From Superstardom, Whitney Houston Lost Herself In Her Own Success

Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner are shown in a scene from their 1992 film "The Bodyguard." Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" helped the soundtrack sell 44 million copies worldwide. (Photo: REUTERS/Courtesy of Warner Home Video)

Whitney Houston had a long way to fall, and she did.

From the towering heights of international superstardom in the 1980s and ’90s, Houston, who died Saturday in Beverly Hills at 48, spent her later years drifting through the shell of her career as she struggled with addiction and depression.

We can shake our heads at the result of her senseless entanglement with drugs, or talk sagely about cautionary tales or the corrosive effects of fame in a culture that fetishizes celebrity — there’s no shortage of material. For all her frailties, though, Houston was in many ways a prisoner of her own good fortune, her stunning voice and monumental commercial achievements having locked her in a world of artifice that she simply wasn’t equipped to handle.

No one is, really.

Houston wasn’t the first to lose herself in the cracked reflection of success, but few others have equaled her stature. She was among the biggest stars of her time, releasing seven studio albums and appearing on a pair of soundtracks, all of which have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide. She won scores of awards, including six Grammys, two Emmys and 22 American Music Awards. She starred in movies, leading to the biggest hit of her career with “I Will Always Love You,” from the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” her 1992 film with Kevin Costner.

Even off-screen, she was self-possessed and elegant, and the uplifting message of a tune like “Greatest Love of All” — a No. 1 hit in 1986 and still her third biggest song — cast Houston as a positive role model, an inspiration for subsequent generations of impressionable youngsters.

In fact, despite her astounding sales figures, Houston’s real legacy can be found echoing in the voices of the singers she helped lead to themselves. Houston blended the earthy power of gospel with a sleek pop sensibility, merging emotion with canny showmanship, and she made it sound effortless. Her influence informed the tough courage and perseverance of Mary J. Blige; the lush, shining pop of Mariah Carey; and the bombastic confidence of Beyoncé.

It’s hard to imagine the creators of “American Idol” could have had anyone but Houston in mind when they went trolling for undiscovered pop talent, and even in a sea of over-emoting wannabes suffering from delusions of grandeur, a few stood out: first season winner Kelly Clarkson, for one; and Jennifer Hudson, who was slated to join Chaka Khan in performing a tribute to Houston at the 54th Grammy Awards Sunday night.

She never said when her drug use began, but the last decade of Houston’s life was a messy tangle of diminution. She released just two albums of new material after 1998’s “My Love is Your Love,” and her life and 15-year marriage to singer Bobby Brown — a union they dissolved in 2007 — were too often fodder for the tabloid press, thanks to erratic behavior in public, her infamous “crack is wack” utterance to Diane Sawyer in 2002 and Brown’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown.”

Houston’s career flickered briefly to life in 2009 when she released “I Look to You,” but it was clear that she wasn’t the same singer who racked up seven consecutive No. 1 hits in the ’80s. That Whitney was gone, and while her fans never stopped hoping for stability and a genuine comeback, Houston simply couldn’t make it happen.