Whitney Houston
The Voice, no qualifier needed. Whitney Houston arrived in 1985 with a record-breaking debut and never slowed down: seven consecutive #1 singles — still unmatched — and, with The Bodyguard, the best-selling soundtrack of all time. For a stretch of the '90s, she simply was the pop ballad.
Whitney Houston's debut album arrived on Valentine's Day 1985, and by March 1986 it had climbed to #1, going on to spend a stunning 14 weeks there — the longest run of any debut album by a woman. There was no irony in her rise, no argument to have: the voice was simply undeniable. On April 23, 1988, "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" made her the only artist in history to land seven consecutive #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 — a record no one has touched since.
The Bodyguard (1992) was her film debut and her commercial Everest. The soundtrack spent 20 weeks at #1 and sold about 45 million copies worldwide, still the best-selling soundtrack album of all time. Her towering cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" held #1 for a then-record 14 weeks and remains the best-selling US single by a female artist. For a sustained moment in the early '90s, she commanded popular music entirely — the wedding song, the breakup song, and the talent-show Everest were all the same record.
That run made her the template for every big-voiced diva who followed, and her name became the default shorthand for singing a ballad at full power. Houston died on February 11, 2012. What remains is the catalog — and a voice that defined a decade and a half of popular music.
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