WITHOUT Whitney Houston we would not have had Mariah Carey or Beyonce. We would not have had Adele, who grew up a fan of Carey and Houston. And it's fair to say we would not have seen or heard a good portion of the singers who appeared in clubs, pubs and on television talent shows such as Australian Idol in the past decade.
Houston was discovered dead in her room in the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday. The website TMZ reported she was found drowned in the bath. She was 48.
As will no doubt be said many times today at the Grammy Awards, since the late 1980s her vaulting voice, an instrument of both range and sensitivity, became the benchmark for singers around the world.
All of them would attempt to extend the melismatic style (building multiple notes on individual words) Houston occasionally used into a showy manner which many fans and viewers came to consider the epitome of good singing. It was a style markedly different to that of her mother, the gospel singer Cissy Houston, her cousin the smooth pop singer Dionne Warwick and even that of her godmother, the soul great Aretha Franklin.
Not everyone appreciates or respects that legacy but it is substantial and will outlast the circumstances of her death and a latter-day reputation centred more on erratic behaviour and drug use than talent. A reputation only worsened, it should be noted, by her 2010 tour of Australia where reviews and fan commentary online excoriated her damaged voice, missed notes and an appearance that hinted at self-harm.
Massively successful ballads such as Greatest Love of All and Saving All My Love for You (from her 1985 self-titled debut) and the uptempo I Wanna Dance with Somebody (from the very similar second album, Whitney, in 1987) proved that gospel-style singing was more than a ''black thing'' with limited appeal to white audiences.
With sales of more than 45 million for her first two albums and 70 million overall thanks in part to her globe-bestriding cover of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You (from the soundtrack to her almost-as-successful film, The Bodyguard), she helped this sometimes sidelined genre underpin pop music for the next 25 years.
This was a real shock, I saw her in an interview not that long ago where she seemed very enthused about the new movie she was doing with Jennifer Hudson.
