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Major Works of Whitney Houston
Her awards include two Emmy Awards
six Grammy Awards
30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010.
Houston was also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide.
"I Will Always Love You", became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history.
Her Marriage
Whitney Houston met R&B singer Bobby Brown at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards. They dated for three years and married in 1992. Their relationship was beset with tabloid headlines and Bobby Brown's run-ins with the law. Their family was the subject of a reality TV show Being Bobby Brown which debuted on Bravo in 2004. The pair separated in September 2006, filed for divorce the following month, and the divorce was eventually finalized in April 2007. |
Major Achievements
Whitney Houston was born in 1963 in a middle-income neighborhood in New Jersey. At the age of 11, Houston began to follow in her mother's footsteps and started performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she also learned to play the piano.
She spent some of her teenage years touring nightclubs where her mother Cissy was performing, and she would occasionally get on stage and perform with her. In 1977, she became a backup singer on the Michael Zager Band's single "Life's a Party".
In 1983, Gerry Griffith, an A&R representative from Arista Records saw her performing with her mother in a New York City nightclub and was impressed. He convinced Arista's head Clive Davis to make time to see Houston perform. Davis too was impressed and signed a worldwide recording contract with Houston.
Houston's debut album Whitney Houston was released in 1985. The lead single "You Give Good Love" became a hit in the US but failed to get enough attention outside the US. While "How Will I Know", peaked at No. 1 and introduced Houston to the MTV audience thanks to its video.
She won her first Grammy award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for "Saving All My Love for You" in 1986.
In the early 1990's Whitney Houston branched out beyond music into acting. Her first role was co-starring with Kevin Costner in 1992's The Bodyguard. The soundtrack's lead single was "I Will Always Love You", it peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks and proved to be Houston's biggest hit ever.
In the early 2000's rumors of drug use, missed performances, and late appearances all tarnished Whitney Houston's public image. She released her fifth studio album Just Whitney in 2002 to mixed reviews. The album debuted inside the top 10 on the album chart but failed to produce any top 40 singles. It did eventually sell a million copies. Whitney Houston released One Wish, a Christmas album, in 2003.
Whitney Houston embarked on a world concert tour in 2004, but the following few years found her doing little connected with music. In 2007, as her divorce with Bobby Brown was being finalized, Clive Davis announced Houston would be going into the studio to record new material. After nearly two years of rumors, Whitney Houston took the stage at Clive Davis' pre-Grammy part in 2009.
In late 2011 reports surfaced that Whitney Houston was planning to produce and star in a remake of the 1976 film Sparkle. However, she was found dead February 11, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California just hours before the annual Clive Davis pre-Grammy Awards party.
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