Houston Death Cause
TMZ.com says Whitney Houston's family was told by L.A. county coroner's officials she died from an apparent combination of Xanax and other prescription drugs mixed with alcohol.
The website cited family sources. TMZ did report water was found in Houston's lungs but it wasn't enough to lead to the conclusion she drowned.
Assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said yesterday the department will not release any information on the autopsy at the request of police detectives investigating the singer's death.
Houston was found dead in the bathtub of her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton on Saturday. She was supposed to appear at a pre-Grammy gala.
Posted by Donald Morrison
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By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer
–
6 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen
until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use,
erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has
died. She was 48.
Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.
At
her peak, Houston the golden girl of the music industry. From the
middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling
artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless
vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the
masses with a pop sheen.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."
She
had the he perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who
had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect
poise.
She influenced a generation of younger singers, from
Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded
so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.
But by the
end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll
of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her
once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public
appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and
her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high
notes as she had during her prime.
"The biggest devil is me. I'm
either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane
Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her
side.
It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the
top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million
records sold in the United States alone.
She seemed to be born
into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the
cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha
Franklin.
Houston first started singing in the church as a child.
In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and
others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music
mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.
"The time that I
first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a
stunning impact," Davis told "Good Morning America."
"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.
Before
long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her
album debut in 1985 with "Whitney Houston," which sold millions and
spawned hit after hit. "Saving All My Love for You" brought her her
first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. "How Will I Know," ''You Give
Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All" also became hit singles.
Another
multiplatinum album, "Whitney," came out in 1987 and included hits like
"Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."
The
New York Times wrote that Houston "possesses one of her generation's
most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the
churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel
phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful
vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building
pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity."
Her
decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like
Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black
roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a
constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during
the "Soul Train Awards" in 1989.
"Sometimes it gets down to that,
you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough for
them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The
white audience has taken you away from them."
Some saw her 1992
marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an
attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was
seen as pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already
had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in
1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges
ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.
But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.
"When
you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you
have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the
same place," she told Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you
deal with their image, that's their image. It's part of them, it's not
the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's
angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy."
It would take
several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her
moving 1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl,
amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed
her as America's sweetheart.
In 1992, she became a star in the
acting world with "The Bodyguard." Despite mixed reviews, the story of a
singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin
Costner) was an international success.
It also gave her perhaps
her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's
"I Will Always Love You," which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was
Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the
"Bodyguard" soundtrack was named album of the year.
She returned
to the big screen in 1995-96 with "Waiting to Exhale" and "The
Preacher's Wife." Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio
album, "My Love Is Your Love," in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best
female R&B vocal for the cut "It's Not Right But It's Okay."
But
during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an
interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time "The
Preacher's Wife" was released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. ...
I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two,
it was every day. ... I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing
myself."
In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to
Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993.
They divorced in 2007.
Houston would go to rehab twice before she
would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim,
there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and
public meltdowns.
She was so startlingly thin during a 2001
Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next
day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show,
"Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer
interview, where she declared "crack is whack," was often parodied. She
dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.
Houston staged what
seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You."
The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go
platinum.
Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album
on "Good Morning America" went awry as Houston's voice sounded ragged
and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her
voice.
A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed
suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to
hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled
concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs,
but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming
illness for cancellations.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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