Clive Davis in Rolling Stone: "Everyone knows that Whitney and Aretha..."

[dback]

...are the two best singers alive."

It's morons like this that have teenage girls lined up all over the country for "American Idol" auditions, and always doing the exact...same...songs...in...the...exact...same...style. (You know, faux-gospel, lots of "runs," etc.) They should all be vigorously smacked cross-eyed.

I'd like to officially state that Clive is full of shit: Patti Labelle, Barbra Streisand, Christina Aguilera, Bonnie Raitt, Annie Lennox, Lena Horne, and a host of others are just as good as that overrated diva bitch Whitney Houston, whom I expect to OD any time now, or at least ruin her voice permanently due to drug abuse. (Aretha, however, just might be in the Top 2.)

Comments?

[LostinVA]

1. No comments -- I agree

Except I would suggest some singers to include in your list: Alanis Morrissette, Sarah Maclachlan, etc.

[graywarrior]

2. Whitney music is non-music to my ears

That is one style of music I cannot stomach.

[southpaw]

3. Whitney Houston is a member of the NRA...

Not
Relevant
Anymore

[graywarrior]

4. O but, she dumped what's-his-name and is cutting a CD

She'll be all over entertainment tonight.

[kwassa]

5. I think Whitney is a very talented singer and performer BUT

her drug problems and life with Bobby Brown have destroyed her career, pretty much. It is not a style I care for, but she is a terrific stage performer and had great chops. I wish her health and drug-free happiness in a life without Bobby.

Clive Davis made her a star in the first place, so of course he will rave about her.

Aretha is the touchstone that everyone goes to, and I like her, but there are many other great singers out there. Most of the black singers have grown up in the church and have that gospel style, which has influenced blues, r&b, and now hop-hop. In recent years it has become a very embellished style, overly ornate with excess trills and runs. I like a simpler style. I've always like Gladys Knight's voice, with that great smoky quality to it. Some of the younger singers have great voices, but the style is way over the top, as in Mariah Carey and Christina Aguillera. They are direct descendants musically from Whitney, by the way, who revived the modern pop diva idea in the first place, under the guidance of Clive.

You lump together singers who work in very different vocal styles, though, so it is comparing apples and oranges, a little. Lena Horne has very little in common with Patti Labelle, for instance. Lena is a jazz singer, Patti a gospel shouter. Bonnie Raitt is really a blues singer.

How did Whitney make you so angry, by the way?

[dback]

8. I've never seen an interview or awards show where she wasn't a bitch

Seriously. Every time I have seen her interviewed or presenting, she's been snide, self-important, condescending, throwing attitude, etc. And there are very, very few songs she's done (except maybe "Run To You") where she exhibits things like subtlety, delicacy, etc. (Dolly Parton performed "I Will Always Love You" as if it were a prayer; Houston performed it as if it were an invasion of a Third World country, complete with artillery.) I won't even mention the friends whom she's disappointed by cancelling concerts over and over again, ostensibly for "health reasons." (Yeah right.)

She just made my flesh crawl--and then "Being Bobby Brown" premiered.

After seeing a few clips from the show, I confirmed that there is no way this woman should have custody of any living creature beyond a houseplant, much less a child. She is one of the most egomaniacal, horrific people on the planet.

(And yes, to the poster below, maybe it was unfair to cross musical genres in my comparison, but Davis' generalization was so ridiculously sweeping I didn't know where to begin. I didn't even mention classical or exclusively gospel artists who could be considered in our "greatest voices," and I also forgot to mention Celine Dion and Mariah Carey--both of whom also "oversing" but have exhibited a certain amount of restraint here and there, and also seem like reasonably nice people.)

[kwassa]

9. Whitney has had a drug problem for awhile

and that "Being Bobby Brown" was scraping bottom for her, though on track for her talentless husband. Drugs do terrible things to people.

which is irrelevant to her art, really, except that her art has suffered, also.

[AngryAmish]

10. Cocaine is a helleva drug

[kwassa]

6. wierd dupe

[SOteric]

7. Well...at least he didn't say anything about Celine Dion.

:shrug:

[SteppingRazor]

11. I could agree with him, depending on what he meant...

if he meant that, of the pop singers alive today, Whitney and Aretha were the best in their primes, I might agree with him.

But to suggest that, currently, they have the best voices in the music industry, is laughable. One would expect such a statement to come from a washed-up, 75-year-old, has-been record exec.... oh.... wait...

[regnaD kciN]

16. But what about Britney...?????

:rofl:

[RedStateShame]

12. If a singer on drugs can't even make an interesting recording...

that's a lost cause.

[Kajsa]

13. Aretha IS the Queen of Soul.

But Whitney Houston?
She's good but not one of the
"two best singers alive".

Etta James has her beat by a mile!

[azmouse]

14. Linda Ronstadt has one of the best voices ever.

...and she's a Dem!

[xchrom]

15. not a whitney fan here -- great voice

doesn't know how to sing a song for my money.