Whitney the studio singer might be bland but Whitney the LIVE performer is ANYTHING but. The way she would blend Broadway and jazz standards into her performances not only showed versatility but a true musician. Her vocal runs and belts where pitch perfect and precision SHARP!! Whitney re-wrote the book on what a vocalist can do in a Pop setting. I wish I knew how to post youtube videos or I would personally post performances of why Whitney is legendary and how she helped shape music for generations to come.

Whitney was NEVER hollow, she did what she had to do make a living and so would ANY of you. Her being a "sellout" opened doors further for African Americans (especially women) in mainstream Hollywood. Diana Ross might have unlocked it but Whitney kicked the door down and blazed an entire new path. Diana NEVER had the vocals that Whitney possess and can't do 1/4 of what Whitney can do in a live performance.

PlayboyOriginal said:

Whitney re-wrote the book on what a vocalist can do in a Pop setting. I wish I knew how to post youtube videos or I would personally post performances of why Whitney is legendary and how she helped shape music for generations to come.

Posting a youtube video is very easy. Simply paste the url to your video in between youtube in brackets as shown below.

[youtube]url to your video[/youtube]

V10LETBLUES said:

I agree that the girl was a technically gifted singer, but there was never anything behind that voice for me. To me she was always a hollow talent like so many other gifted prodigies that you can trot out on stage and can perfectly repeat rote performances without being able to muster anything remotely original emanating out of them.

I hold her responsible for all the other over the top hollow mechanical talents like Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey with their grotesque yodeling on every single track. These singers can't seem to be able to sing a simple song like Happy Birthday without their trite intrepid grotesque yodeling ruining the tune for me.

So for me, she was never a positive force in music.

[Edited 2/2/12 21:45pm]

Don't blame Whitney for all the extra runs and riffs every wannabe diva does to show off . Whitney learned from the best: ARETHA FRANKLIN. She's the one who invented all those oohs and ahhs on record. Aretha is the queen of melisma (or how ever the hell you spell it).

V10LETBLUES said:

PlayboyOriginal said:

Whitney re-wrote the book on what a vocalist can do in a Pop setting. I wish I knew how to post youtube videos or I would personally post performances of why Whitney is legendary and how she helped shape music for generations to come.

Posting a youtube video is very easy. Simply paste the url to your video in between youtube in brackets as shown below.

[youtube]url to your video[/youtube]

Thank you!

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neoretro7 said:

Whitney Houston came during a time where the female vocalists was slowly disappearing in the mainstream music. Music and technologly started to change and here was the Michale Jackson effect.

The Music Video made a serious change to music because it was a medium where the youth can learn how dance and learn cherorgraphy without taking dancing classes. Through that the mainstream audience wanted more dance music. Michael Jackson made that era possible and through Michael's sucess there were the duplicators and people who carried out the same formula such as Janet Jackson, Madonna, etc. What these women did was bring sexuality to pop music and the female voice started to disappear and it became all about costumes, flair and sexuality.

Whitney helped sustain the female vocalists even though there a lot of female vocalists in the 80's non of them really had the connections and mainstream appeal like Whitney Houston. Who was young, and her advantage was that she can target the younger people and she was very mature for age which can help her cross over to the older audience. Whitney also made singing more simplisitc and soulful at that same time but she also more emphasis on hitting notes and singing through techicality.

The female vocalists was alive and well in R&B world but not in pop music and Whitney was the real singer who sucessfully crossed over in that world.

Anita Baker and Sade sucess was more towards a more sophiscated and mature audience and the same would.

Without Whitney it would be more difficult for Mariah and Celine to cross-over in the pop world too.

Uh....you mean cross over into the R&B world because they would have had no problem being in the pop world which already had folks like Debbie Boone, Barbara Streisand, and Neil Diamond. Mariah and Celine would have fit in perfectly in that world without Shitney paving the way for them and Celine was already white and a lot of folks thought Mariah was white so race wouldn't have been an issue for them either getting into that world.

Shitney did open doors for them though. She opened doors for them through the R&B world which they should have never been a part of. R&B had been full of funk and other good music. It wasn't for the dull and fuddy duddy bullshit so yeah, Shitney did open doors and change things but it was in the R&B world, not the pop world, and she changed things for the worst, not the better.

PlayboyOriginal said:

neoretro7 said:

Whitney Houston came during a time where the female vocalists was slowly disappearing in the mainstream music. Music and technologly started to change and here was the Michale Jackson effect.

The Music Video made a serious change to music because it was a medium where the youth can learn how dance and learn cherorgraphy without taking dancing classes. Through that the mainstream audience wanted more dance music. Michael Jackson made that era possible and through Michael's sucess there were the duplicators and people who carried out the same formula such as Janet Jackson, Madonna, etc. What these women did was bring sexuality to pop music and the female voice started to disappear and it became all about costumes, flair and sexuality.

Whitney helped sustain the female vocalists even though there a lot of female vocalists in the 80's non of them really had the connections and mainstream appeal like Whitney Houston. Who was young, and her advantage was that she can target the younger people and she was very mature for age which can help her cross over to the older audience. Whitney also made singing more simplisitc and soulful at that same time but she also more emphasis on hitting notes and singing through techicality.

The female vocalists was alive and well in R&B world but not in pop music and Whitney was the real singer who sucessfully crossed over in that world.

Anita Baker and Sade sucess was more towards a more sophiscated and mature audience and the same would.

Without Whitney it would be more difficult for Mariah and Celine to cross-over in the pop world too.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whitney represented RAW talent. She didn't need gimmicks, she didn't have to sell her pussy to every journalist willing to put it on their front cover and she didn't need controversy. Give her a microphone and she can entertain you for hours with her creative improvisations and vocal excellence. Whitney is the STANDARD which everybody since 1985 have been compared to and judged against. Whitney appealed to R&B, Gospel, Jazz, Pop and Adult Contemporary audiences the WORLD around. She single handedly put vocalists back in the driving position. Without Whitney, we would have to suffer with mediocre singing from Madonna, Jody Watley and the other singers of the day that could barely squeek there way out of a paper bag. Thank you Whitney!!

We also would have had to continue "suffering" through the artists and groups that had great rhythmic music behind them where voice came secondary and music and rhythm came first. Jody Watley's first album was absolutely great! Not one damn slow song on the entire album and the whole entire thing was packed with jams. Shitney couldn't have held a candle to that album. Her little goodie two shoes ass would have tripped over her own two left feet. And as for real talent coming from the ladies of the late 1980s that came after Shitney, that would have been Bernadette Cooper who had been bad as hell as part of Klymaxx, but was also responsible for Madame X.

As for Shitney being the standard for everyone to be compared to since 1985, that's absolutely true and that's the problem. She made the standard for music to be dull so when you compare new dull artists to the Queen of Dull, the only thing being made is dull. Kinda like the phrase "nothing from nothing means nothing".

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[Edited 2/3/12 8:47am]

V10LETBLUES said:

I agree that the girl was a technically gifted singer, but there was never anything behind that voice for me. To me she was always a hollow talent like so many other gifted prodigies that you can trot out on stage and can perfectly repeat rote performances without being able to muster anything remotely original emanating out of them.

I hold her responsible for all the other over the top hollow mechanical talents like Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey with their grotesque yodeling on every single track. These singers can't seem to be able to sing a simple song like Happy Birthday without their trite intrepid grotesque yodeling ruining the tune for me.

So for me, she was never a positive force in music.

[Edited 2/2/12 21:45pm]

Whitney is one of the few female artists who doesn't oversing like the ladies you mention (including Artetha). When it's on top form - it's perfection!

But she hardly has any creative imput in her career - just turns up and sings - so in a way anyone with a good voice and looks at the right place and at the right time could have been Whitney Houston

PlayboyOriginal said:

Whitney the studio singer might be bland but Whitney the LIVE performer is ANYTHING but. The way she would blend Broadway and jazz standards into her performances not only showed versatility but a true musician. Her vocal runs and belts where pitch perfect and precision SHARP!! Whitney re-wrote the book on what a vocalist can do in a Pop setting. I wish I knew how to post youtube videos or I would personally post performances of why Whitney is legendary and how she helped shape music for generations to come.

^^I actually don't care for her South Africa concert. That was the last stop of her super long Bodyguard Tour, her voice was shot. She had no business doing a tour that long imo. Notice the change in her voice in post-1994 work.

[Edited 2/3/12 16:19pm]

Terrib3Towel said:

I actually don't care for her South Africa concert. That was the last stop of her super long Bodyguard Tour, her voice was shot. She had no business doing a tour that long imo. Notice change in her voice in post-1994 work.

I know but she still had a good performance with it... but I can see why some don't care for it.