Whitney Houston, 1963-2012
Tonight’s Grammy Awards will bear the distinction of taking place 24 hours after a great loss for the music industry: the death of Whitney Houston, a woman who sold in excess of 55 million albums and created the template for what many music listeners, “American Idol” viewers and record business executives consider the height of female pop vocal skill. She died at age 48 at the Beverly Hilton, a traditional gathering point for pre-Grammy celebrations, where she was scheduled to perform at a tribute to her greatest advocate, former Arista head Clive Davis.
“Joe, Matt and I are saddened by the loss of Whitney Houston,” said Edmond singer-songwriter Mark Alan Stansberry, who is attending the Grammy Awards with sons Matt and Joe Stansberry. “We stood right behind Whitney and her daughter at the Beverly Hills hotel on Thursday (at the hotel desk) where we were staying. We saw her and her family last year at the same hotel where she has been a regular performer at the annual Clive Davis/Grammy Event. She appeared upbeat and friendly on the occasions we saw her.”
The early stages of Whitney Houston’s career were so radically different from what is experienced in the modern music industry that the decisions that were made for a young woman with an extraordinary voice seem almost quaint. Houston was uncommonly connected: her mother was Cissy Houston, a highly regarded gospel singer, her cousin was Dionne Warwick, and her godmother was Aretha Franklin. And yet, after she made her debut singing backup on Chaka Khan’s 1978 single “I’m Every Woman,” a song she would later cover, and the record labels came to court the 15-year-old Houston, the decision was made for Houston to hold off, pursue her modeling career, and wait until a proper musical strategy could be developed.
Davis signed Houston to Arista in 1983, and spent the next two years cultivating the singer’s repertoire and executive producing her debut album, 1985′s “Whitney Houston.” The first single, “Someone For Me,” made little impact, but the second single and the opening track from the album, “You Give Good Love,” can be seen as the point where a mature R&B sensibility reasserted itself after being sidelined or absorbed into electro-funk and new wave. I still consider it her exemplary single, the song that displayed the elasticity of Houston’s vocals without creating an environment for the bombast and showy vocals that would later take over and, for better or worse, create that modern “American Idol” standard for vocal “perfection.” That album generated three more huge hits — “Saving All My Love For You,” “How Will I Know?” and “The Greatest Love of All” — and if Michael Jackson was the quintessential mainstream superstar of the first part of the 1980s, then Whitney Houston essentially took over for the balance of the decade.
Houston continued her commercial winning streak with 1987′s “Whitney,” which in terms of style and content was essentially a sequel to her debut, and 1990′s “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” a successful album marred by a significant dropoff in the quality of material. By 1992, Houston was so successful that she could be relied on to co-star in a major film with the biggest male star of the time, Kevin Costner, in Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Bodyguard.” The film achieved solid success, but the soundtrack was unstoppable, powered mainly by the ubiquity of Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” That single, a feat of vocal gymnastics that was roundly loved for its display of vocal dexterity and equally despised for its excesses, pushed sales of the soundtrack beyond the 16 million mark.
That same year, Houston married Bobby Brown, the former New Edition singer who enjoyed a chart-dominance period of his own in the late-1980s and early 1990s. At the time, Brown’s follow-up to the 1988 multiplatinum success of “Don’t Be Cruel,” titled “Bobby,” delivered well below expectations, and the marriage was considered something of a lopsided proposition: Brown was not a talent of Houston’s caliber, and his frequent legal problems seemed a stark contrast to the carefully cultivated regal stature of his wife.
Houston continued to make films during the 1990s rather than concentrating on album work: consequently, her chart and pop cultural presence was diminished as an emphasis on youth came to dominate the charts and Houston was increasingly a performer associated with adult-contemporary music. But by the early 2000s, Houston’s veneer of perfection was peeling away thanks to a marijuana bust in Hawaii, reports of harder drug use and a firing from an Academy Awards performance due to unprofessional behavior. A 2002 album, “Just Whitney,” suffered from weak material and even weaker performances — Houston’s voice sounded ravaged. Two years later, Houston appeared in the Bravo reality series “Being Bobby Brown,” which depicted the husband and wife as sadly addled, foul shadows of their former selves.
Houston seemed to be on the mend with 2009′s “I Look to You,” which gave the singer her first No. 1 album since the “Bodyguard” soundtrack. She was expected to appear later in 2012 in a remake of the cult classic “Sparkle,” co-staring with Jordin Sparks.
Just a cursory look at the mainstream pop landscape displays Houston’s impact. Without Houston, there would certainly be no Mariah Carey, possibly no Beyonce, and tryouts for “X Factor,” “The Voice” and “American Idol” would undeniably take a wildly different tack. Although her passing calls to mind the recent loss of Amy Winehouse, an artist who also struggled with substance abuse, its closer analog is the death of Michael Jackson, an artist whose early skill ultimately became eclipsed by the wreckage of his later life.
Tonight’s Grammy Awards will feature a tribute performance by Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan, but prepare for the evening to be lengthy remembrance of Houston’s life and work. Regardless of the TMZ-baiting details of her personal life, Whitney Houston’s recording legacy is what will take center stage tonight. I will be live-blogging the event throughout the evening.
StaticBlog live blogs the 54rd Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday
Join me live at 7 p.m. CST Sunday as I endure 3 1/2 hours of this year’s Grammy Awards on StaticBlog as they unspool on CBS. I’ll be offering up-to-the-minute spew on winners, presenters and performers, and hoping that when Paul McCartney receives the MusiCares Person of the Year award, we are not treated to Skrillex chopping up “The Long and Winding Road.”
Come for magic, stay for the recrimination!
– Lang
Album Review: Van Halen, “A Different Kind of Truth” (Interscope)
Rating: 82
For Van Halen, now is not the time for innovation, and that time might never come again for the band. No, what is required for “A Different Kind of Truth” is restoration, and consequently the first Van Halen album recorded with David Lee Roth in 29 years sounds like an unearthed artifact. In a certain sense, “A Different Kind of Truth” truly is such an article, constructed largely from songs written in the mid-1970s, some of which appeared on the Gene Simmons-produced demo the group recorded in 1976. This could be construed as cutting corners, but when a band collectively decides to create a classicist album, attempting to replicate the spirit of Van Halen’s first two albums with entirely new songs would probably not be nearly as successful as the rebuilt parts that power “A Different Kind of Truth.”
“Tattoo,” the first single, does not factor in this success: Edward Van Halen’s sludgy riffing and Roth’s compressed vocals feel tired straight out of the gate, and the song desperately needs the high harmonies formerly provided by departed bassist Michael Anthony. But this could just be artful misdirection, because subsequent tracks such as “She’s the Woman,” “You and Your Blues” and “China Town” unexpectedly deliver the intensity of old, setting the stage for the one song that truly rises to the level of classic Van Halen, “Blood and Fire.” Everything about “Blood and Fire,” from its instantly memorable chorus to John Shanks’ spacious recording of Alex Van Halen’s drums, suggests that the band conjured the old magic from muscle memory.
On those tracks and the later “Big River,” bassist Wolfgang Van Halen does a fine job of replicating Anthony’s traditional roles, but the biggest revelation of “A Different Kind of Truth” is how important the tortuous and delicate Roth/EVH alliance is to this operation. After the temporary jolt of “5150,” Eddie Van Halen seemed at a loss for inspiration, and “Truth” suggests that Roth’s irrepressible Borscht Belt scatting, as heard in fine form on the “Ice Cream Man” sequel, “Stay Frosty,” is needed to launch the guitarist skyward. When Roth breaks the fourth wall on “Blood and Fire” and announces, “I told you I was coming back. Say you missed me. Say it like you mean it,” it’s with the confidence heard on the lion’s share of “A Different Kind of Truth” that Roth already knows the response.
— George Lang
Album Review: Lana Del Rey, “Born to Die” (Interscope)
Rating: 50
Comment section trolls with Eminem and Jay-Z in their collections tore Lana Del Rey to shreds for inventing a persona, critics who praise Lady Gaga for high-concept theatrics stomped on the former Lizzy Grant for draping herself in artificiality, and an idiotic debate raged about whether an artist signed to Interscope was truly “indie.” That’s not even counting all the shrill, mean-girl hatred aimed directly at Del Rey’s lips. All this extraneous blather, both before and after Del Rey’s weak-sauce performance on “Saturday Night Live,” muddies the water on whether “Born to Die” has any genuine life in it.
The absolute honest truth is that “Born To Die” was born at the right time in 2012, released in the early first quarter when movie studios dump their most exploitative horror bombs and most manipulative romances, and Del Rey has a whole lot of both in her. “Video Games,” the single that first earned Del Rey deserved attention, succeeded because it straddled the line between old-world Hollywood glamour and a severe case of David Lynchian creeps, but quality control falls off precipitously from there. “National Anthem,” containing the bona fide groaner “Money is the reason we exist/ everybody knows that it’s a fact — kiss kiss,” is too clunky to work as effective social criticism and insufficiently clever to operate as irony. The sonorous delivery on “Video Games” and the opening lines of the luxury rap pastiche “Off to the Races” get supplanted by baby-doll cooing on echo-laden dance-pop love songs such as “Diet Mountain Dew” and “Radio” that leave Del Rey sounding like Britney Spears trapped in a well.
Perhaps the naysayers feel cheated because, after the unsettling splendor of “Video Games,” Del Rey has little left lyrically, alternately simpering that she “will love you till the end of time” on “Blue Jeans” and flashing fake gangsta poses. “Born to Die” plays like a stunt gone wrong, a piece of performance art that began promisingly but lacked an exit strategy. Artifice is a key component of pop music, whether the instigator is a changeling like David Bowie or Madonna or a pseudonymous speaker of truth like Bob Dylan. What Lana Del Rey is missing that all those people have is sincerity — we can’t believe a single slurred word that comes out of her pouty mouth.
— George Lang
St. Vincent models proposed new police uniform on “Portlandia”
Amazing guitarist, songwriter and now, example for fighting crime.
– Lang
Video of the Day: Miike Snow, “Paddling Out”
A beer-bellied slob discovers magic dancing shoes and then is kidnapped by aliens dressed like Louis XIV courtiers and transformed into a cross between Gerard Depardieu and Cher.
Just another Monday on StaticBlog.
– Lang
Album Review: Chairlift, “Something” (Columbia/Young Turks)
Rating: 89
Chairlift displays a caliber of pop construction on its second album, “Something,” that ensures a large and devoted cult following in 2012, but if “Something” had found a release in the mid-1980s, Chairlift might have achieved the worldwide following of Depeche Mode. This is not to say that Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberley are strictly dancing in a retro heaven, but the Brooklyn duo employ the best elements of classic synth-pop to create similarly great electro songs for the digital present.
Fortunately, “Something” is not just displaying a beautiful surface. Polachek begins opening track “Sidewalk Safari” with a palpable threat: “All of the bones in your body are in way too few pieces for me/ Time to do something about it, if you know what I mean.” Like all great romantic revenge songs, the melody achieves the kind of buoyancy that makes unsuspecting listeners bob their heads and sing along to lines like “I’m bad with bows and arrows, I’m not so good at guns/ poison seems old fashioned, and hired help’s no fun.” Polachek’s ended romance with former Chairlift member Aaron Pfenning crops up again in the more heartbroken “Cool as a Fire,” in which the singer displays her vocal and emotional range.
But “Something” is not brimming with despair — in fact, it’s hard to identify a song from the past year as positively sweet as the irresistible dance-pop confection “I Belong In Your Arms,” or as romantic as the retro-R&B bouncer “Ghost Tonight.” Compared to 2009′s “Does You Inspire You,” “Something” is a more sophisticated undertaking, an album that could bridge the gap between Feist aficionados and Robyn acolytes, but this first major-label recording represents an advancement on all fronts rather than a mere concession to commerce. It is also proof that, after knocking out the indie world with “Bruises,” Polachek can deliver the goods many times over.
— George Lang
Album Review: The Darcys, “Aja” (Arts & Crafts)
Rating: 86
So tightly crafted is Steely Dan’s 1977 masterwork, “Aja,” that the only ways for any artist to approach the material consist of recreating the thing with painstaking detail or launching a sledgehammer at its crystalline perfection and rebuilding it from memory. The first approach can be thrilling in a live tribute but utterly pointless on record, and fortunately The Darcys take the latter route on their haunting, front-to-back reassessment of “Aja.” The Canadian band takes this 35-year-old monument to obsessive-compulsive jazz-rock and sails the yacht-rock juggernaut into a fog bank, creating a beautiful dissonance that amplifies the album’s spooky interior world.
Stripped of the syncopated rhythm and bright horn charts that gave it such buoyancy, the Darcys paint “Black Cow” with harsh tones to match its lyrics about instability and infidelity, beginning the song with churchlike organs and ending with a thunderous crash of drums and wires. Singer-keyboardist Jason Couse delivers the title track with choirboy tones as the rest of the Darcys emphasize the song’s Eastern tonalities and expand on Steve Gadd’s iconic drum flurry from the original. The band segues into “Deacon Blues” with a Krautrock rhythm and cascades of warm background vocals, and then pounds forward with a chiming, anthemic reinvention of “Peg.”
The Darcys rarely sound as if they are trying to actively subvert the material, and when it suits their purpose, they embrace elements of the original — Michael Le Riche’s guitar on “I Got the News” almost quotes Larry Carlton’s work, one of the rare moments when the band closely evokes the source. But by the closing “Josie,” the Darcys get into some serious subversion, turning Steely Dan’s ebullient story of a hottie’s homecoming into a meditation on a “raw flame, a live wire” with supernatural control over the people around her, giving new context to that line in which they “dance on the bones ’til the girls say when.” “Aja” in no way eclipses the original and will likely anger some sectors of the Steely Dan cult, but by attacking these songs from a new angle, the Darcys create a convincing argument that “Aja” has deep substance beneath its shiny exterior, and the songs can exist outside of Steely Dan’s hermetic seal.
— George Lang
Album Review: Cate Le Bon, “Cyrk” (Control Group)
Rating: 76
Welsh singer Cate Le Bon’s first showcase seems, in retrospect, like an artful bit of misdirection: She delivered the icy R&B female part on Neon Neon’s “I Lust You,” a 2008 electro-pop duet with her mentor, Super Furry Animals leader Gruff Rhys. Following her much darker 2009 debut disc, “Me Oh My,” Le Bon’s “Cyrk” sounds like a recently unearthed artifact, a collection of irresistibly wry and playful ballads and bashers that, much like the Super Furries or Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, delivers a Cardiff-bred take on late-1960s psych-rock.
Specifically, Le Bon’s vocal timbre suggests Nico with more range — she could easily get away with putting a banana on the cover of “Cyrk” given the mournful, accented delivery on the stately ballad “Puts Me to Work.” But Le Bon is not nearly as narcotic as Nico, opening “Cyrk” with the winking magnificence of “Falcon Eyed,” which takes breaks from a 4/4 punk rhythm to indulge in a waltzing, genre-bent, Bee Gees-referencing refrain: “It’s the curl in his hair and his falcon-eyed stare / He is more than a woman to me.” The singer’s voice can serve as the strong center in a storm, as it does on the title track, or as the soft counterpoint to menacing Farfisa organ attacks (“Julia”).
The production is refreshingly raw, letting “Cyrk” alternately evoke long-forgotten garage rock or the early 1970s British folk movement. Le Bon lets her accent grow thick to envelop “The Man I Wanted,” possibly the most Velvets/Nico-style ballad on the album. The sole credited songwriter on “Cyrk,” Le Bon sounds cut from the same cloth as Rhys, absorbing the best elements of psycheledia and alternative rock’s foundations and funneling it through a distinctly Welsh, pastoral folk-rock mindset.
— George Lang
Video of the Day: The Darkness, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us”
The Darkness’ first new material in seven years is pure earworm, and a great way to forget that terrible second album. Welcome back in a big way.
– Lang
