Thoughts on Whitney Houston
The community of dying in the modern era: no flowers laid outside hospital gates, but status updates and Youtube links, as together we commemorate the dead. Whitney Houston dying brought the usual raft of videos, remixes and R.I.P hashtags, but also as with other celebrity deaths a cathartic, almost joyful chance to reexamine someone, their life and their career. With Whitney Houston, it felt like even more of a release because we who grew up in the 90s had had to adjust very quickly to the need to dislike her, to dismiss what we had previously loved: that big, barnstorming voice and the easy, accessible melodies she had sung. If you were aged between 8 and 14 in 1992, you or your sister owned the Bodyguard soundtrack, and you or your sister (OK, you - you don't even have a sister; let's just own up to it) listened to it all the time. Its songs were slow-danced to at parties and you made your parents play it in the car. It was great. (Sidenote: it actually wasn't great; ...