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Everything We Know About The New Whitney Houston Biopic 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'

The life story of the late legend Whitney Houston is coming to theaters this winter, dedicated to celebrating "The Voice" and her legacy. With a trailer revealing a first look on Sept. 15, GRAMMY.com rounded up all the details we know about the film.

We've all saved our love for Whitney Houston . Although she's known as "The Voice," the late singer's impact transcends her powerhouse vocals. A six-time GRAMMY winner, Houston's soulful music still resonates with hearts today — and now, her legacy and influence is being celebrated on the big screen.

Aptly named I Wanna Dance With Somebody , the Sony Pictures Entertainment film details Houston's life from her Newark upbringing to the height of her iconic career. The film, set for release later this year, aims to help audiences "discover the Whitney you never knew," according to the new trailer.

Here's everything we know about the Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody , so far.

The trailer arrived Sept. 15.

Sony Pictures Entertainment released the film's official trailer on Sep. 15. The lively two-minute clip flashes with scenes that suggest the film isn't just about Houston's life, but about how her music changed expectations of genre within culture and the industry. As the trailer's YouTube description teases, "The greatest voice of our time has an even greater story."

The film will hit theaters on Dec. 21, 2022.

As the trailer revealed, I Wanna Dance With Somebody will arrive "exclusively in theaters" on Dec. 21 this year — just in time for the holiday season.

It comes from the writer of Bohemian Rhapsody .

I Wanna Dance With Somebody is Anthony McCarten's latest screenwriting project. A renowned writer and filmmaker, McCarten is best known for his biopic screenwriting. And there's no doubt he'll do Houston justice: McCarten is the screenwriter behind the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody , which as of press time is the highest-grossing music biopic of all time.

Naomi Ackie will play Whitney Houston.

The English actress is known best for playing Bonnie in the dark comedy television series The End of the F—ing World . She also gained wider recognition for her roles as Jannah in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and as Alicia in the third season of Netflix's comedy-drama “Master of None.”

Beyond her lead role in I Wanna Dance With Somebody , she'll later star in Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut Pussy Island as well as Bong Joon-ho's science fiction film Mickey7 .

The film features quite a few big names besides Ackie.

Spotlight star Stanley Tucci will play Clive Davis, Moonlight 's Ashton Sanders will portray Houston's ex-husband Bobby Brown, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" actress Tamara Tunie is Houston's mother Cissy, Harriet actor Clarke Peters is Houston's dad John, and "Black Lightning" star Nafessa Williams is Houston's "sister she never had," Robyn Crawford.

The film is produced by five-time GRAMMY Award winner Clive Davis.

Music executive Clive Davis produced the biopic, along with executive Larry Mestel on behalf of Primary Wave Music. As the film's trailer shows, Davis discovered Houston in a nightclub and helped sign her to Arista Records when she was 19. Primary Wave Music is an independent music publishing company that is a partner of the Whitney Houston estate.

Kasi Lemmons is directing it.

Kasi Lemmons is known for directing 2019's Harriet , which starred Cynthia Erivo , Leslie Odom, Jr. and Janelle Monáe . I Wanna Dance With Somebody is Lemmons' first foray into the musical biopic world, but a full-circle moment for the director.

"Early in my writing career I developed two projects for Whitney, and I had the opportunity to meet her," Lemmons told Deadline last year. "She was a tremendous, incomparable artist, and her story is as awe-inspiring as it is tragic. I feel privileged to be part of bringing her life story and music to the audience."

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Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Enrique Iglesias Forever: 10 Songs That Prove He's A Latin Pop Hero

Ahead of what might be his final album — 'Final (Vol. 2),' out March 29 — celebrate Enrique Iglesias' legacy of groundbreaking Latin pop with 10 tracks of heartbreak, sensuality and dancefloor bangers.

Latin music has gone global and Enrique Iglesias is one of the superstars who laid the foundation for that crossover. The Spanish pop icon's music career spans four decades of hits both in his native tongue and in English. Following his reign as Billboard ’s Greatest Latin Artist of All-Time , Iglesias marks the end of an era with the last album of his career, Final Vol. 2 .

Iglesias followed in the footsteps of his father, singer/songwriter Julio Iglesias , and made his own debut in the 1990s with Spanish-language love songs. He began singing in English at the end of the decade, and subsequently led an explosion of interest in Latin pop alongside acts like Ricky Martin , Jennifer Lopez , and later Shakira . 

As of writing, Iglesias has a record-breaking 27 No. 1 singles on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart, and solidified himself as a global heartthrob with an allure that defies language barriers. For his efforts, Iglesias has won one GRAMMY and five Latin GRAMMY Awards.

Enrique Iglesias will release what will likely be his final album on March 29, aptly titled Final (Vol. 2) . Ahead of his final bow, here are 10 tracks that celebrate Iglesias' legacy in Latin music. 

"Experiencia Religiosa" (1995)

Iglesias made his debut in 1995 with a self-titled first album. Among the ballads on the10-track LP, the otherworldly "Experiencia Religiosa" best demonstrates the power of his charm.  

Backed by the piano with elements of gospel music, Iglesias belts his heart out about a night of passion that felt like spiritual awakening. To capture the energy of the sparks flying, an electric guitar solo rounded out his soulful yet sexy sermon. Iglesias demonstrated his knack for seamlessly blending together romance and sex appeal, which would go on to define his artistry and style.

Enrique Iglesias earned the singer his first golden gramophone at the 39th GRAMMY Awards for Best Latin Pop Performance.

"Nunca Te Olvidaré" (1997)

Iglesias proved that he was here to stay with his third album, 1997's Cosas Del Amor . The LP includes one of his signature love songs, "Nunca Te Olvidaré." 

Iglesias' voice reached angelic highs in the Spanish-language power ballad, which details  romance that left a lasting impression. No matter what happened, the love Iglesias shared with that person couldn't be forgotten — much like his impact on the Latin pop explosion that was brewing.

"Bailamos" (1999)

Proving he was so much bigger than the Iglesias last name, he crossed over into the English-language market with his 1999 album Enrique . Iglesias became a global Latin pop heartthrob with the sultry club banger "Bailamos." The song was featured on the Wild Wild West soundtrack, after Will Smith personally invited Iglesias to contribute music to the project.

Backed by the strum of the Spanish guitar with alluring synths, he invited the world to dance with him in English and Spanish. In a major moment for Latin acts at the time, the song topped the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart. The massive success of the song led Iglesias to sign with Interscope Records, where he released his breakthrough album. 

"Could I Have This Kiss Forever" (1999)

One of the underrated gems on Iglesias' Enrique album is his collaboration with six-time GRAMMY-winner Whitney Houston . 

The late pop legend joined forces with him for the sensual "Could I Have This Kiss Forever," making worlds collide with an irresistible mix of Latin percussion, Spanish guitar, and R&B. Houston also sang a bit in Spanish with Iglesias. His dreamy duet with Houston (who also sings in Spanish) broke down barriers for collaborations between Latin and English-language pop acts. In the years that followed, he collaborated with superstars like Kelis , Ciara , and Usher .  

"Hero" (2001)

Iglesias' love songs in English touched the hearts of millions around the world. One of his enduring classics is the empowering "Hero" from his 2001 album Escape . 

The beautiful ballad was released in both English and Spanish. In one of most tender vocal performances, Iglesias serenades his lover with sweet lyrics about always being by her side. After the song impressively peaked at No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, Iglesias proved that his star power was here to stay. 

The song also became an anthem of hope for the U.S. following the Sept. 11 attacks, and Iglesias was invited to perform "Hero" for the broadcast special "America: A Tribute to Heroes." 

"Bailando" (2014)

After laying the foundation for the globalization of Latin music, Iglesias enjoyed one of his greatest career triumphs in 2014 — in both Spanish and English. 

The feel-good smash "Bailando" blended Caribbean rhythms with flamenco influences, bringing together Sean Paul and Cuba's Descemer Bueno and Gente De Zona. The Spanglish banger peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. At the 2014 Latin GRAMMYs, Iglesias and his collaborators took home golden gramophones for Song Of The Year, Best Urban Performance, and Best Urban Song. 

The success of the song also helped usher in the reggaeton music revival of the last decade. Pop and reggaeton collaborations became more commonplace with songs like "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee and J Balvin ’s "Mi Gente" remix with Beyoncé later following suit.   

"Beautiful" (2014)

Iglesias joined forces with GRAMMY-winning dance-pop icon Kylie Minogue for "Beautiful," a  haunting love song about a formidable romance that could withstand the apocalypse. 

The electronic ballad was co-produced by Mark Taylor, who was also at the helm of Iglesias' collaboration with Houston. Iglesias and Minogue's voices melted together in a hypnotic harmony that made this song live up to its name. The song was included on Minogue’s Kiss Me Once album and deluxe edition of Iglesias’ Sex and Love LP.  

"El Baño" (2018)

Before he became a GRAMMY-winning global star, Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny teamed up with Iglesias for a freaky reggaeton romp, "El Baño." 

Iglesias first turned up the heat by singing about getting intimate with his lover in the restroom. Bad Bunny dropped in that halfway point as his wingman with a fiery guest verse. The hypnotic collaboration was included on Iglesias' penultimate album Final (Vol. 1) . 

Iglesias later added a woman’s perspective to the song, bringing on Dominican reggaeton star Natti Natasha joining them on the remix. As one of Latin pop’s most daring artists, he was never afraid to push boundaries with his risque tracks. 

"Space In My Heart" (2024)

After the release of his reggaeton-heavy Final (Vol. 1) , Iglesias was ready to be more adventurous with the music that followed. In 2022, Iglesias ventured into country music for the first time with "Espacio En Tu Corazón." 

To bring some more authenticity to the English-language version of the song, "Space In My Heart," Iglesias teamed up with GRAMMY-winning country star Miranda Lambert . The breathtaking country-pop ballad features Iglesias and Lambert singing passionately about winning over the hearts of their crushes. 

The song is a highlight on the last album of his career, Final (Vol. 2) . And while it seems like this may be the singer's final hurrah, Iglesias told PEOPLE in 2021: " No, I'm never gonna retire! I'm gonna keep on writing songs but that doesn't mean I need to be putting out albums every so often. "

"Fría" (2024)

Iglesias is going out in style with "Fría." For the most vibrant song on Final Vol. 2 ,  Iglesias collaborates with Cuban singer/songwriter Yotuel on a frisky and refreshing banger, which blends reggaeton beats with elements of tropical music.

Iglesias sounds like he's having a blast with Yotuel as they try to convince their partners there was no infidelity at last night's wild party. "I just went out for a cold one," Iglesias winkingly sings in Spanish. Cheers to the legacy of one of Latin pop's greater stars.  

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Photo: L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

17 Love Songs That Have Won GRAMMYs: "I Will Always Love You," "Drunk In Love" & More

Over the GRAMMYs' 66-year history, artists from Frank Sinatra to Ed Sheeran have taken home golden gramophones for their heartfelt tunes. Take a look at some of the love songs that have won GRAMMYs.

Editor's Note: This is an update to a story from 2017.

Without heart-bursting, world-shifting love songs, music wouldn't be the same. There are countless classic and chart-topping hits dedicated to love, and several of them have won GRAMMYs.

We're not looking at tunes that merely deal with shades of love or dwell in heartbreak. We're talking out-and-out, no-holds-barred musical expressions of affection — the kind of love that leaves you wobbly at the knees.

No matter how you're celebrating Valentine's Day (or not), take a look at 18 odes to that feel-good, mushy-gushy love that have taken home golden gramophones over the years.

Frank Sinatra , "Strangers In The Night"

Record Of The Year / Best Vocal Performance, Male, 1967

Ol' Blue Eyes offers but a glimmer of hope for the single crowd on Valentine's Day, gently ruminating about exchanging glances with a stranger and sharing love before the night is through.

Willie Nelson , "Always On My Mind"

Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, 1983

In this cover, Nelson sings to the woman in his life, lamenting over those small things he should have said and done, but never took the time. Don't find yourself in the same position this Valentine's Day.

Lionel Richie , "Truly"

Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, 1983

"Truly" embodies true dedication to a loved one, and it's delivered with sincerity from the king of '80s romantic pop — who gave life to the timeless love-song classics "Endless Love," "Still" and "Three Times A Lady."

Roy Orbison , "Oh, Pretty Woman"

Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, 1991

Orbison captures the essence of encountering a lovely woman for the first time, and offers helpful one-liners such as "No one could look as good as you" and "I couldn't help but see … you look as lovely as can be." Single men, take notes.

Whitney Houston , "I Will Always Love You"

Record Of The Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, 1994

Houston passionately delivers a message of love, remembrance and forgiveness on her version of this song, which was written by country sweetheart Dolly Parton and first nominated for a GRAMMY in 1982.

Celine Dion , "My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From Titanic)"  

Record Of The Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, 1999

This omnipresent theme song from the 1997 film Titanic was propelled to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 as the story of Jack and Rose (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and GRAMMY winner Kate Winslet) swept the country.

Shania Twain , "You're Still The One"

Best Female Country Vocal Performance, Best Country Song, 1999

Co-written with producer and then-husband Mutt Lange, Twain speaks of beating the odds with love and perseverance in lyrics such as, "I'm so glad we made it/Look how far we've come my baby," offering a fresh coat of optimism for couples of all ages.

Usher & Alicia Keys , "My Boo"

Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, 2005

"There's always that one person that will always have your heart," sings Usher in this duet with Keys, taking the listener back to that special first love. The chemistry between the longtime friends makes this ode to “My Boo” even more heartfelt, and the love was still palpable even 20 years later when they performed it on the Super Bowl halftime show stage.

Bruno Mars , "Just The Way You Are"

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, 2011

Dating advice from Bruno Mars: If you think someone is beautiful, you should tell them every day. Whether or not it got Mars a date for Valentine's Day, it did get him a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

Cee Lo Green & Melanie Fiona , "Fool For You" 

Best Traditional R&B Performance, 2012

It's a far cry from his previous GRAMMY-winning song, "F*** You," but "Fool For You" had us yearning for "that deep, that burning/ That amazing unconditional, inseparable love."

Justin Timberlake , "Pusher Love Girl" 

Best R&B Song, 2014

Timberlake is so high on the love drug he's "on the ceiling, baby." Timberlake co-wrote the track with James Fauntleroy, Jerome Harmon and Timbaland, and it's featured on his 2013 album The 20/20 Experience , which flew high to No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Beyoncé & Jay-Z , "Drunk In Love"

Best R&B Performance / Best R&B Song, 2015

While "Drunk In Love" wasn't the first love song that won Beyoncé and Jay-Z a GRAMMY — they won two GRAMMYs for "Crazy In Love" in 2004 — it is certainly the sexiest. This quintessential 2010s bop from one of music's most formidable couples captures why their alliance set the world's hearts aflame (and so did their steamy GRAMMYs performance of it).

Ed Sheeran , "Thinking Out Loud"

Song Of The Year / Best Pop Solo Performance, 2016

Along with his abundant talent, Sheeran's boy-next-door charm is what rocketed him to the top of the pop ranks. And with swooning lyrics and a waltzing melody, "Thinking Out Loud" is proof that he's a modern-day monarch of the love song.

Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper , "Shallow"

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance / Best Song Written For Visual Media, 2019

A Star is Born 's cachet has gone up and down with its various remakes, but the 2018 iteration was a smash hit. Not only is that thanks to moving performances from Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, but particularly thanks to their impassioned, belt-along duet "Shallow."

H.E.R. & Daniel Caesar , "Best Part"

Best R&B Performance, 2019

"If life is a movie/ Know you're the best part." Who among us besotted hasn't felt their emotions so widescreen, so thunderous? Clearly, H.E.R. and Daniel Caesar have — and they poured that feeling into the GRAMMY-winning ballad "Best Part."

Kacey Musgraves , "Butterflies"

Best Country Solo Performance, 2019

As Musgraves' Album Of The Year-winning LP Golden Hour shows, the country-pop star can zoom in or out at will, capturing numberless truths about the human experience. With its starry-eyed lyrics and swirling production, "Butterflies" perfectly encapsulates the flutter in your stomach that love can often spark.

Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber , "10,000 Hours"

Best Country Duo/Group Performance, 2021

When country hook-meisters Dan + Shay teamed up with pop phenom Justin Bieber, their love song powers were unstoppable. With more than 1 billion Spotify streams alone, "10,000 Hours" has become far more than an ode to just their respective wives; it's an anthem for any lover.

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8 Ways Whitney Houston Made An Iconic '90s Comeback With 'My Love Is Your Love'

After several years of made-for-movies music, Whitney Houston delivered her first studio album in nearly a decade — and reestablished herself as one of pop's all-time greats.

By 1998, the late Whitney Houston was a good 15 years into her colossally successful music career— and yet, by this point, she'd only ever released three studio albums. But as the millennium approached, the legendary diva finally decided to follow up her two eponymous 1980s efforts and 1990's I'm Your Baby Tonight . And the wait proved to be worth it.

My Love Is Your Love may have only peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 (it had the misfortune to be released alongside nine other major new releases on a retail battlefield coined Super Tuesday ). But the record-buying public gradually recognized that Houston was no longer just the power ballad expert; she had finally embraced the kind of innovative R&B sound they'd always wanted, and known she was capable of. And after several years away from the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, she suddenly scored three consecutive top five hits, guiding the slow-burner to platinum status four times over – and proving that Whitney Houston was back in full force.

With the contemporary R&B classic now celebrating its 25th anniversary on Nov. 17, here's a look at how Houston reasserted her status as a superstar with one of the greatest comebacks of the decade.

She Tapped The Era's Hottest Producer

Rodney Jerkins ruled the R&B scene at the turn of the century, producing monster hits for the likes of Destiny's Child ("Say My Name"), Jennifer Lopez ("If You Had My Love"), and Toni Braxton ("He Wasn't Man Enough for Me"), to name a few. But Houston was one of the first artists to recognize that his trademark staccato beats and alluring harpsichords equaled musical gold. **

Shortly after Brandy and Monica 's "The Boy Is Mine" put him on the map in 1998, Jerkins was tapped to work his magic on three My Love Is Your Love tracks: "Get It Back," "If I Told You That" (which also received a 2000 remix with another 1980s favorite, George Michael ), and, perhaps most notably, "It's Not Right But It's Okay." Houston's work with Jenkins both helped her move away from mainstream pop and show that she still had her finger on the pulse.

She Rediscovered Her Soulfulness

Houston had famously been accused of abandoning her gospel and soul roots in favor of chasing a white pop crowd during her first imperial phase, even memorably getting booed at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989. No one could label her a sellout with My Love Is Your Love , though.

Not only did Houston put her own spin on an all-time Motown classic, Stevie Wonder 's "I Was Made to Love Her," she also roped in R&B talents both established ( Babyface , Lauryn Hill ) and emerging ( Missy Elliott , Kelly Price ) to help hone a fresh, forward-thinking sound that was far removed from the adult contemporary ballads she'd made her name with. It was a move validated when the same ceremony she'd been heckled at handed her two nominations and an Artist of the Decade Award .

She Didn't Forget Her Beloved Original Sound

Houston didn't entirely eschew the blockbuster ballads that established her place alongside Celine Dion and Mariah Carey in the holy trinity of powerhouse divas. In fact, she and the latter essentially engage in a sing-off on The Prince of Egypt Oscar-winning theme "When You Believe" (which served as the lead single for the film's soundtrack, My Love Is Your Love and Carey's compilation album #1's ).

Elsewhere, songwriting maestro Diane Warren delivers not just one, but two epic love songs in the shape of "I Learned from the Best," and "You'll Never Stand Alone." And Faith Evans and Kelly Price collab "Heartbreak Hotel" (despite its title, not an Elvis Presley cover) proved Houston could still out-warble those who were still in school when "Greatest Love of All" and "Saving All My Love for You" topped the Hot 100. It was a move that helped to perfectly bridge the gap between the old and the new.

She Won Her First R&B Grammy

Although Houston had previously been nominated six times in the R&B GRAMMY categories, she'd never converted any of them into wins: three of her five awards had been for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, while The Bodyguard 's success helped her scoop both the Record and Album Of The Year categories of 1993. That all changed with My Love Is Your Love .

The star picked up three R&B nods, and while  Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals went to TLC , Houston did take home her sixth and final GRAMMY when "It's Not Right But It's Okay" was crowned Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

She Snagged Two Fugees At The Top Of Their Game

Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill might now be better known for controversial presidential campaigns and a staggering aversion to punctuality . But back in the late '90s, they were very much R&B royalty. Both had made the transitions from chart-topping trio Fugees to solo success look effortless, particularly Hill who, a year later, would clean up at the GRAMMYs with her debut LP, The Miseducation of... And so, they proved to be an astute choice of collaborators from an artist whose street cred had long been questioned.

Wyclef gave Houston the best Bob Marley -esque jam of his career with My Love Is Your Love 's title track, while his former bandmate produced the gorgeous, and hidden, closing number "I Was Made to Love Him."

She Delivered Her Most Iconic Video

From the patriotic jumpsuit she sported while belting out the National Anthem at the Super Bowl to that "accidental" fashion clash with Carey at the MTV VMAs, Houston constantly delivered as a fashion icon . But it was the video for My Love Is Your Love 's third single that spawned her most iconic look.

Directed by regular cohort Kevin Bray, the "It's Not Right But It's Okay" promo sees Houston hold court in a black skin-tight corset complete with matching choker and razor-sharp bob. It was a style she replicated for one of her finest stage performances – her show-stealing display at the 1999 BRITs – and one that was also faithfully recreated in both Glee and the recent biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody .

She Became A Club Favorite 

Back in the '90s, you weren't a bona fide diva unless you got the thumping dance mix treatment: see Frankie Knuckles ' take on Toni Braxton 's "Unbreak My Heart," for example, or David Morales ' reworking of Carey's "My All." My Love Is Your Love undoubtedly spawned Houston's biggest club banger. In fact, for many, Thunderpuss' epic nine-minute retooling of "It's Not Right But It's Okay" is the definitive version.

But there was plenty more where that came from, with remixes from the likes of Hex Hector ("Heartbreak Hotel") and Junior Vasquez ("I Learned from the Best") giving Houston four No. 1s on the US Dance Club Songs chart within the space of just 13 months.

She Reminded Everyone Of Her Ultimate Talent

For a good six years, the only singles Houston released were movie tie-ins, a clear sign that she was focusing more on her acting career than her recording during most of the 1990s. And while she acquitted herself well in Waiting to Exhale , The Preacher's Wife , and, of course, the phenomenon that was The Bodyguard , she never quite reached the same heights on the big screen as she previously had in the studio. And My Love Is Your Love reminded everyone that her voice could still blow everyone away.

On the Missy Elliott-penned "In My Business," she's the fearsome R&B diva, warning those skeptical about her bad boy lover to mind their own. On "I Learned from the Best," she's the powerhouse balladeer, drawing upon her trademark melisma while pleading with the one who got away. And on the spiritual title track, she has a new trick up her sleeve: subtlety. This is Houston at her most expressive and most versatile — and arguably, her best.

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Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Upon winning the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album for 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' Kendrick Lamar thanked those that helped him get to the stage, and the artists that blazed the trail for him.

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly . Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly .

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube . This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg , Doggystyle . This is for Illmatic , this is for Nas . We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal , Anna Wise and Thundercat ). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift 's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN ., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers .

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

10 Essential Facts To Know About GRAMMY-Winning Rapper J. Cole

• 1 Everything We Know About The New Whitney Houston Biopic 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'
• 2 Enrique Iglesias Forever: 10 Songs That Prove He's A Latin Pop Hero
• 3 17 Love Songs That Have Won GRAMMYs: "I Will Always Love You," "Drunk In Love" & More
• 4 8 Ways Whitney Houston Made An Iconic '90s Comeback With 'My Love Is Your Love'
• 5 GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Movie Reviews

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About 25 minutes into "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody," an inarticulate, slapdash musical biopic about the famed songstress, the film reaches its high point: Arista Records head Clive Davis ( Stanley Tucci ) enters the nightclub where Houston ( Naomi Ackie ) and her gospel legend mother Cissy Houston ( Tamara Tunie ) are performing. When the latter sees the A&R man taking his seat, she fakes losing her voice, clearing the way for her daughter to sing "The Greatest Love of All." Her vocals climb, soaring to the familiar majestic heights that catapulted her toward stardom. We watch Davis watch her. In one close-up, you can almost imagine dollar signs dancing around his head. The scene is so stirring one woman in my screening pulled out a lighter and waved her flame to the rhythm of Houston's unforgettable vibrato.

During that brief scene, you can imagine "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" gravitating toward a clear-eyed narrative about the annihilation of a voice, talent, and person by flattening her identity for the commodification of an image. But in working with an unfocused script by Anthony McCarten (" Bohemian Rhapsody "), director Kasi Lemmons flounders when rendering the woman beyond the tabloid cliff notes of her life. 

"I Wanna Dance with Somebody" takes great pains to craft an intuitive throughline for Houston's life, as we briefly open in 1994 at the American Music Awards before flashing back to 1983 in New Jersey. But how Lemmons ultimately maneuvers back to the AMAs makes little emotional or logical sense. 

Still, for a short time, we're ready to absorb the saga with Lemmons. We see Houston (her friends call her "Nippy") meeting and forming a lesbian relationship with Robyn Crawford ( Nafessa Williams )—Lemmons should be complimented for not avoiding this portion of the singer's personal life. Houston eventually signs with the steadfast Clive Davis, takes advice from her parents Cissy and the selfish patriarch John Houston ( Clarke Peters ) to tone down her butch image in lieu of becoming America's princess. Soon enough, she begins racking up hits. Unfortunately, these scenes rush by, to the point that their brusque speed fools you into believing that Lemmons is merely trying to get to the real story she wants to tell.

But that story never arrives. Instead, the film hops and skips through the highlights of Houston's career: making the music video for "How Will I Know," choosing the demo tape of the titular "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" from Davis' pile of cassettes, and performing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV. All the while, hampered by her drug addiction, her relationship with Crawford frays. Instead, she chooses her image, career, and desire for Bobby Brown (played by Ashton Sanders , who gives the R&B singer a bundle of tics and a vocal cadence alarmingly close to DMX).

The editing choices by Daysha Broadway ("Insecure") are driven by a bare necessity to advance the narrative but not any emotional momentum. Some of her dissonant decisions are unintentionally comedic in an "It's so bad, it's entertaining" way, like when Houston’s father threatens his daughter with litigation from his hospital bed—the next cut is to his funeral.

And the way that Lemmons stages certain scenes doesn't cohere with how humans communicate. One sequence, occurring in the singer’s dressing room, sees Crawford, Houston, and Brown discussing business. Rather than cutting between each person, Lemmons stages the trio in a three-shot in which they don’t face each other but stare awkwardly into a dressing room mirror, giving the appearance of them stiffly speaking to their reflections. 

We never get a sense from this film of Houston as a person; Ackie might as well be a hologram performing these songs. Her marriage to Brown lacks a visible arc; the role that Crawford played in Houston's life after Brown entered is never discussed (though Williams pulls some laughs through her energetic verve); and Cissy and John serve little purpose (Peters makes some very odd, grating choices). But you can't blame any of the actors for coming up short. The script, the editing, the cinematography, and every component of what makes a movie—aside from the impeccable costuming—undermines the performances here.    

The jukebox element of a musical biopic will always prove a hit. The film, however, must be as transcendent as the songbook. None of the performances, unfortunately, are filmed well by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (" The Hurt Locker "). The lighting proves inconsistent, and his shaky cam style plays incongruously with the musical staging. Only the tunes themselves make these scenes remotely watchable. It's a sad development, and for a director of Lemmons' caliber, it is particularly shocking.   

It's never clear what destination this film is heading toward, or what climax we're climbing up to. The score by Chanda Dancy turns unbearably soapy and melodramatic as we fast-forward to Houston's 2009 performance on Oprah, and then her life in Los Angeles in 2012. These events are boxes on a checklist. They would bloat the movie if a scene ever played long enough to fulfill the definition of a scene.

What did Black superstardom mean during the 1980s? What does the erasure of Houston's queer relationship and its modern acceptance say about the strides we've made in Black queer representation? Who was Houston as a mother, as a businesswoman, and as the leader of her career? The script asks these questions but never takes any considerable interest in their answers. 

Much like with " Respect ," last year's Aretha Franklin biopic, the events here all feel meaningless when trying to hit every point of Houston's life. We do arrive back at the AMAs performance, a high-wire vocal act that thrills yet doesn't provide an exclamation point to the biopic. The credits then feature clips of the real-life Houston performing, once again undermining Ackie's turn as the singer. The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

Now playing in theaters. 

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Film credits.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022)

Rated PG-13

144 minutes

Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston

Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown

Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis

Nafessa Williams as Robyn Crawford

Lance A. Williams as Gerry Griffith

Tamara Tunie as Cissy Houston

Clarke Peters as John Houston

Daniel Washington as Gary Houston

JaQuan Malik Jones as Michael Houston

Kris Sidberry as Pat Houston

Tanner Beard as Günther

Bailee Lopes as Bobbi-Kristina (8-10 Yrs old)

Jennifer Ellis as Lisa Hintelmann

• Kasi Lemmons
• Anthony McCarten

Cinematographer

• Barry Ackroyd
• Daysha Broadway
• Chanda Dancy

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‘This film is a corrective’: Whitney Houston biopic aims to change the narrative

The much-anticipted new film about the life and loves of the singer might be approved by the estate but the makers aren’t looking to ‘flatter anybody’

I n the 10 years since Whitney Houston lost her life, four movies have tried to tell her story. In quick succession, we got an unauthorized documentary, an endorsed one, a Lifetime TV depiction, plus a film that focused squarely on her relationship with her daughter, Bobbi Kristina. According to Anthony McCarten, who has written the first big-budget Hollywood biopic of the star, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, those films all had one thing in common. “They’re obsessed with her mistakes,” he said to the Guardian. “They were all sensationalist.”

At the same time, he believes they accurately mirrored the jaundiced view many have long held of the star. “When people hear the name ‘Whitney Houston’, they inevitably say the word ‘tragic’,” McCarten said. “It’s a universal perception. In some respects, this film is a corrective to that.”

It’s one many may approach with a bit of skepticism. I Wanna Dance with Somebody is the brainchild of Houston’s estate, which includes her sister-in-law and executor Pat Houston, as well as the company that controls key parts of her musical rights, Primary Wave, and the man who signed, and some say, shaped her, Clive Davis. Though they have all endorsed the final product, McCarten strongly contests the assumption that it resulted in any softening or censoring of his work. “I said to them ‘you will not have authorial control over this,’” he said. “I’m not doing this to flatter anybody. The public can smell a rat if it’s a puff piece.”

In fact, the movie’s director, Kasi Lemmons, said there were scenes in the film that definitely made the estate uncomfortable. “One of the things that was most challenging about this was dealing with real people, with real emotions and memories and points of view,” she said. “They had approved the script but seeing it as a movie was a different thing.”

While the film’s final cut includes some of the grimier, or more controversial, details of Houston’s story – in fact certain things are made more explicit than before – the film-makers admit that their primary goal was to make the film a celebration. “I wanted to focus on her vast achievements,” McCarten said.

Towards that end, a great deal of the film centers on the creation and performance of her music. At the same time, that music sounds dramatically different from the way it did on the studio recordings, in live concerts or in TV performances. Everything has been buffed and amplified to take advantage of a modern movie theater’s Dolby 5.1 sound system. The result thunders right through you. All the vocals come from Houston, but the breaths of the actor who plays her, the British star Naomi Ackie, have been deftly incorporated to make the physicality of the performance palpable. “It’s got to sound, and feel, like she’s singing live,” Lemmons said. “And Naomi knew every breath of the songs.”

The depth of those breaths, and the dexterity with which Houston deployed them, are two elements that McCarten considers key to her brilliance. “Any musician who ever stood behind her during her performances would often note that this small frame of hers could magically expand,” he said “She would take in a breath with her whole rib cage. They say whales can do this when they sink miles beneath the ocean. They expand their ribs to hold enormous amounts of air. The way Whitney could hold that ballast of air, combined with the force with which she could sustain the high notes and add vibrato, was majestic.”

Of course, the high-wire drama of her music found a mirror in the constant tug between the triumphs and tribulations in her life. One controversial aspect that’s presented with more frankness and specificity than in any previous depiction is her relationship with her friend and business associate Robyn Crawford, who had no involvement in the film. While earlier works strongly implied a lesbian relationship, the new film makes it physically explicit. According to Lemmons, part of that has to do with details offered in Crawford’s memoir, published in 2019. McCarten said the public’s changing attitudes towards sexuality also played a part. “We live in a much more tolerant time,” he said. By contrast, “being open in the 80s was very, very difficult”, he said.

The pain of that judgment is driven home in the film by the strongly disapproving attitude towards the relationship displayed by Whitney’s father as well as her mother, Cissy Houston. Both Lemmons and McCarten believe that if Houston had come up in today’s age of non-binary pop stars like Janelle Monáe and Demi Lovato, she could be fully out about her relationship with Crawford. As to how Houston viewed her own sexuality, Lemmons believes she was “fluid”, while McCarten opts for the description “bi-curious – at least in her younger days”.

The futility of placing a single label on Houston’s sexuality was something she shared with Davis. One scene in the film shows him revealing a male lover to her. While Davis didn’t talk about such things in public then, he wrote about it in his 2013 memoir. “It was important to Clive to put that in the film,” said Lemmons. “He and Whitney had that in common.”

One sexual aspect that’s notably absent from the film is an assertion made in the 2018 documentary by Kevin Macdonald that the singer had been molested by a female friend of the family when she was young. Though the estate had authorized that film, McCarten said “They were very unhappy” with the result. “They felt that Kevin had overrun the boundaries of the deal that they had,” he said. “The accusation at the center of it was unsupported by anything that [Whitney] had told anyone else. For Kevin to have based a documentary on it seemed fragile. I would have needed a substantial amount of supporting evidence to include that.”

The new film is more direct in dealing with the issues in Houston’s life surrounding race. It recreates the infamous scene at the Soul Train awards where she was booed and features a scene during a radio interview at a Black station in which the DJ echoes a common complaint of the day: that her music was “too white”. McCarten’s script has Houston calling out the inherent racism in that view with righteous clarity. At the same time, such accusations wounded her deeply. “To have your own people calling you an ‘Oreo’, is extraordinarily painful,” Lemmons said. “I would certainly hope that the conversation would be different now.”

The lack of nuance in Houston’s day underscores the pain she experienced for falling on a fault line of assumptions about both race and sexuality. Worse, she had battles within her own family, most notably with her father, who served as her manager. Shortly before his death he sued her for $100m. In the film, he’s depicted as treating her more like a financial asset than a human being. “I had a personal experience with John that shook me up,” Lemmons said. “He was the one who spoke to me about ‘the brand’. That was very chilling. That was his daughter that he was talking about!”

McCarten has a different view. He called John Houston “a villain with a very small ‘v’. Even at the end, when he was suing Whitney, he had in his mind a justification for that,” he said. “He put this record deal together for her and he thought that the money was being wasted by Whitney and Bobby. He did a lot for his daughter.”

Regardless, the singer never made peace with her father and didn’t attend his funeral.

The depiction of Bobby Brown, while, at times, rough, lifts the blame some people have put on him for Houston’s physical decline. In one scene, Whitney tells him directly that she was into drugs before she met him. Like Crawford, Brown had no involvement in the film.

Despite the many sad moments in the film, it makes good on its goal to showcase Houston’s brilliance above all, aided by the fact that its creators had access to far more of her music than earlier film-makers did. The movie finds its peaks in the recreations of epochal performances, like her triumphalist rendering of The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl. “She was the architect of that performance,” McCarten said. “She slowed the whole thing down to give herself room to do her thing. And she sure did.”

Another stand-up-and-cheer moment arrives in a scene depicting the Concert for the New South Africa, which was the first show held in that country after apartheid. “Whitney knew how to make a performance speak to a moment,” Lemmons said. Added McCarten, “When she sang I Will Always Love You at that show, she extrapolated it from a love story to another person into a love story for freedom.”

Eclipsing all that is a performance from the 1994 American Music Awards where she combined three daunting songs to create a suite the film-makers have called “The Impossible Medley”. It includes I Loves You, Porgy (from Porgy and Bess), And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going (from Dreamgirls) and her own hit I Have Nothing. Houston compares singing them together to “climbing Mount Everest without oxygen”. “She’ll be singing full out and you think, ‘this is as good as it gets,’” Lemmons said. “And then she goes higher.”

Given the power of such performances, as well as the love Houston managed to experience in her life, McCarten refuses to view her as a tragic figure. “If you view a life as flowers, at one end of the scale, and a pile of shit, on the other, which is there more weight to?” he said. “Whitney’s life had vastly, vastly more flowers.”

I Wanna Dance With Somebody is out in the US on 23 December and in the UK and Australia on 26 December

• Whitney Houston
• Drama films
• Pop and rock

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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

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Watch Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody with a subscription on Netflix, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Another wiki-biopic for posterity's sake, the relatively watchable I Wanna Dance with Somebody leaves you feeling like you were on stage with Whitney Houston, but didn't really get to dance with her.

Naomi Ackie does an outstanding job as Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody , and even longtime fans might learn a few things about the singer's life.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Kasi Lemmons

Naomi Ackie

Whitney Houston

Stanley Tucci

Clive Davis

Nafessa Williams

Robyn Crawford

Tamara Tunie

Cissy Houston

Clarke Peters

John Houston

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Best movies to stream at home, movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

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‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ Review: Her Lonely Heart Calls

This film from Kasi Lemmons is a jukebox retelling of Whitney Houston’s parabola from sweatshirts to sequins.

By Amy Nicholson

No one could sing like Whitney Houston, and Kasi Lemmons, the director of the biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” only rarely asks her lead, Naomi Ackie, to try. This is a jukebox retelling of Houston’s parabola from sweatshirts to sequins, from church choir girl to tabloid fixture, from her teenage romance with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), the woman who would continue on as her creative director, to her volatile marriage to Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), who slithers into the movie licking his lips like he’s hungry to eat her alive.

Those beats are here. But it’s the melodies that matter, those moments when Ackie opens her mouth to channel Houston’s previously recorded songs. We’ve heard Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” countless times, and Lemmons bets, correctly, that the beloved hit will still seize us by the heart during the rather forthright montage she pairs with it, images of Houston marrying Brown, birthing her daughter Bobbi Kristina and honoring Nelson Mandela underneath a sky filled with fireworks.

Ackie doesn’t much resemble the superstar, although her carriage is correct: eyes closed, head flung back, arms pushing away the air as if to make room for that mezzo-soprano. That the film sticks to Houston’s surfaces is half excusable. The screenwriter Anthony McCarten seems to find that the woman underneath the pop star shell was still struggling to define herself at the time of her death at the age of 48. We see her raised to be the mini-me of her mother, the singer Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie), complete with matching haircut, and then handed over to a recording label to be transformed into America’s Princess, a crown she wore with hesitance, and, later, resentment. (Stanley Tucci plays her friendly, Fagin-with-a-combover Clive Davis of Arista Records, who also produced this film.) At Houston’s final “Oprah” performance, recreated here, she belts an earnest ballad called, “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”

Houston didn’t write her own material; she just sang like she did, courtesy of Cissy’s fastidious coaching. “God gives you a gift, you got to use it right,” Cissy lectures. Yet, Houston as seen here can only say yes or no to other people’s ideas of what she should sing, wear and do. (A camera pan suggests, unconvincingly, that Houston thought of the film’s title track as a love song to Crawford.) Increasingly, she chooses opposition. Her successes are shared — and her money swallowed up by her father (Clarke Peters), who was also her manager — but her mistakes are all hers. (Even though Lemmons takes care to include a scene in which Houston absolves Brown of her crack addiction.)

Houston’s defiance is the movie’s attempt to answer the great mystery of her career: why she deliberately damaged her voice through smoking and hard drugs. “It’s like leaving a Stradivarius in the rain!” Davis yelps. The trouble with a gift, the film decides, is it went undervalued by Houston herself, who assumes she’ll be able to hit bombastic high notes every night of her poorly reviewed final world tour. In this doomed stretch, the camera creeps so close to Ackie that you can count the beads of sweat on her nose. The smothering is heavy-handed, yet apropos for an artist who never had the space, or creative motivation, to fully express herself.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody Rated PG-13 for drugs, cigarettes and swearing. Running time: 2 hours 26 minutes. In theaters.

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Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston was an American singer and actress whose first four albums, released between 1985 and 1992, amassed global sales in excess of 86 million copies.

Early Years

Albums and songs, daughter bobbi kristina, documentary, posthumous music, projects, and honors, who was whitney houston.

Whitney Houston released her debut album at age 22 and scored three No. 1 singles. Whitney (1987) delivered four more No. 1s and earned Houston a Grammy, with later albums including I'm Your Baby Tonigh t (1990) and My Love Is Your Love (1998) as well as soundtracks to The Bodyguard (1992) and Waiting to Exhale (1995). With her marriage to singer Bobby Brown in 1992 and ensuing drug use, Houston's career got off track. She eventually made a comeback with 2009's I Look to You and also co-starred in the musical film Sparkle . Houston died from accidental drowning in a hotel on February 11, 2012.

Born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, Houston almost seemed destined from birth to become a singer. Her mother and cousin were both legendary figures in American gospel, soul and pop music. Cissy Houston was the choir minister at New Hope Baptist Church, and it was there that a young Houston got her start. Even as a child, Houston was able to wow audiences; she later told Diane Sawyer that a rapturous response from the congregation at New Hope had a powerful effect upon her: "I think I knew then that [my singing ability] was an infectious thing that God had given me."

By the time she turned 15, Houston was performing often with her mother and trying to get a record deal of her own. Around the same time, she was discovered by a photographer who was awed by her natural beauty. She soon became an extremely sought-after teen model, one of the first African American women to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine. But music remained her true love.

When she was 19, Houston was discovered in a nightclub by Arista Records' Clive Davis, who signed her immediately and took the helm of her career as she navigated from gospel to pop stardom. In 1983, Houston made her debut on national television, appearing on The Merv Griffin Show to sing "Home" from the musical The Wiz . She and Davis spent the next two years working on her debut album, finding the best producers and songwriters available to showcase her amazing vocal talent.

Whitney Houston Album: “Saving All My Love for You” and “How Will I Know”

In 1985, the artist released her debut album, Whitney Houston , and almost immediately became a smash pop sensation. Over the next year, her hit singles "Saving All My Love for You" and "How Will I Know" helped the album reach the top of the charts, where it stayed for 14 non-consecutive weeks. Houston won a Grammy in 1986 for "Saving All My Love for You"; the award was presented to the singer by her cousin Dionne Warwick .

Whitney Album: “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”

Houston followed the monumental success of her first album with a second release, Whitney , in 1987. That record, too, went platinum many times over and won a Grammy for the single "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)," with a successful world tour following. During this time, the singer also appeared at a concert for Nelson Mandela's birthday and founded the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, a nonprofit organization that funds projects to help needy children over the world.

By 1992, Houston was on top of the world, but her life was about to get very complicated very quickly. That year she married the R&B singer Bobby Brown , formerly of New Edition, after a three-year engagement. At first, the marriage was passionate and loving, but things turned sour as the decade progressed. Both Brown and Houston battled substance abuse and increasingly erratic behavior, with Houston later alluding to emotional abuse from Brown and domestic violence.

The Bodyguard Album: “I Will Always Love You”

In spite of these growing personal troubles, Houston continued to progress in her career, crossing over successfully into acting in 1992 by starring opposite Kevin Costner in the wildly popular movie The Bodyguard . With this project, she set a trend for her films to follow: For each movie she also released hit singles, creating sensational record sales for the soundtracks. Her smash single from The Bodyguard , a cover of Dolly Parton 's "I Will Always Love You" from 1974, proved to be Houston's biggest hit ever, spending a record-breaking 14 weeks atop the U.S. charts. The soundtrack album went on to win Houston three Grammys, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Later in the 1990s, Houston also starred in Wait ing to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife , both accompanied by hit soundtracks as well.

My Love Is Your Love Album: “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”

In 1998, Houston released My Love Is Your Love , her first non-soundtrack studio album in many years, and it earned her another Grammy for the single "It's Not Right But It's Okay," The album was not as successful as her previous full-length releases, though her collaboration with Mariah Carey in the animated film The Prince of Egypt produced a hit single, "When You Believe," which won an Academy Award.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Houston's increasingly rocky marriage, struggles with drugs and health problems threatened to derail her career. Several concert cancellations and a notorious TV interview with Sawyer in 2002, in which Houston appeared far too thin and in poor health, led many to speculate that she was on the verge of a breakdown.

Just Whitney Album

In 2004, when production began on the TV reality series Being Bobby Brown , Houston received substantial airtime. The show aired during the worst years of the couple's crumbling marriage; drug use, lifestyle excess and bad behavior were all caught on tape and Houston's reputation sunk to new lows. Houston tried to ignore the controversy, charging ahead with her music by releasing Just Whitney… to combat her detractors, but it did not match the success of her earlier works. In spite of her troubled relationship, Houston was still celebrated as a singer, being named the most-awarded female artist of all time by Guinness World Records in 2006.

Over the next few years, Houston attempted to repair her marriage and to break her drug habit, but after several relapses, Cissy had to step in. As Houston explained to Oprah Winfrey in 2009: "[My mother] walks in with the sheriff and she says: 'I have a court injunction here. You do it my way or we're not going to do this at all. You're going to go on TV, and you're going to retire. And say you're going to give this up because it's not worth it.'" Houston took a break from her career, divorced Brown in 2007 and won sole custody of Bobbi Kristina.

I Look to You Album

After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life, Houston seemed to be pulling herself together. She released a new album, I Look To You , in 2009. "The songs themselves will speak to you and you'll understand where I am and some of the changes I've gone through for the better," Houston told Entertainment Tonight . The recording received a warm welcome from music fans, making it to the top of album charts. Her live shows, however, garnered mixed reviews, with some complaining about the quality of her voice.

In early 2012, Houston was rumored to be experiencing financial trouble, but she denied this claim. Indeed, the artist seemed poised for a career upswing: Houston worked on the musical film Sparkle with Jordin Sparks, a remake of the 1976 movie about an all-girl musical group similar to The Supremes, and also reportedly had been approached to join the singing competition series The X Factor as a judge. Unfortunately, Houston did not live long enough to see the latest comeback reach fruition.

Houston died at the age of 48 on February 11, 2012, in Los Angeles at a Beverly Hilton hotel where a Grammy party was being held by Davis. Houston had been seen out in the days before her death, including at one of the pre-Grammy parties. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County coroner's office on March 22, 2012, the official cause of her death was an accidental drowning. The effects of heart disease and cocaine found in her system were contributing factors as well.

With her passing, the music world lost one of its most legendary stars. Davis once said that Houston "is in the great tradition of great, great singers, whether it's Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan or Gladys Knight ."

Daughter Bobbi Kristina dealt with much tumult after the death of her mother. She was hospitalized immediately after the passing of Houston due to emotional trauma but later spoke with Winfrey about returning to her mother's home and feeling her mother's presence. Houston left everything to her daughter, but eventually the singer's sister-in-law Pat Houston became the executor of the estate.

Bobbi Kristina had public conflicts with her grandmother, Cissy, over the publishing of the Houston biography Remembering Whitney . In early 2014, she was reported to have been married to Nick Gordon, who had been taken in by Houston during his childhood and raised with Bobbi Kristina, yet later reports stated that they weren't legally wed. In another confrontation, she made disparaging comments via Twitter about Angela Bassett after the actress/director opted to cast a trained actress in the lead role of a Houston biopic instead of Bobbi Kristina.

On January 31, 2015, nearly three years to the date of her mother's death, Bobbi Kristina was discovered face down in a bathtub in her Roswell, Georgia, home by associate Max Lomas. After being admitted to North Fulton Hospital, she was eventually taken to Emory University Hospital, having been placed into a medically-induced coma.

Her father and grandmother visited her bedside amid calls for public support and prayer, with a candlelight vigil held on February 10 in suburban Atlanta. Bobbi Kristina Brown died on July 26, 2015, at Peachtree Christian Hospice in Duluth, Georgia. She was 22 years old.

Backed by the Houston estate, the documentary Whitney was released in July 2018, with Houston's sister-in-law, Pat, serving as executive producer.

“Everyone that has a life has a story. It’s her story and it’s played out in the documentary," Pat Houston told Good Morning America a few weeks before the film's release. "She narrated a lot of it herself. It’s just her life and her story as the family would see it, and the friends, who dealt with it every single day.”

The documentary premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. In the doc, it is revealed that her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, sister of Dionne Warwick, allegedly sexually abused the singer. Houston’s brother told filmmakers he was abused by Dee Dee and believed his sister was too. The documentary also provided insight into Houston's relationship with drugs — her brother Michael admitted that he gave her marijuana and cocaine as a gift for her 16th birthday — as well as her kinship with fellow pop superstar Michael Jackson .

The following year brought more revelations about the singer's private life with the publication of A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston , by Robyn Crawford . A longtime friend and assistant, Crawford confirmed that the two also had a romantic relationship before Houston became a global superstar.

Memories and Higher Love

In 2016, fans were treated to the release of a new Houston single, "Memories," with Malaysian singer Siti Nurhaliza sharing credit on the track. Houston's vocals had been recorded nearly 35 years earlier. In 2019, another new Houston single surfaced, this one a cover of Steve Winwood's 1986 hit "Higher Love." Houston had recorded a version that was originally meant for her 1990 album I'm Your Baby Tonight , before it was remixed for a posthumous release by Norwegian DJ and producer Kygo.

Hologram Tour

In 2019, it was announced that Houston's hologram would be going on tour the following year. The production was being developed by BASE Holograms, which had already debuted shows featuring the likenesses of Greek opera diva Maria Callas and American rock 'n' roll great Roy Orbison .

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

On January 15, 2020, it was announced that Houston had been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Watch Whitney on Lifetime Movie Club

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Whitney Houston
• Birth date: August 9, 1963
• Birth State: New Jersey
• Birth City: Newark
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• Death date: February 11, 2012
• Death State: California
• Death City: Beverly Hills

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

• From the beginning, the camera and I were great friends. I know the eye of the camera is on me—eye to eye. It loves me, and I love it.
• Well, I've gone from singing too white to R&B diva, and now I'm hip-hop. I guess it's flattering to know that I can sing it all.
• I know what my color is. I was raised in a Black community with Black people, so that has never been a thing with me. Yet I've gotten flack about being a pop success but that doesn't mean I'm white ... pop music has never been all white.
• Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy. And that's how I have to deal with it.
• Cracking gum or sitting with your legs open were considered unacceptable ... and I'd better not come back from the yard with scratched knees."[On mother Cissy Houston's parenting.]
• I wanted to be a teacher. I love children, so I wanted to deal with children. Then I wanted to be a veterinarian. But by the age of 10 or 11, when I opened my mouth and said, 'Oh God, what's this?' I kind of knew teaching and being a veterinarian were going to have to wait. What's in your soul is in your soul.
• They're devils to me ... and they're out to eat my flesh."[On the media.]
• Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let's get that straight. OK? We don't do crack. We don't do that. Crack is whack.
• I can tell you that I am not self-destructive. I'm not a person who wants to die. I'm a person who has life, who wants to live. And I always have. And I wouldn't mistake it for anything else other than that.

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

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Whitney Houston

• Born August 9 , 1963 · Newark, New Jersey, USA
• Died February 11 , 2012 · Beverly Hills, California, USA (accidental drowning)
• Birth name Whitney Elizabeth Houston
• The Prom Queen of Soul
• The Princess of Pop
• Height 5′ 8″ (1.73 m)
• Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born into a musical family on 9 August 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of gospel star Cissy Houston (née Emily Lee Drinkard) and John Russell Houston, Jr., and cousin of singing star Dionne Warwick . She began singing in the choir at her church, The New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, as a young child and by the age of 15 was singing backing vocals professionally with her mother on Chaka Khan 's 1978 hit, 'I'm Every Woman'. She went on to provide backing vocals for Lou Rawls, Jermaine Jackson and her own mother and worked briefly as a model, appearing on the cover of 'Seventeen' magazine in 1981. She began working as a featured vocalist for the New York-based funk band Material and it was the quality of her vocal work with them that attracted the attention of the major record labels, including Arista with whom she signed in 1983 and where she stayed for the rest of her career. Her debut album, 'Whitney Houston', was released in 1985 and became the biggest-selling album by a debut artist. Several hit singles, including 'Saving All My Love For You', 'How Will I Know', 'You Give Good Love', and 'The Greatest Love of All', were released from the album, setting her up for a Beatles-beating seven consecutive US number ones. The album itself sold 3 million copies in its first year in the US and went on to sell 25 million worldwide, winning her the first of her six Grammies. The 1987 follow-up album, 'Whitney', which included the hits 'Where Do Broken Hearts Go' and 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody', built on her success but it was the 1992 film The Bodyguard (1992) that sealed her place as one of the best-selling artists of all time. While the movie itself and her performance in it were not highly praised, the soundtrack album and her cover of the Dolly Parton song 'I Will Always Love You' topped the singles and albums charts for months and sold 44 million copies around the world. That same year she married ex-New Edition singer Bobby Brown with whom she had her only child, their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown in March 1993. It was about this time that her much documented drug use began and by 1996 she was a daily user. Her 1998 album, 'My Love Is Your Love' was well reviewed but the drug abuse began to affect her reputation and press reports at the time said that she was becoming difficult to work with, if she turned up at all. She was dropped from a performance at The 72nd Annual Academy Awards (2000) because she was "out of it" at rehearsals. Her weight fluctuated wildly - she was so thin at a 'Michael Jackson' tribute in 2001 that rumors circulated the next day that she had died - and her voice began to fail her. She was twice admitted to rehab and declared herself drug-free in 2010 but returned to rehab in May 2011. Her 2009 comeback album 'I Look To You' was positively received and sold well, but promotional performances were still marred by her weakened voice. Her final acting performance was in Sparkle (2012) (a remake of the 1976 movie, Sparkle (1976) ), released after her death. She was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel room on 11 February 2012. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
• Spouse Bobby Brown (July 18, 1992 - April 24, 2007) (divorced, 1 child)
• Children Bobbi Kristina Brown
• Parents Cissy Houston John Russell Houston Jr.
• Relatives Michael Houston (Sibling) Gary Houston (Half Sibling) Dionne Warwick (Cousin) Dee Dee Warwick (Cousin) Rayah Houston (Niece or Nephew) David Elliott (Cousin) Damon Elliott (Cousin) John Houston III (Half Sibling) Gary Houston (Sibling)
• Powerful mezzo-soprano vocals
• Her beautiful smile
• Because she passed away the night before the 54th Grammy Awards (2012), the host for the evening, LL Cool J , opened the show with a tribute and a prayer in her honor.
• Her mother was at one time a background singer for Elvis Presley .
• One of the last times Whitney Houston was seen on camera was at a rehearsal for Monica and Brandy's performance at Clive Davis' pre-Grammy party. At the time, Brandy did not know that Houston had planned a surprise birthday party for her on the night she passed away.
• Her powerful rendition of "I Will Always Love You", from The Bodyguard (1992) , was ranked #65 on the American Film Institute's list of "The 100 Years of The Greatest Songs".
• The Preacher's Wife (1996) soundtrack is the best-selling gospel album of all time. The soundtrack also remained at number one for for a record twenty-six weeks on the Billboard Top Gospel Albums Chart.
• I almost wish I could be more exciting, that I could match what is happening out there to me.
• I've got a good man. He takes care of me. I don't have to be scared of anything because I know he will kick every ass... disrespect him and you've got a problem.
• God gave me a voice to sing with, and when you have that, what other gimmick is there?
• I was aware of people staring at me. No one moved. They seemed almost in trance. I just stared at the clock in the center of the church. When I finished, everyone clapped and started crying.
• I know that I could really kill for my daughter. I know because I'm living for her, so I'm fierce when it comes down to it. And I feel the same about my husband and my family. I'm just fiercely protective. It's like, that's my lair and nobody messes with my lair.
• The Preacher's Wife (1996) - $10,000,000

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Whitney Houston meets Clive Davis, marries Bobby Brown and belts out the national anthem in 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' trailer

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More than a decade after Whitney Houston 's untimely death, the biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody will dramatize her story on the big screen. The Sony movie, which is produced by the singer's manager and sister-in-law, Patricia "Pat" Houston, as well as her mentor, recording executive Clive Davis, unveiled its trailer on Thursday.

The two-minute clip depicts a young version of the future star (Naomi Ackie, of Master of None and The End of the F***ing World ) giving an impressive performance of "How Will I Know," as Davis (played by Stanley Tucci) watches from the audience. "I might've just heard the greatest voice of her generation," he says.

There are scenes that show Houston hearing her track on the radio for the first time, singing at church, walking out at Super Bowl 1991 to deliver a spectacular version of the national anthem and leaving her 1992 wedding to fellow music artist Bobby Brown. Houston is told that "a common criticism" is that her music "isn't Black enough," and quickly responds, "Look, I don't know how to sing Black, and I don't know how to sing white either. I know how to sing."

While the clip notes that the movie is from Anthony McCarten, the writer of the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody , it does not mention that Davis and Pat Houston are producers.

Fans seemed to approve of the project focusing more on the Emmy winner's music than on her private life, such as her drug addiction , her tumultuous relationship with Brown and her queer relationship with her best friend, Robyn Crawford. They compared it to Lifetime's 2015 biopic, which starred Yaya DaCosta and was directed by one of Houston's Waiting to Exhale co-stars, Angela Bassett. (It was straightforward about chronicling her turbulent years with Brown.)

"I'm speechless! I wish she was here to see her story told the right way. But I'm so excited to see this movie. It looks so good!" BritBrit Nicole commented beneath the YouTube trailer .

Marcel wrote, "Based on Career not on drugs is enough for me. We’re here for it."

Helen Smith added, "Finally not lifetime and tvone. A real feature film for the queen."

"Say what you want but Naomi Ackie looks stellar as Whitney Houston," JaylenExclusive wrote. "The fact that the trailer showed no drugs , let's me know they focused on the right thing. HER VOICE, and it's about damn time. Yes drugs will be shown because it was apart of her struggles but I'm glad that her main focus is her voice, the tribute Whitney deserves. She was more then her demons!!!"

"Oh, I cannot WAIT to go and see this," im hatten wrote, "and just from looking at this trailer, I already know that this movie will be ONE MILLION TIMES better than that crappy Lifetime biopic (w/ Yaya DeCosta playing Whitney)."

Brown himself told Billboard in May that he was optimistic I Wanna Dance With Somebody would concentrate more on his former wife's talent and achievements.

"I truly hope that they let her rest and also let our relationship rest," Brown said. "I don't know anything about the biopic that Clive is doing. But hopefully it won't dive into our relationship. Hopefully it will be more about the music and not about her personal life."

I Wanna Dance With Somebody arrives in theaters Wednesday, Dec. 21.

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Whitney Houston

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Lifetime's biopic of Whitney Houston is actually a movie about Bobby Brown

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Whitney Houston is one of the greatest recording artists who ever lived. Her golden vocals made her one of the most popular vocalists ever. Over the course of her career she sold 200 million albums. And her songs were technically demanding, flying all over her impressive range.

But all of that success, talent, and work is glossed over in the new biopic of the star that premieres Saturday, January 17, on Lifetime . Instead, the movie glosses over her legacy and her talent by focusing the 90-minute running time almost entirely on her relationship with R&B singer Bobby Brown.

To be clear, that could have made for a soapy, fun drama, even based on the real life story of Houston. It just would have to actually be about the woman in its title.

A scene from the Lifetime movie where Whitney Houston is in the studio (Lifetime)

Whitney focuses on love over work

The opening scene of Whitney shows the singer (played here by America's Next Top Model vet Yaya DaCosta) entering the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards. She takes her seat, hugs a few friends, and meets a new face — Bobby Brown, a young R&B singer. When Brown takes the stage, Houston is mesmerized. He's sexy, he's talented, and he's a little bit of a bad boy. She's drawn to him, and she agrees to go on a date with him.

Immediately, the film makes clear that this is not a story with Whitney Houston at its heart; it's a film that romanticizes Bobby Brown. There is no mention of chart-topping albums or the Grammy nominations Houston had before she met Brown. In fact, the only sign that Whitney Houston was successful in any form before she met Brown is that briefly, in one scene at her birthday party, she and Brown walk by a case full of trophies and awards.

"People tired of seeing me getting prizes," Houston says when she first meets Brown. "I don't blame 'em. Sometimes I get tired of hearing about myself." It's a statement that the movie itself seems to believe. The plot of the story, because it picks up with Brown, assumes that the viewer already knows about Houston's success, already knows her best hits, already knows that she is a bigger, better, more memorable star than Bobby Brown could ever be. And then it treats her as a secondary character in a movie about her life.

Whitney doesn't sound like Whitney

Whitney Houston, in the movie, is only two things: a companion to Bobby Brown and a performer. None of Houston's three performances in the movie do the real star justice. DaCosta does a decent job with mastering Houston's mannerisms and spirit. But since the producers could not secure the rights to either Houston or Brown's vocals, they were forced to use imitators as backing vocals for the actors to lip-sync to. Thus, Whitney doesn't sound like Whitney. But the larger problem is that every single one of the artist's performances in the biopic is mired in Brown's reaction to it.

In her first, he falls for her. Her second — a performance built to look like an edited video of several nights of performances meshed together, not unlike what Beyoncé (a performer who has said Houston was an inspiration to her) did with her performances at Roseland — concludes with Bobby Brown joining her on stage. The third, is supposed to be a heart-wrenching rendition of "I Will Always Love You." It is sung to Bobby Brown, who stands off stage.

The problem, though, for anyone who knows anything about Houston is that she didn't always love Brown. The two got divorced in 2006.

A snapshot from the movie during the Soul Train Awards (Lifetime)

The movie romanticizes a deeply messy relationship

That's the second problem with Whitney . Placing Houston's relationship with Brown at the center of the film could have worked, but the movie refuses to engage with the truth of that relationship. Houston's mother spoke out against the movie in November telling Entertainment Tonight that "Lifetime has chosen to go ahead with the movie about Whitney in spite of my family's objections. No one connected with this movie knew Whitney or anything about her relationship with Bobby." It's obvious, watching the movie, that she was 100 percent right.

Were this a movie that took a deep dive into the very messy relationship that Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown actually had, it would have been more interesting. Bobby Brown did meet Houston at the Soul Train Awards. Just as the movie shows, the pair did date, get engaged, survive a miscarriage, get married, and have a daughter together. But the film paints Houston as a passive, perfect figure, refusing to engage with the complicated realities of her marriage.

She is the victim to whom things happen, without agency or a voice in her relationship .

In the movie, Houston and Bobby have several conversations about what will happen once their baby is born- — in that they agree that neither of them will tour so that they can spend time together as a normal couple. That transitions, as Houston's fame grows, to both of them going on her tour, but when Brown decides that he isn't getting enough attention, he leaves. But Houston isn't shown as angry or frustrated or even disappointed. Instead she weeps. She cries about how lonely she will be. She positions herself under Bobby so he can hold her. In the movie, she is the victim to whom things happen, without agency or a voice in her relationship.

That's not,however, how the pair's real relationship was. "There was infidelity in the marriage, yes, on both parts," Bobby Brown told Access Hollywood 's Shawn Robinson about their real relationship. "Both of us cheated on each other, period. So that's hard to swallow for both of us. I just think when two people that love each other as much as we loved each other, when they start drifting apart, different people come into the situation, into the scenario, and we make mistakes.

Brown and Houston were married for 15 years in a union that graced the cover of tabloids over and over and over again. "He was my drug," Houston told Oprah Winfrey in a widely publicized 2009 interview . "I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together, and we were partners, and that’s what my high was — him. He and I being together, and whatever we did, we did it together. No matter what, we did it together."

Notably, the two did crack together Despite Houston's famous 2000 interview with Diane Sawyer where she dramatically declares that "We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is wack ." That she lied was obvious by the mid-2000s, when she was in and out of rehab for addiction to the drug.

No one can know everything that happened in Houston and Brown's relationship, save Brown himself, but we do know that they fought, that they did drugs together, and that in 2003 police responded to a domestic-violence 911 call at their Georgia home and found Houston with a bruised cheek and a cut lip. Brown turned himself in and was charged with a misdemeanor for battery.

It certainly wasn't the beautiful love story, scarred only by a single time that Bobby Brown cheated, that the movie makes it out to be.

The film ends as it began, with Bobby.

Whitney ends with Whitney's performance of "I Will Always Love You," as the camera flashes to shots of Bobby Brown's face. The story spans just five years of Houston's life, which means it is conveniently cut to make the most of her relationship with Bobby.

"As a public, we know how it ultimately ends," director Angela Bassett told The Washington Post . "But we only follow a five-year period of [Whitney and Bobby's] life together, and that’s the sweet spot of their youth and their success."

How "it ultimately ends" would have really thrown a wrench into the love story Lifetime and Bassett wanted to tell. Whitney Houston was found dead in a hotel bathroom the night before the Grammys with cocaine in her bloodstream. Her marriage with Bobby Brown was over. She was 48.

That isn't the love story Lifetime wants. Instead, the movie trails off right as the couple's relationship is starting to get ugly.

Lifetime bills itself as television for women, but the channel frequently does disservice to actual, complicated women who lived and did great things and sometimes had huge failings. By reducing Houston's life to a romanticized love story, Whitney is just the latest film to play into this unintentional agenda.

After the movie ends on Saturday, the network will air Bobby Brown: Remembering Whitney , an interview between Brown and Access Hollywood correspondent Shaun Robinson, making it all the more clear whose story this movie is really trying to tell. Hint: his name isn't in the title.

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Whitney Houston: A Timeline of Her Life and Legacy

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One of the most iconic performers of the 20th century, Whitney Houston’s legacy will remain as long as music can be played. With the release of the new biopic, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody , fans new and old are getting a closer look at the life, career and struggles of a generational talent gone too soon.

From her early days singing in church, to her star-making Super Bowl rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," to major movie roles and even more successful soundtracks, Whitney was a superstar in every sense of the word. However, her personal life was plagued by complicated relationships and substance abuse, the latter of which lead to her death in 2012 at just 48 years old.

Naomi Ackie stars as Whitney in the Houston family-approved biopic, and she told ET that having the support of Whitney's family and friends was instrumental in doing justice to the singer's story.

"Reading what Clive [Davis] had written, what Pat [Houston] had written, it was so heartwarming," she added. "And to get to see them in so many different parts of the process, they were always so supportive. Always willing to share anything to help me tell the story properly. I'm eternally grateful for them, and really quite touched by their involvement and how much they wanted this part of her story to be told."

Read on for a look at the life and legacy of one of the greatest performers of all time.

The Early Years

Whitney was born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, to John Russell Houston Jr. and Emily "Cissy" Houston (née Drinkard). She was surrounded by music from an early age -- Cissy was a gospel singer who later joined a popular session vocal group called the The Sweet Inspirations, who performed on songs with stars like Elvis Presley , Dusty Springfield, Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and more. Darlene Love was Whitney’s godmother, Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick were first cousins, and Aretha Franklin was considered an honorary aunt.

Whitney started out singing in church at the age of five, and also learned to play the piano. She was a soloist by age 11, and by 14, had started singing backup for her mother at cabaret clubs in New York City. She also started modeling, becoming one of the first women of color to cover a fashion magazine when she appeared on the cover of Seventeen . 

She continued performing and recording throughout high school -- with Cissy insisting she turn down offers from record labels until her education was complete -- but her big moment came when Arista Records head Clive Davis came to see her perform and was instantly impressed, signing her to a worldwide deal on April 10, 1983.

Making It Big

Whitney’s first major hit was a duet with Teddy Pendergrass, “Hold Me,” which became a Top 5 R&B hit prior to the release of her self-titled debut album. Whitney Houston , released on Feb. 14, 1985, went platinum 13 times over and included mega hits like “Saving All My Love for You,” “Greatest Love of All” and “How Will I Know.”

She followed it up with 1987’s Whitney , which was certified Diamond and made Whitney the first female act to achieve four No. 1 hits from one album: "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", "Didn't We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go.”

The success of her first two albums established Whitney as a global superstar -- with seven consecutive Billboard No. 1 hits breaking a record previously shared by The Beatles and The Bee Gees. Then, she stepped onto one of the biggest stages of her career in January 1991, when she performed a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Super Bowl XXV amid the Persian Gulf War. Whitney’s recording of the national anthem peaked at No. 20 on the Hot 100 and became the most successful recording of the song.

Over the course of her career, Whitney released five more albums -- I'm Your Baby Tonight, My Love Is Your Love, Just Whitney, One Wish: The Holiday Album, and I Look to You -- and two soundtrack albums, all of which were certified diamond, multi-platinum or platinum. She was the top-selling female R&B artist of the 20th century, and has sold more physical singles than any other female solo artist in history.

She also garnered dozens of awards during her career, including two Emmy Awards, eight GRAMMYs (including two GRAMMY Hall of Fame honors), 14 World Music Awards, 16 Billboard Music Awards and 22 American Music Awards.

The Silver Screen

In addition to her music career, Whitney also found success in the movies. Her first film role came in 1992’s The Bodyguard. The romantic drama -- in which Houston played a famous singer with a stalker who falls in love with her bodyguard, played by Kevin Costner -- received mixed reviews, but it was massively successful at the box office, earning $410 million worldwide.

Even more successful was The Bodyguard soundtrack, on which Whitney co-executive produced and recorded six new songs. Her cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” remains one of the best-selling physical singles of all time -- going platinum 18 times over -- and won the performer the GRAMMY Awards for Album of the Year and Record of the Year in 1994. The album would go on to be named the top-selling Soundtrack Album of the Century by the RIAA.

Whitney also performed on the soundtracks for her next two films, 1995’s Waiting to Exhale and 1996’s The Preacher’s Wife. In 1997, she co-executive produced and starred in a television adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella , playing the Fairy Godmother to Brandy’s titular princess. The special was ABC’s highest-rated in 16 years, racking up over 60 million viewers, and remains a fan favorite to this day.

Later in her career, Whitney teamed up with other music stars on several movie projects, recording the duet “When You Believe” with Mariah Carey for the 1998 animated film The Prince of Egypt , and singing with Jordin Sparks in the 2011 remake of Sparkle , which ended up being her final film and music release.

Love and Troubles

After being linked to stars like Jermaine Jackson, Randall Cunningham and Eddie Murphy in the early years of her career, Whitney met Bobby Brown in 1989 and the pair were married on July 18, 1992. The relationship was a roller coaster from the start with Brown facing numerous legal troubles for drunk driving, drug possession and battery, and Houston suffering miscarriages before and after the couple welcomed their only child, daughter Bobbi Kristina, on March 4, 1993.

The later years of Whitney's marriage to Bobby also brought increased speculation about the couple’s drug use and erratic behavior. In early 2000, she had marijuana found in her bags at a Hawaiian airport, no-showed for the ceremony celebrating Clive Davis’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was fired from performing at the Academy Awards after appearing “distracted and jittery” during rehearsals.

Then, there was Whitney’s relationship with Robyn Crawford . The pair met as teens, when they were counselors at a summer camp in East Orange, Jersey, and remained inseparable for many years. Speculation about the nature of their relationship was always dispelled during Whitney’s life, however, in Robyn’s 2019 memoir , she claimed that the pair had a sexual relationship in their early years, but stopped being physical at the start of Whitney’s musical career.

However, Robyn remained close for many years, serving as Whitney’s personal assistant and working with her management company until 2000, when she quit. In her book, Robyn says that she left because of Whitney’s refusal to seek help for her drug use.

Early on, Whitney denied rumors of drug use, however, in her infamous “crack is whack” interview with Diane Sawyer in 2002, she admitted to using cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and pills, and added that her highly-speculated weight loss was in fact due to drug use. 

In 2003, Bobby was charged with battery after an incident in which he assaulted Whitney, and in 2004, the couple starred in one season of his ill-fated reality show, Being Bobby Brown . The series was an unflattering look at the couple’s home life and led to further speculation about their substance use and domestic turmoil.

In a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Whitney admitted that her drug use increased following the birth of her daughter and the success of The Bodyguard. She also opened up about more domestic disputes with Bobby and revealed that she had attended a 30-day rehab program. In 2011, Whitney returned to rehab, with a rep saying at the time that the outpatient treatment was a part of Houston's ongoing recovery process.  

Gone Too Soon

Whitney was found dead in her hotel room at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Feb. 11, 2012. It was GRAMMY Awards weekend, and the performer was scheduled to attend the annual pre-GRAMMYs bash held by her longtime friend and producer Clive Davis that night. She was discovered in the bathtub -- the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office later determined that her death was caused by drowning and the "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”

The singer was mourned in a private funeral, with performances by Stevie Wonder, CeCe Winans, Alicia Keys, Kim Burrell, and R. Kelly and remarks by Clive Davis, Kevin Costner, Dionne Warwick, music director Rickey Minor, and Ray Watson, Whitney’s security guard for the previous 11 years. 

Sadly, tragedy followed Whitney in death, as her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, died just three years later, after also being found unresponsive in a bathtub. She was just 22.

It’s been over 10 years since Whitney’s death, but there’s no denying that her legacy continues to remain strong. In the weeks following her death, the singer became the first and only female act to ever place three albums in the Top 10 of the US Billboard 200 Album Chart all at the same time, with Whitney: The Greatest Hits at No. 2, The Bodyguard at No. 6 and Whitney Houston at No. 9.

To this day, she remains the first and only Black artist to have three Diamond-certified albums. The Bodyguard soundtrack remains the best-selling soundtrack album of all time, and The Preacher's Wife soundtrack is the best-selling gospel album of all time.

On January 15, 2020, Whitney was announced as an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 2020 class, and in March 2020, the Library of Congress announced that Houston’s rendition of "I Will Always Love You" had been added to its National Recording Registry, a list of "aural treasures worthy of preservation" due to their "cultural, historical and aesthetic importance" in the American soundscape. 

And in October 2020, the music video for "I Will Always Love You" surpassed 1 billion views on YouTube, making Houston the first solo 20th-century artist to have a video reach that milestone --  and proving that she’s just as relevant as ever.

Now, with the release of  Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,  fans new and old can get more perspective on one of the greatest musical talents of her generation.

Ackie told ET that she spent months researching the superstar, "studying the songs and her history and what she was like as a child and all this beautiful, imaginary work that me, as an actor, I just like live for... It really pushed me to my outer limits and I'm so happy that I got to do it."

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