Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born on the ninth of August 1963 at Newark, New Jersey, the youngest child of John Russell Houston — a U.S. Army veteran who became an entertainment executive and her early manager — and Emily "Cissy" Houston, the Grammy-honored gospel and soul singer who led The Sweet Inspirations. She was raised in the Baptist faith and came of age within a lineage of great voices; her cousin was Dionne Warwick, and Aretha Franklin stood as a godmother-like figure of her girlhood.

Her gift was formed first in the sanctuary. She joined the choir at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark as a child, learned piano there, and sang her first solos beside her mother in Manhattan clubs before she was grown. After modeling and session work, her self-titled 1985 debut announced a talent of rare purity, and her 1987 follow-up made her the first artist in history to place seven consecutive singles at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Across her career she sold hundreds of millions of records and reached beyond music into film, most memorably in The Bodyguard, whose recording of "I Will Always Love You" became one of the best-selling singles ever released. Her instrument — vast in range, exact in control, and radiant in tone — reset the standard for the popular ballad and shaped a generation of singers who followed.

She died on the eleventh of February 2012. May the clarity of her voice be remembered as it was given — a light lifted from the choir loft to the whole world.