OBITUARY: Whitney Houston almost had it all

By Andy Goldberg Feb 12, 2012, 5:49 GMT

Los Angeles - Whitney Houston's death Saturday in a Beverly Hills hotel room on the eve of the Grammy Awards deprived her fans and the music world of one of its most successful female artists.

But it came after years of drug abuse had turned her into a shell of the woman once admired for her poise, beauty and a voice that was considered among the best of her generation.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, Houston was the female artist with the most awards of all time, 415 - including two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards.

With over 170 million albums sold, she was one of the world's best-selling musical artists, and the only one ever to chart seven consecutive Number 1 Billboard hits in the US.

Houston, who died at 48, was born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey. Her mother Cissy Houston was a famous gospel and R&B singer, and her father was an entertainment executive. Her godmother was Aretha Franklin, and long before she started performing as a soloist at the age of 11 in a local Baptist church she was destined be a star.

Houston gradually started appearing with her mother on stage, and worked as a back-up singer to other acts, while her striking looks made her one of the most popular teen models of the early 1980's.

That poise and effortless style yielded her a record contract with legendary mogul Clive Davis, and her self-titled album in 1985 became the best-selling debut album by a solo artist, yielding Houston the first of her six Grammys.

'The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club .it was such a stunning impact,' Davis told Good Morning America in 2009. 'To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine.'

Houston went from strength to strength, confirming her status as an American icon with a 1991 rendition of the national anthem at the Super Bowl at the start of the first Gulf War. The next year, she starred in the blockbuster film The Bodyguard, whose soundtrack became the fourth best-selling album of all time.

She was at the peak of her fame and adulation. But her marriage that year to Bobby Brown, a crooner with a bad boy image was quickly going wrong.

By 1993, he had been arrested for domestic violence, and it seems that Houston turned to drugs to deal with him and the pressures of her success. She told Oprah Winfrey that by the mid 1990's she had become a daily user of marijuana and cocaine, and her performances began to suffer.

Her behaviour became erratic and her once flawless voice became hoarse and unsteady. Reports of her drug binges and violent clashes with her husband turned her into tabloid fodder. The couple eventually divorced in 2007.

In 2001, Houston was the first artist to sign a 100-million-dollar record deal, but she was unable to replicate earlier successes. She tried rehab multiple times during the decade and came clean about her past in a 2009 interview with Oprah.

She tried a comeback later that year with a televised concert and world tour in which it was clear her voice had suffered.

She had not been in good form prior to Sunday's Grammys. According to the Los Angeles Times, Houston had appeared disheveled at a press event, smelled of alcohol and had been doing handstands by the pool.