Friday, December 5, 2025
Time: 6:05 PM
Song: How Will I Know
Artist: Whitney Houston
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Whitney Houston’s self-titled album.
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5tdKaKLnC4SgtDZ6RlWeal?si=96584c0954604c19
“This has to be one of her first albums,” Jodi says as we eat. “It’s 1985.”
I didn’t know the answer until looking that it was Whitney Houston’s first album. Her debut. Glancing through her wiki page, she had appeared as a backup singer on albums for her mother (Cissy Houston), Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She had also started modeling in high school, appearing on the covers of major national magazines.
She went on to release seven solo albums between 1985 and 2009 while also starring in several major motion pictures before dying in 2012.
Houston was plagued by drug and alcohol problems along with having a volatile relationship with husband Bobby Brown.
I guess I’ve never really thought about where Houston ranks in terms of famous tragedies of my lifetime. I suppose because I am more of a Rock ‘N Roll fan, a name like Kurt Cobain comes to mind first.
Houston’s story is different though, as Cobain was gone almost as quickly as he burst onto the scene.
Houston’s problems lingered. They were the fodder for tabloids and the dark recesses of the internet. The conclusion seemingly obvious, yet impossible to stop. The tattered woman at the end so different than the vibrant one singing on this album.
Houston probably is closer to being our generation’s Marilyn Monroe than anyone. That talented, beautiful, intriguing figure consumed by some inner demon.
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