albums including I'm Your Baby Tonigh t (1990) and My Love Is Your Love (1998) as well as soundtracks to The Bodyguard (1992) and Waiting to Exhale (1995).

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Another Beautiful picture

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Whitney Houston's speech was as confounding as her song. In the early nineteen-eighties, the teen-ager from East Orange, New Jersey, spoke like a shy ingénue-one who had apparently come from a raceless society. Televised interviews still mattered back then. Houston insisted on giving weight to her consonants; charming the likes of Merv Griffin, she indulged in prissy pauses between responses. In 1984, asked in an interview with "Entertainment Tonight" about her relationship with her mother, the gospel singer Cissy Houston, and her cousin, the soul singer Dionne Warwick, Houston, dewy-skinned, gave a debutante's practiced rebuttal: "It really isn't any pressure at all. I am honored to be associated with those two ladies." Houston's spectacular accent was her witty version of white Hollywood's mid-Atlantic affectation: part Baptist gravity, part small-city charisma, at once assimilationist and easy. Idolatrous children thought she spoke like a princess. But American princesses, historically, have not had an Afro and been deeply brown-skinned; they have not been born in Newark, three years before a race riot.

Houston's other speaking voice was stalked by that childhood. This was how she talked when she had tired of pop's required politesse, when she screeched the name of her lover-"Bobby!"-across red carpets, from the rolled-down window of an S.U.V. This voice vibrated with caprice. It startled Diane Sawyer when she pried into Houston's weight loss, in the infamous "20/20" interview. ("Crack is whack!" Houston said in response to Sawyer's speculation that drugs were the cause.) One can imagine that this was the voice that Houston used when, speaking to Redbook's Jamie Foster Brown, in 1996, she identified the nature of her audience's interest in her romantic and sexual life with the R. & B. "bad boy" Bobby Brown: "I'm like an American princess. White America wanted me to marry someone white," she said. "They don't understand why I'd want a strong black man." Houston knew that their union emphasized her blackness, and she seemed to luxuriate in this fact-though the relationship was, according to both parties, a source of pain, and exhaustion. In the twilight of Houston's career, when dew had turned to sweat, it was to her "black" voice and black life that her instability was attributed.

The new documentary "Whitney: Can I Be Me?," by Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal, ostensibly takes as its subject the gradual destruction of Houston's singing voice. In Dolezal's archival footage of Houston's 1999 world tour, we watch a lanky and big-eyed Houston, with coral lips and a green fur, trot up a short stairwell on her way to bless a German crowd. Those who were part of the tour remember that Houston's voice was shot by the end. Assistants, makeup artists, and one fatherly bodyguard recount their bewilderment about and love for the vivacious star. They speculate on what drug use-which the film suggests began in the late eighties, before Houston first encountered Brown-did to her body, her vocals. Perhaps it wasn't just the drugs that wrecked her. Houston was in love with her best friend, Robyn Crawford; there was no room in her persona, designed to refract all-American values back to her fans, for bisexuality. But Broomfield ("Kurt and Courtney," "Biggie and Tupac") has subdued his usual scrounging, gonzo instincts, opting instead for the most solemn, respectful consideration to date of the most famous female pop singer of the pop-music era. (This likely says more about the pickings than about "Can I Be Me?": "Whitney," the 2015 Lifetime movie, which was made against the Houston family's wishes, aired just a month after Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina, died, at the age of twenty-two. She had lost consciousness in a bathroom tub, just as her mother did in 2012, at forty-eight.)

"Can I Be Me?" also obliquely examines Houston's anxiety about the public spectacle of her race. In grainy home videos, Houston's homegirl from New Jersey trills out; as she coos to Bobby, her vowels are rounder than in interviews, and her gerunds slip away. But the skinny youth who grew up under the thumb of her mother and the Gospel-who gained an "Auntie Ree" in her mother's former boss, Aretha Franklin; who negotiated the narcotic thrills of Newark and the aspirational black middle-class splendor of East Orange-was made the ambassador of a blackness that felt artificial to many. By the time she was twenty-five, Houston's two albums had sold millions, sharing records previously held only by the Beatles, and she had established the architecture of a standard female pop record and the attendant revival of chanteuse pop. She had mastered technique-but, it was said, she did not know true, gut-wrenching soul. Houston was not, at least initially, an R. & B. singer; in fact, she was aggressively pitched as the opposite. A Time profile, from July of 1987, titled "Prom Queen of Soul," describes her "impeccable face, sleek figure, and supernova smile," like "a Cosby kid made in heaven," before arguing that Houston represents an "overdue vindication of that neglected American institution: the black middle class." (The "Prom Queen" part wasn't a compliment.) "Clearly, there was an effort to make her the un-black black artist," Mark Anthony Neal writes, in his book "Soul Deep." Some black radio stations decided not to play her. In 1989, Houston was booed at the Soul Train Awards. (Her mother writes, in her autobiography, that the crowd jeered at her, calling her "Whitey.") This was an existential blow.

The documentary empathetically and, I think, accurately proposes that Houston was a consummate victim of racial expectation. We are used to thinking of Michael Jackson as such a sufferer: as Margo Jefferson has written, Jackson was tasked as a small boy with turning "all complications of age, race, or sex into pure entertainment." The lightening of his skin, the maintenance of his high and effete voice, and the wigs are all easily interpreted as a hyperbolic rejoinder to the concept of racial fate. Houston's struggles were not so obvious, but she was groomed for crossover fame in her early teens, and was burdened with similar responsibility. It was a critical time: the music charts were highly segregated, and favored rock. "Clive had been trying to create the pop diva," Kenneth Reynolds, an R. & B. executive at Arista Records, said of Clive Davis, the director of Houston's career. "Along came Whitney, rough around the edges, but that could be fixed." In his memoir, Davis, who undoubtedly held great affection for Houston, recalls the moment when he finally recognized the economics of black popularity. "For Whitney's third album, it was clear that we needed to shore up her base in the black community." What Davis seems not to have understood was that this was also an issue of spirit. Both Michael and Janet Jackson, Houston's counterparts in crossover appeal, had been able to channel overt, even radical blackness as their careers matured. But Houston's catalogue, organized around the concept of stubborn female resilience, and for the most part written by men, hardly ever gave us insight into her knowledge of her particular black female pain.

Davis's rerouting of Houston's career worked, in a sense. "I'm Your Baby Tonight," released in 1990, lustier and overstuffed with New Jack Swing rhythm, successfully communicated Houston's capabilities as an R. & B. artist. But the image of Houston-as-princess, and the expectation that she act like one, always lurked. That year, Joy Duckett Cain profiled Houston for Essence: "I know what my color is," Houston said, with the defensiveness that she would wear for the rest of her brief life. "I was raised in a black community with black people, so that has never been a thing with me." Her evident pain made her eccentric. In sit-down interviews, especially those that took place in the decade before she died, in 2012, she was irritable and cunning and loud and heartbreaking. "We need a longer month!" she declares in one notorious clip, fanning herself behind an equally erratic Brown, when asked about the importance of Black History Month.

"Can I Be Me?" resituates Houston as a matron saint of pop's broken women; it is hard to imagine that other divas who have incorporated their private struggles into their public personae-Mariah Carey's comeback from that strange afternoon at "Total Request Live"; Britney Spears's emotional reveals; even Beyoncé's autobiographical frankness-could have existed without Houston's legacy, however tabloid. But Houston herself came from an era that dissuaded her from meaningfully admitting to this brokenness in her music. Instead, Houston code-switched: between black vernacular and white English, palatable pop and searching R. & B., between producer's plaything and autonomous composer, between haughty grace and extreme vulnerability, between alertness and breakdowns-and she did so tremendously, tragically.

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Whitney Houston's speech was as confounding as her song. In the early nineteen-eighties, the teen-ager from East Orange, New Jersey, spoke like a shy ingénue-one who had apparently come from a raceless society. Televised interviews still mattered back then. Houston insisted on giving weight to her consonants; charming the likes of Merv Griffin, she indulged in prissy pauses between responses.

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A Whitney Houston Beautiful Picture

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As the daughter of gospel and soul singer Cissy Houston and the cousin of Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston was better connected than most young vocalists when she embarked on a recording career in the mid-1980s. Nothing, however, could have prepared the model-turned-singer from East Orange, N.J., for the superstardom which greeted her. Thanks to MTV ubiquity an incredibly commanding voice, Houston became one of the most successful female recording artists of all time, redefining the image of a female soul icon and inspiring singers ranging from Mariah Carey to Rihanna. Several years into her career, however, releases became more infrequent as her personal life became more troubled, and though she appeared to have gotten back on track by the end of the 2000s, she was no longer a trend-setter.

Born in 1963, as a child, Houston sang in her family's church choir. At 15 she began performing in her mother's nightclub act. While attending a Catholic high school, the lithe beauty signed with a modeling agency and posed for magazines including Glamour and Vogue. After graduating, she continued to model and sing, backing up Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan before Arista president Clive Davis spotted her at a Manhattan showcase. Having previously steered the careers of Warwick and Houston family friend Aretha Franklin, Davis signed the 19-year-old and started choosing songs for her self-titled debut album, which featured duets with established stars Jermaine Jackson and Teddy Pendergrass and her first hit, "Hold Me" (Number 46 pop, Number 5 R&B, 1984). Arista budgeted the disc at $250,000, an extraordinarily hefty sum for an unproven artist.

Released in 1985, Whitney Houston proved a worthwhile investment. It shot to Number One and generated the smash singles "You Give Good Love" (Number Three pop, 1985), her first Number One "Saving All My Love for You" (1985), "How Will I Know" (Number One, 1985), and a new version of the George Benson hit "Greatest Love of All" (Number One, 1986). In 1987, the pop-oriented Whitney solidified Houston's success, reaching Number One and spawning the peppy "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)" (Number One, 1987), "Didn't We Almost Have It All" (Number One, 1987), "So Emotional" (Number One, 1987), "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" (Number One, 1988), and "Love Will Save the Day" (Number Nine, 1988). Houston also recorded "One Moment in Time," NBC-TV's theme song for the Summer Olympics (Number Five, 1988). In 1989 she teamed up with Aretha Franklin on the R&B hit "It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Never Gonna Be." All of a sudden, Whitney Houston owned pop.

The new superstar went to work with songwriters L.A. & Babyface, singing alongside Luther Vandross and Stevie Wonder on her third album, which displayed a slick R&B edge. In 1990 the title track to I'm Your Baby Tonight's topped the pop and R&B charts, as did "All the Man That I Need." There were more hits in 1991 - "Miracle" (Number Nine), "My Name Is Not Susan" (Number 20), and "I Belong to You" (Number 10 R&B) - but, peaking at Number Three, Baby proved disappointing after its predecessors. Houston bounced back in a big way with the 1992 film The Bodyguard, in which she made her acting debut opposite Kevin Costner to mixed reviews and huge box office success. The movie's soundtrack proved even more successful, hitting Number One and producing a monster single. Houston's cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" (1992) remained at the top of the chart for an unprecedented 14 weeks. She also released a cover of Chaka Khan's 1978 hit "I'm Every Woman" (Number Four pop) as well as "I Have Nothing" (Number Four pop, 1993). In 1992 Houston married singer Bobby Brown; their first child, Bobbi Kristina, was born the next year, and Houston sang alongside Brown on his single „Something in Common.

Houston's next move was to attempt to duplicate the success of The Bodyguard‚s movie/soundtrack twofer with 1995's Waiting to Exhale. The melodrama was popular with female audiences, and resulted in a few more hit singles, most notably "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" (Number One, 1995) and a duet with CeCe Winans, "Count on Me" (Number Eight pop, 1996). In 1996 Houston starred with Denzel Washington and Courtney B. Vance in the comedy The Preacher's Wife, a box-office disappointment whose soundtrack nevertheless gave her another charting ballad, a cover of The Four Tops‚ "I Believe in You and Me" (Number Four).

Houston moved to the small screen in 1997, producing and playing the Fairy Godmother to Brandy's Cinderella in a Wonderful World of Disney remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. In 1998, she released her first studio album since 1990. My Love Is Your Love (Number 13) was an uncharacteristic move. Aside from a handful of ballads, including her Oscar-winning duet with fellow diva Mariah Carey, "When You Believe" (Number 15, 1998), from The Prince of Egypt, and the Diane Warrenˆpenned torch song "I Learned From the Best" (Number 13 R&B, 1999), the album showcased a new, savvy street savvy that had previously come through only in her later interviews and her private life with Brown. Hip-hop personalities and producers such as Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, Rodney Jerkins, Missy Elliott, and Faith Evans collaborated with the vocalist on various tracks. The public loved the new Whitney, giving her hits with the sultry "Heartbreak Hotel" (Number Two, 1999), the kick-him-out anthem "It's Not Right But It's Okay" (Number Four, 1999), and the reggae-inflected title track (Number Four, 1999).

While Houston was back in the spotlight, reports of her diva behavior became more prevalent in 1999 and 2000: She was often hours late for interviews, photo shoots, and rehearsals; concerts and talk-show appearances were cancelled. In what would be the start of a string of tabloid stories questioning her state of mind, Houston dodged arrest for marijuana possession at a Hawaii airport in January 2000 (charges were later dismissed). In the months that followed that incident, Houston was a surprising no-show at her mentor Clive Davis' induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was allegedly booted out of Academy Awards rehearsals for an all-star tribute to Burt Bacharach. Rumors about her tumultuous marriage to Brown resurfaced, particularly when he was briefly imprisoned in mid-2000 for a parole violation. Yet Houston delivered a powerful performance at an Arista Records anniversary party that also served as a tribute to Davis, and the release of a two-disc collection Whitney: The Greatest Hits equally highlighted her ballads and dance-club remixes. Whitney featured four new songs, three of which were duets with Deborah Cox, Enrique Iglesias, and George Michael. But after renewing her Arista contract with the biggest record deal in history ($100 million for a promise of six new albums), she performed on Michael Jackson's Thirtieth Anniversary television special looking thin and frail.

It turned out Houston had been struggling with a drug problem. The following year, she spoke frankly about her involvement with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine in a special edition of ABC's Primetime with Diane Sawyer that coincided with the release of her comeback album, Just Whitney (Number Nine, 2002). The album -which included production work by Missy Elliott and Babyface and a second duet with Brown- was Houston's first work without the involvement of Davis. Just Whitney was not well received: critics bashed it, the singles failed to reach the Top Forty and sales of the album were lower than any of her previous works. She followed up with a holiday disc, One Wish: The Holiday Album (Number 49, 2002), which sold even fewer copies.

In spring of 2004 Houston entered rehab for the first time; later that year, she toured as part of the Soul Divas along with her cousin Dionne Warwick and Natalie Cole. That September, Houston received a standing ovation when she sang a tribute to Davis at the World Music Awards. She and Davis subsequently announced they would be working together on a new album. Houston returned to rehab in 2005 and the following year filed for divorce from Brown (after some of the couple's trails and travails were aired on the MTV reality show "Being Bobby Brown" in 2005). Houston's divorce from Brown was finalized in April 2007 with her winning sole custody of the couple's daughter. In December 2007 an apparently sober Houston performed an entire show before a crowd of 10,000 at the Live and Loud Festival in Malaysia.

Houston released her seventh album I Look to You (Number One, 2009), executive produced by Clive Davis, in August 2009. The disc had been nearly half-a-decade in the making. The R. Kelly-penned title track and lead single (Number 70) was very much in the vein of her previous triumphant ballads, and contributions from Alicia Keys and Akon gave the album‚s mature moments a contemporary R&B kick. Houston embarked on a rigorous promotional tour that included closely-scrutinized performances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and the U.K.‚s X-Factor, and she announced a tour in support of the album that is due to kick off in London in April 2010.

Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Jim Macnie contributed to this article.

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As the daughter of gospel and soul singer Cissy Houston and the cousin of Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston was better connected than most young vocalists when she embarked on a recording career in the mid-1980s. Nothing, however, could have prepared the model-turned-singer from East Orange, N.J., for the superstardom which greeted her.

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On February 11th, 2012, as musical royalty descended on Los Angeles for the Grammys, Whitney Houston checked in to the Beverly Hilton hotel with an entourage of family and friends. In preparation for the pre-Grammy Awards shindig thrown annually by the music impresario Clive Davis, her mentor, Houston's assistant Mary Jones laid out a dress on the bed and left the hotel to pick up alternative attire at Neiman Marcus.

At 3.35pm, Jones returned to find Houston facedown in the bathtub. CPR was administered and paramedics were called to no avail. The police who arrived on the scene found an opened bottle of Champagne and a spoon containing a "white crystal-like substance". Weeks later, an autopsy report would contribute Houston's death to accidental drowning, heart disease and cocaine use. There were additional traces of a muscle relaxant, Xanax, marijuana and an allergy medication in the singer's system.

She was 48.

Five years later and a new documentary - Whitney: Can I Be Me - sifts through the details of Houston's sad, secret life. What exactly killed Houston? Why did she drown? How did she drown? Was she simply overwhelmed by the controlling demands of her formidable mother, Cissy Houston, Svengali Clive Davis, and her record company, Arista? Did the aftermath of her toxic and co-dependent marriage to Bobby Brown send her spiralling? Or was it the dissolution of her decades-old lesbian relationship with her assistant Robyn Crawford?

It's complicated, as documentarian Nick Broomfield discovered.

"In the end I think the divide between who she was and what her public persona was became more and more difficult," says Broomfield. "And she just went down, down, down."

Whitney Houston with her daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown and husband Bobby Brown. Photograph: Frank Mullen/WireImage

Broomfield's iconic gonzo-style - feigned bumbling, boom mic in the shot - has been parodied by The Simpsons and taken up by such film-makers as Louis Theroux and Morgan Spurlock. The director has previously door-stepped various parties to create the conspiratorial music docs, Kurt & Courtney (1998) and Biggie & Tupac (2002). Can I Be Me required an entirely different methodology.

You couldn't help but fall for Whitney. She was so, so funny. It's all so unfortunate"

"I remember the first time I put myself in a film," recalls Broomfield. "My editor was completely horrified. It was a crazy gamble. And then it worked. And then everyone wants you to do what you did last. I had some shots with me in them for Whitney. But her story was so powerful that I was made redundant."

Archive footage

Broomfield says he and his editor Marc Hoeferlin "fell in love with Whitney" while they pored over more than a hundred hours of archive footage. Sure enough, she emerges as wildly entertaining company.

In an early episode of Channel 4's The Word, when presenter Terry Christian asks her a cheeky question about a rumoured romance with Eddie Murphy, Houston beams and parrots his words back in a perfect Mancunian accent: "Rung me up?" Later, on the European leg of her 1999 tour, she lightly teases her husband, Bobby Brown, with a backstage rendition of his 1998 hit, My Prerogative.

Whitney Houston performing on stage during the 2004 World Music Awards at the Thomas and Mack Centre on September 15th, 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

"I didn't know that much going in," says Broomfield. "I went in out of curiosity. Which is pretty much how I've always worked. We were really choked up at the end of the edit, when we screened the film for ourselves. That is a rare experience. There have only been a couple of people who have really made me feel that way. But you couldn't help but fall for Whitney. She was so, so funny. It's all so unfortunate."

She's this completely passionate, unbelievable performer even during some of those late performances. And you can see that she's struggling"

The new film will finally allow diehard fans to see extensive archive material shot by German director Rudi Dolezal for an unfinished documentary about the singer's 1999 My Love is Your Love tour. Dolzezal, who receives a co-director credit on Can I Be Me is a music tour veteran who has shot The Rolling Stones, Queen, Miles Davis and Michael Jackson.

These live performances, even with a voice that is already damaged by drug use, are quite something to behold. "I'm playing behind her," recalls drummer Michael Baker. "And I'm watching the muscles in her back expand. She was like a doggone bodybuilder. And that's how she sang every night. Every song."

"The live performances are so much more compelling than her records because she put so much gospel in it," says Broomfield. "She's this completely passionate, unbelievable performer even during some of those late performances. And you can see that she's struggling. But she's still giving it more than you'll see anyone else give. She's belting it out."

Imploding relations

Dolezal's film - Whitney: Close Up - was scheduled to premiere on television in spring of 2000, before it was cancelled and shelved. The footage proves a treasure trove, particularly in terms of the imploding relations between Houston, Brown and Crawford.

Last year, Brown told Us Weekly magazine that Houston was bisexual and that she once had an affair with Tupac Shakur. He went on to say that Houston kept her relationship with Crawford hidden because of Cissy.

South African president Nelson Mandela and Whitney Houston smile for photographers in Johannesburg in this November 10th, 1994. Photograph: Juda Ngwenya/Reuters

"I really feel that if Robyn was accepted into Whitney's life, Whitney would still be alive today," Brown told the magazine. "She didn't have close friends with her anymore."

Houston's reticence is, sadly, understandable. Broomfield's film includes extracts from Cissy's notorious 2013 interview with Oprah. In the matriarch's 2013 book, Remembering Whitney, she wrote of her dislike for Crawford, prompting Oprah to ask: "Would it have bothered you if your daughter was gay?" "Absolutely," Cissy snapped back. "You wouldn't have condoned it?" continued an incredulous Oprah. "Not at all."

Robyn provided a safe place for her. In that Whitney found safety and solace"

"I didn't particularly like [Crawford]," Cissy told the talk show queen. "She just spoke too much, disrespectful sometimes, like she had something over Nippy (Houston's nickname), and I didn't like that at all. She was all right, she turned out to be all right, I guess. That was her friend."

Houston and Crawford first bonded while they were teenagers working at a community centre in East Orange, New Jersey. When Houston's modelling career began to take off, she'd face bullying in school, and Crawford, who was originally a friend of Houston's older brothers Michael and Gary, would frequently come to the rescue. When Houston moved out of her family home, she shared her first apartment with Crawford.

Houston with Robyn Crawford. Photograph: Juda Ngwenya/Reuters

Broomfield's film contains footage that suggests that, deep into Houston and Brown's 14-year marriage, Crawford remained a fixture in Houston's domestic arrangements.

"I don't think she was gay, I think she was bisexual," Houston's make-up artist and friend Ellin Lavar says in Can I Be Me: "Robyn provided a safe place for her. In that Whitney found safety and solace."

In 2012, gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who met and befriended Houston and Crawford at an AIDS charity event shortly before the singer's 1992 wedding, told Pink News that the marriage was strictly a business arrangement.

"When I met them [Houston and Crawford], it was obvious they were madly in love," he claimed. "Their intimacy and affection was so sweet and romantic."

Crawford, who finally quit as Houston's assistant in 2000, did not speak to Broomfield for the film but she's there in archive footage, and she is certainly there in spirit.

Uneasy romantic trinity

"She has actually talked to no one," says the director. "Although funnily enough she encouraged other people to take part in the film. She's still in touch with people. I think she's pleased. I know she is. I had her phone number. But I just felt that we already have a clear and accurate depiction of their relationship in the film. And there's something so special about that. So I didn't feel that we needed to have to have Robyn now."

Bobby and Robyn had some physical altercations and there were times where he wasn't always the winner"

Houston's marriage to Brown, understandably, made for an uneasy romantic trinity. In Derrick Handspike's unauthorised 2008 biography, Bobby Brown: The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But . . ., the author quotes Brown as saying: "Now I realise Whitney had a different agenda than I did when we got married. I believe her agenda was to clean up her image while mine was to be loved and have children.

Whitney Houston in February 1982 when she was a senior in high school during her first session with a professional photographer. Photograph: Jack Mitchell/Getty Images

"Whitney felt she had to make rumours of a lesbian affair go away. Since she was the American Sweetheart and all, that didn't go too well with her image. In Whitney's situation the only solution was to get married and have kids. That would kill all speculation whether it was true or not."

Can I Be Me respectfully broaches that speculation. "Robyn and Whitney were like twins," says Kevin Ammons, who worked as a security guard for Houston. "They were inseparable. They had a bond and Bobby Brown could never remove Robyn. He wanted to be the man in the relationship."

"Bobby Brown and Robyn Crawford were like fire and ice. They hated each other," David Roberts, Houston's former bodyguard, says in Broomfield's film. "They'd battle for her affections. Bobby and Robyn had some physical altercations and there were times where he wasn't always the winner. But then Whitney would always come and pour oil over troubled waters."

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Roberts was Houston's bodyguard and constant companion. Unlike the Kevin Costner film, there was never any romantic involvement between the superstar singer and Roberts, a former Special Forces sniper from Wales who was involved in the 1980 Iranian embassy siege. But in tribute to her role in The Bodyguard, she did once slip a note under his hotel room door that read "I will always love you".

Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner on the set of The Bodyguard in 1992. Photograph: RDA/Getty Images

'Completely out of control'

After witnessing Houston overdose on her 1999 tour, Roberts filed a carefully compiled report to the people then managing her affairs.

"By then Whitney and Bobby were completely out of control," says Broomfield. "And I think he and various other people tried to bring that to the attention of the estate. He wrote that report that was incredibly detailed. And full of concern. I have a copy of it. And no one chose to act on it. Not at all."

Nick Broomfield, the documentary maker behind Whitney: Can I Be Me: he chose not to highlight Whitney Houston's final decade in the film as it was "too sad". Photograph: Erik Tanner/Getty Images

Worse still, for his efforts, Roberts was let go. "There's no doubt in my mind, had that report been taken seriously, Whitney and Bobbi Kristina would still be here," claims Roberts.

In circumstances that were eerily reminiscent of those surrounding her mother's death, Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only daughter of Houston and Brown, was found unconscious in a bathtub on January 31st, 2015. She was pronounced dead in July, 2015, after spending six months in a medically induced coma. She was 22.

Can I Be Me tags along behind Bobbi Kristina, then aged six, as she takes the stage for guest spots on her mother's 1999 tour.

Roberts, who was plainly fond of the girl, does not mince words: "She never had a chance. She came along when things were only getting worse."

Houston first dabbled with drugs with her brothers, Michael and Gary, as a teenager

Supermarket tabloids did a brisk trade during the 1990s by peddling the idea that Houston's life spiralled into addiction after she married Brown. She was the gospel-singing good girl - the church-going daughter of Cissy and a cousin of Dionne Warwick. He was a bad boy who, aged 20, when they first met, had already been shot and stabbed in the shoulder. Their tumultuous marriage (from 1992 to 2007), characterised by drug use, infidelity and a costly entourage, was seldom out of the headlines. But contrary to popular belief, Brown did not introduce his troubled wife to cocaine.

In fact, Houston first dabbled with drugs with her brothers, Michael and Gary, as a teenager. Speaking to Oprah in 2013, Michael said: "We were always, you know, being together most of the time, and her following behind me - I taught her to drive. We played together - everything that you do together as you're growing up - and then when you get into drugs, you do that together too, and it just got out of hand."

According to his 2016 memoir, Every Little Step, Brown was shocked when, just before their wedding ceremony, he saw Houston "hunched over a bureau snorting a line of coke".

'Bobby wasn't a terrible person'

"It's not like Bobby is a bad person," says Broomfield. "It's just that Bobby and Whitney were unable to support each other, constructively. Instead, they enabled each other. They were totally besotted with each other. But they were unable to support each other in order to change. I think their close friends saw that. Bobby wasn't a terrible person. Whitney wasn't a terrible person. They just couldn't change while they were together. That's why they had to end."

The truth is that Houston was always as "street" as her R&B star husband. But that part of her personal history didn't fit with what Broomfield calls "the Whitney character".

As Pattie Howard, Houston's backing vocalist, notes: "People may not know it but Whitney was from the 'hood'. They wanted to present her as the princess. And that's what white America was presented with."

Whitney Houston performs on stage at the Wembley Arena, UK, in May 2005. Photograph: David Corio/Redferns

Houston was, indeed, born in the projects. After Newark's week of race riots in 1967, however, the family moved to East Orange, New Jersey. She was already a successful teen model when she was discovered by Gerry Griffith, director of A&R for Arista Records, and mentored by Davis, who had previously shaped a young Bruce Springsteen.

Davis had a vision for Houston and it was anything but street.

People shouted "Oreo" - brown on the outside, white on the inside - as her nomination for Best Female Vocalist was announced

Kenneth Reynolds, who worked in marketing for Arista Records recalls that: "Anything that was too black sounding was sent back. We wanted Joni Mitchell. We wanted Barbra Streisand. "

"She was very carefully groomed for nearly two years before the first album came out," explains Broomfield. "So every aspect of her was carefully considered. She was a major project. A lot of money was spent on her. Anything that was too R&B was out. They didn't want a female James Brown. That was not part of their vision. Which, of course, was a very successful vision."

In 1989, just as Houston topped 25 million in album sales and surpassed the Beatles's record with seven consecutive number one hits, she attended the Soul Train awards where, in response to her "white" music, she was roundly booed. Pre-Beyoncé and Mariah Carey, "crossover" was synonymous with cultural betrayal. People shouted "Oreo" - brown on the outside, white on the inside - as her nomination for Best Female Vocalist was announced.

Drug abuse

"It's not a good feeling," says Houston, in Can I Be Me. "It's horrible and kind of funny. You think: 'Are they booing me?' And you have to sit there and be cordial and smiley. And you feel like: 'Oh my God'."

Kirk Whalum, the saxophonist who toured with Houston for more than seven years recalls that night, which coincidentally, was the first time she met Brown. "It was devastating [for her]," says Whalum.

By the turn of the millennium, Houston found herself at the centre of a perfect storm of ongoing racial friction, marital troubles and drug abuse.

Friends, unable to watch Houston's decline, began to drift away. Her father, John, died in 2003, but not before his management company, John Houston Entertainment LLC, filed a $100 million lawsuit against his own daughter. Months before his death, he made a public appeal on the syndicated show, Celebrity Justice: "You get your act together, honey, and you pay me the money that you owe me."

Crawford's departure in 2000, too, prompted a new, crippling dependency on crack-cocaine and other substances.

"Robyn was the one who was keeping her together," says writer Allison Samuels. "That's when drugs became so important to her."

Whitney Houston performs onstage at the American Music Awards at in Los Angeles, California in 2009. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Broomfield's film is careful to avoid drug-related hysteria: "People are so moralistic and judgemental about drugs," he says. "I feel very strongly about that. If you just condemn others outright for drug use, then lack of compassion is the greater problem. That's not helpful for anybody. And it wasn't helpful for her. This woman was incredibly sensitive. She was full of self-doubt. And I think that attitude made things so much worse."

It was kind of a miracle that she lived as long as she did. She went down and kept going"

Houston's final decade

In many others respects, too, Can I Be Me might have been far more of a slow-motion car crash. There is no mention, for example, of Brown's 2003 arrest for physically assaulting his wife. There is some gentle euphemistic language from Burt Bacharach, who was the musical director of the Academy Awards in 2000 when Whitney was famously booked to sing a medley of her hits, only to be dismissed amid reports that she turned up for rehearsals in a "discombobulated" and "totally out of it" state. There is very little footage from Houston's final decade.

"Do we really need to go over that?" says Broomfield. "I felt in the balance, against the trajectory of her life, it wasn't important. From 1999 until the end of her life - which is a relatively long period in her life - she basically withdrew from public life, apart from that disastrous tour in 2009. It was kind of a miracle that she lived as long as she did. She went down and kept going. I guess you just follow your gut feeling on these things.

Whitney Houston performs on stage at Arena Nurnberger on May 27th, 2010 in Nuremberg, Germany. Photograph: Bernd Mueller/Redferns

"I think there was enough said in the last years of her life. There was enough judgment. Her entire appearance changed. She lost all her teeth. Her mouth and her face changed completely. She looked like a different person. And in my mind it was clear which part of her life was more interesting. I didn't dwell on her life at the end because I couldn't, I didn't want to see it. It was just too sad."

"For 10 years or so I started waiting for the phone call that we all eventually got," says Lavar of the Houston's lonely last decade.

The title of the film was a question that Houston often publicly asked. The answer, alas, was a resounding no.

Whitney: Can I Be Me opens June 16th.

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On February 11th, 2012, as musical royalty descended on Los Angeles for the Grammys, Whitney Houston checked in to the Beverly Hilton hotel with an entourage of family and friends. In preparation for the pre-Grammy Awards shindig thrown annually by the music impresario Clive Davis, her mentor, Houston's assistant Mary Jones laid out a dress on the bed and left the hotel to pick up alternative attire at Neiman Marcus.