Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer and actress. Nicknamed “the Voice”, she is one of the bestselling music artists of all time, with over 200 million records sold worldwide. In 2023, Rolling Stone named her the second-greatest singer of all time. Houston influenced many singers in popular music, and was known for her powerful, soulful vocals, vocal improvisation skills, and use of gospel singing techniques in pop music.

Houston made her acting debut with the romantic thriller film The Bodyguard (1992), which despite its mixed reviews became the tenth highest-grossing film to that date. Its soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and remains the bestselling soundtrack album of all time. It generated multiple hit singles, including “I Have Nothing”, “I’m Every Woman” and “I Will Always Love You”; the latter won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, spent a then-record 14 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and became the best-selling physical single by a woman in music history. Subsequently, Houston went on to star in the films Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996), and she recorded their respective soundtracks; the former scored Houston’s last Billboard Hot 100 number-one single, “Exhale (Shoop Shoop)”, while the latter, produced by Houston herself, became the bestselling gospel album of all time. As a film producer, she produced multicultural movies such as Cinderella (1997) and series such as The Princess Diaries and The Cheetah Girls.

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