I Will Always Love You My Favorite Singer

Whitney Houston arrived on this planet in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick, the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin. She could hardly have had a better passport into the world of music. She started with the blessings of a revered sisterhood, with their belief in her and assistance, but all that would have been so much dross without The Voice, the voice that gave her the world and all its glittering prizes.

Whitney is the first female artist to enter the Billboard 200 album chart at number one (her second album, Whitney, 1987); and the only artist with seven consecutive multiplatinum albums (Whitney Houston, Whitney, I'm Your Baby Tonight, The Bodyguard, Waiting to Exhale, and The Preacher's Wife soundtracks and My Love Is Your Love ).

From her first two albums and beyond, Whitney Houston became one of the most successful female singers of all time. She has won seven Grammy Awards and been nominated 26 times.

She knew what we wanted knew what we needed and she delivered it to us with a dance beat that took us beyond care and worry, to a divine moment with the one we cared for and in whose eyes we glimpsed forever. And so it should have gone on until she met the quintessential bad boy, every mother's nightmare, every good girl's secret dream, the man who asked for everything, demanded everything... and with each thrilling step changed everything to the point of devastation, despair, degradation. And at last she understood what fulfillment meant and its terrible costs.

Now her pain is over, but The Voice, her great gift from God, abides leaving us the best of her, every soaring note a eulogy for the lady who loved not wisely, but too well.