Rhian Jones

littlejoeii:

This is a ‘Whitney Houston is dead’ post in three parts. 

I

Like jamiesoncox, I’m a little too young to have much ‘first-hand’ experience of Whitney Houston’s talent, so my reaction to her death has been shock over someone dying at 48 more than anything else. Her fame and legacy didn’t extend that far out of the 80s; where pretty much everyone felt something personal when Jackson died, the grief for Houston looks seems more age sensitive. Sasha Frere-Jones mentions her persona ‘was always human’ in his New Yorker piece, and that frailty’s reflected in her reputation. She was something, definitely, but growing up after the fact of her 80s peak, her name wasn’t mentioned in the same revered tones as Jackson, Madonna, or even Prince. She lost the early 90s ‘tug-of-war’ with Mariah Carey that Jody Rosen’s Slate obit takes note of. So, growing up, Whitney never filled the adult contemporary ‘Good Singer’ slot that Adele’s got wrapped up now. Girls at secondary school were more likely to sing ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ than ‘I Will Always Love You’.

Clearly she wasn’t just a 80s curio who never translated her appeal into the 90s or 00s. Her personal problems, rather than a lack of talent, stymied her longevity. In terms of reinventions, there was ‘My Love Is Your Love’ in 1998, my mum played that well into the millennium, but, where Madonna was somewhere between her eastern mysticism look and hanging around with Ali G, that would be pretty much it for Whitney. 

II

So, as a mostly disinterested outsider, the choice of How Will I know as the song that’s won out as the self-written obituary people use to show their appreciation is interesting. If you asked me to name five Whitney Houston tracks, it’d probably go something like:

I Will Always Love You

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

It’s Not Right But It’s Ok

The Greatest Love of All

My Love Is Your Love

Three of her biggest hits and two of her more ‘recent’ (12 year old!!) successes. I’d wager that list would be similar if you asked most people on this side of the Atlantic. If a song’s success in the artist’s lifetime were a barometer for its likely use as a tribute on that artist’ passing, ‘How Will I Know’ would be a decent shot, but not the shortest odds. 

The isolated vocal track doing the rounds on Tumblr’s  done a lot to influence it. Like most vocal tracks recorded separately, it has something lost and haunted about it. It’s a passionate and untamed vocal made slightly strange without the spritzy keys and uptempo drums adorning it. The talented vocalist she was, she’s always hanging off those other elements in the track. So when you take them out and just leave that vocal, reverberating slightly in the empty spaces, it gets an elegiac quality that perhaps isn’t otherwise there in her gutsy ballads and more melismatic moments. The repeated trills of the title’s question in the pre-chorus makes sense as a tease of anticipation in the logic of the song, but on the vocal track it feels little existential and lost. Not to mention that, if you ignore the more crush-y elements, that question has a vaguely religious feel backed up by the choir and lyrics like ‘take me to the clouds above’.

III

But beyond the Tumblr and Twitter bubbles, quite a few people have posted up this video on my FB feed. The appeal of the song is obvious, but what makes people flock to a song that wasn’t the artist’s most popular in life?

A good recent example was the popularity of (I think!) ‘Man in the Mirror’ in the weeks after Jackson’s death - again, one of his bigger songs, but not his biggest. Which leads to a slightly morbid - but interesting! - question:

What songs will enjoy a postmortem revival after the passing of Madonna/Prince/Enter Your Favourite Pop Star Here? 

I’ll get us started…

Madonna: ‘Frozen’ - Surprisingly, it’s 3rd on her last.fm charts and has the whole mysticism vibe going for it. People will want to hear an ‘authentic’ sounding Madonna and I think this is the most accomplished ‘authentic’ song she’s got. Not one of her best, but sex and death don’t usually go together.

Prince: ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’ - this is a pretty deep cut that closes the similarly underappreciated Parade - it doesn’t chart anywhere on last.fm - but Prince has a hardcore fanbase that could push it out into the open. It’s beautiful, restrained, spiritual rather than sexual, romantic rather than randy. The kind of small classic Prince was knocking out as album tracks and b-sides throughout the 80s that people just don’t pay enough attention to.

What say you?