Legendary
this my muhf--king natural...
"Reluctant Star Whitney Houston Grapples with 'Madness' of Her Celebrity Life in a Fishbowl"
The Record December 28, 1995by Cindy Pearlman
Whitney Houston may never have laughed so hard. Twenty minutes into an interview in Houston's hotel suite with 10 reporters, a 40ish woman asks for some background information. What's the singer's favorite song? Favorite color? "Are you married?"
Houston can't check a whoop of laughter. "Yeah, I'm married. Haven't you heard?"
After several months in tabloid hell, Houston needs a good laugh. Her husband, singer Bobby Brown, began the summer with a bar brawl. In the fall, he was involved in a shooting incident. Most recently, Brown entered rehab and the couple separated.
"I am still married," she says in a steely voice, emphasizing every word. "I am still married."
Amid the personal trauma, Houston's career is soaring. This month marks the releases of both her long-awaited greatest-hits album and the film Waiting to Exhale, based on Terry McMillan's best-seller.
The movie (due onscreen Friday in Kitchener) is Houston's second, following The Bodyguard (1993), which earned a blockbusting $400 million. There has been understandable pressure to live up to the expectations created by that smash hit, but early word on the film is positive. Already, its soundtrack -- featuring Houston, naturally -- is topping the pop charts. The movie opened in major cities as the No. 1 choice at the box office during Christmas weekend.
Nevertheless, Houston portrays herself as a reluctant movie star.
"I don't want it all," she says. "I don't want to be a movie star." This, despite her upcoming role opposite Denzel Washington in The Bishop's Wife. Houston has also optioned the rights to The Dorothy Dandridge Story.
"I swear I tell my agent, 'I do not want to be a movie star,"' she insists. "I got enough problems with this madness. Then my agent will say, 'OK, Whitney, we're just going to go see this one director. Read one script. You might like it."'
It isn't easy being Whitney Houston. According to her co-star and new best friend Angela Bassett, "She lives in a fishbowl. On the set of Exhale, photographers were paying homeowners near our set $5,000 so they could use their living-room windows to get a picture of Whitney. Yet Whitney doesn't get crazy and paranoid about it."
"People won't let me be a regular person," Houston says. "I see this person made up in the media that they try to sell people. So now I go to the park and the other mothers just stare at me. It's like, 'Is she really this diva?' People watch me. 'What is she gonna do next?' They watch me drink my tea.
"I go into a restaurant and I think people expect me to do handstands or something. I'm really just a normal, boring person."
Normal she may be, but ever since 12-year-old Whitney Houston stood up in a Newark, N.J., church with her knees knocking to sing her first song in public -- Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah -- she's been anything but boring.
Her track record of hits is amazing, adding up to more than $80 million worth of records sold.
Her debut album, Whitney Houston, sold over 13 million copies, and spawned the single Saving All My Love for You, which won her a Grammy for Best Pop Female Vocalist. Her second album produced four consecutive number-one singles.
The Bodyguard soundtrack alone sold more than 27 million copies, so that when Houston's third album sold only seven million copies, what for most other singers would be a career-maker seemed mildly disappointing for Houston.
Of all her achievements, Houston is proudest of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown.
"This child is so special to both of us," Houston says. "I can only speak for myself, but I've changed. You start living for your child and you stop living for yourself.
"I look at her and she moves me. She motivates me. She makes me say,
'Ahhh, forget all that stuff.' Bobbi makes me get up and take her to school. It's 'C'mon, mom, let's go.' 'OK, I'm coming.'
"Jesus is the greatest love of all. She's next," Houston says.
"Giving birth was the toughest choice I've ever made," she says. "I got to the labor room and said, 'Why? Why did I do this? I must be crazy. This is a person in my body moving.' It was the most incredible thing I've ever done.
"I was so horrible in the delivery room," she says with a giggle. "I'm screaming, 'Wait! I want to change my mind! Excuse me. Give me drugs! Give me all of it!' "
Childhood
Houston's own childhood was anything but ordinary. She grew up in New Jersey as the daughter of Cissy Houston, who sang lead vocals for a group called Sweet Inspiration and did backup vocals for Aretha Franklin.
"My mom didn't have enough white fans," says Houston, who has plenty. "She never crossed over. She should have been the big star in the family."
With a famous mother and an aunt named Dionne Warwick, Houston was an easy mark in town.
"I had to fight girls all my life who would chase me down the street yelling, 'You think you're cute. I'm gonna kick your butt.'
"I didn't like to fight. I'd always try to talk. I would yell, 'You don't want to fight me. Look at me! I'm a nice girl.' Then they would wind up chasing me all the way home with umbrellas."
One day, Houston recalls, eight umbrella-wielding girls tormented her all the way home.
"My mother met me at the front door and told me, 'Stop running. Turn around. Turn around!'
"She had a belt in her hand. She yelled to the other girls, 'I want the baddest one of you. I want the one who wants her so bad to step out now 'cause she's gonna fight you today and this will be over.'
"To the other girls, she yelled, 'If any one of you think you can jump in I'm gonna spank you. I'm gonna beat you with my belt like your mother should have.' "
The girls retreated with a timid "Never mind."
"Now I see these same girls when I go back to my old neighborhood," Houston says with a smile. "Those girls tell me, 'We love your records.' Mm-hmm. Right, girlfriend."
Singing
Other things may be complicated, but for Houston singing is simple. Sometimes she even amazes herself.
"Sometimes I will be on stage and I'll hit some note and I stop myself," she says. "Sometimes I just go, 'Ohhhh, sing, girl -- right on!' "
Despite her new album of greatest hits, Houston doesn't have an answer when asked about her greatest hit.
"I don't know, man," she says. "I was having this same discussion with my dear friend Clive Davis, and we were talking about my greatest-hits album. We were going through all my songs and looking at the whole list of things I've done.
"He said, 'Whitney, what do you think is your greatest song?'
"I said, 'I have no idea.'
"Clive said, 'That's good. Don't think you've had your greatest song yet. Don't think you've done your greatest work. Because when you do that's when you stop. That's when the juices stop flowing and the creativity leaves you.' "
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