As Whitney Houston stages a comeback, Andy Pemberton wonders whether the frail-looking star is up to it On July 14, Clive Davis, the most powerful music executive in the world, hosted a "listening party" for Whitney Houston's comeback album, I Look To You. Key players in the UK music industry ate canapés and made small talk as Houston's new record tinkled agreeably in the background. With a few words, Davis introduced the night's guest of honour: one of the world's most famous singers who has sold 140 million albums and 50 million singles but spent the last seven years in ruinous exile. She has survived a toxic marriage, dangerous addictions, the near destruction of her voice and a series of public humiliations that have left her reputation and health in pieces. But now, Davis said, she is making a comeback. And she is here tonight!
"Whitney tottered on stage," recalls Paul Rees, the editor of Q magazine. "She dropped a piece of chewing gum and fumbled with it for about 30 seconds. Then she pulled out a piece of paper, explaining that she'd come all this way to London and didn't want to mess up her speech. "Then she read: 'I love you London', and that was it," says Rees. "She seemed quite mentally frail." Whitney Houston is back. Or at least that is what her record company says. Her album is at the top of the US Billboard chart, and many believe it to be one of her best. Today she will promote it with an interview on the most-watched chat show in the world: The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Winfrey has been trailing what the pair will talk about for days. "It will leave you gasping," she says about her exclusive interview, which will include frank discussions of Houston's addictions and fractured marriage to the fallen R&B star Bobby Brown. "She does not blame Bobby Brown and she takes full responsibility for her engagement in drugs," adds Oprah. "At one point she says: 'I didn't get out of my pyjamas for seven months.'"
But is Houston in a fit state to return to the punishing life of a touring and recording artist? Could things go wrong, as they did for that other music superstar, Michael Jackson? The early signs are not good. Houston's brief appearance on ABC's Good Morning America last week - a dry run for her big Oprah interview - featured an awkward moment when her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, joined her on stage. Houston startling warbling about "me and Bobby's baby".
Rees doesn't think a comeback is such a good idea. "I am told her record company is expecting her to tour next year and in the music business right now that is where the money is," he says. "She'll probably play the O2 arena in London. Who knows what her mental state is. Does she want to do it?" But Julian Linley, the creative director for Heat, Closer and Grazia magazines, believes Houston has a support network that includes Davis, the man who masterminded the careers of Alicia Keys, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and Leona Lewis. Davis recently described Whitney as a "trouper".
"Unlike Michael Jackson, or even Britney Spears, Whitney Houston has very powerful backup," Linley says. "If anyone can keep her in line, Davis can." He'll have his work cut out for him. Since 2002, Houston has actively engaged in effectively trashing her own career. The opening salvo came when she told the interviewer Diane Sawyer that she did not take crack because it was for "poor people" and she was rich.
In 2005, Houston's marriage dissolved in front of the American viewing public on the reality TV show Being Bobby Brown. And in March 2006, she hit rock bottom when a photo of her bathroom strewn with drug paraphernalia appeared in The National Enquirer. In 2007, Houston finally divorced the hapless Brown and since then has fought her way back to health, she says. Whatever the truth, a new challenge looms - and not one of her own making. Pre-orders for the Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle's new album are already dwarfing sales for Houston's comeback record.
Whether she's ready for it or not, Houston's time in the spotlight may be running out.
