Round and round they go in your head.
Snippets of tunes, entire songs you loved decades ago, dance moves you copied and videos you never missed. Those things were essential to your youth, they were a soundtrack of your life, so read “Holding Lightning” by Emily Lordi and learn about the woman whose music you can still remember at full volume.
In the nearly fifteen years since she died, Whitney Houston, says Lordi, has been “widely considered to be one of the greatest singers of all time.” Her mother, Cissy Houston, and record executive Clive Davis are generally “credited for her rise.” Her ex-husband is “frequently blamed for her fall.”
Says Lordi, “This… frame has made it impossible to see how hard Whitney worked to become herself…”
Houston was born in August 1963, the child of musical royalty. Her mother was a renowned back-up singer; her cousin was Dionne Warwick. The family was immersed in music from church to concert, and Houston happily took take her place among them.
“Whitney… loved the sound of her voice,” says Lordi, which is apparently rare for a singer. As Houston’s talents grew, she became a “diva” and that was important: “she understood what it meant to claim this superlative status as a Black woman.” She was likewise focused and “worked hard to develop the aptitude she’d inherited.”
She also played hard: early in her career, she and her best-friend-turned-lover, Robyn, did drugs sometimes but it didn’t affect Houston’s work then. Houston was energetic, on top of her career, topping the charts, and she made it all look easy. It seemed as though she was everywhere, dancing in heels and using that amazing voice – and yet, her success brought criticism from those who questioned her musical choices and her Blackness.
By the early part of this century, Houston was struggling. Substance abuse plagued her. She was “stressed out all the time,” seemingly refusing to fail but also ready to stop…
It’s called an earworm, when you just can’t get a song out of your head, when it rolls around and around for days. That’s what’s going to happen when you read “Holding Lightning.”
If you’re a fan, you won’t mind. Whitney Houston’s music is a good accompaniment to this book – and a needed one, since, aside from the occasional insight and surprising tidbit, author Emily Lordi doesn’t offer much new about Houston’s life here.
Still, Houston’s story is a classic tale of a rising and falling star, the kind that movies are made of. That doesn’t make it any easier to read, nor is it easy to look away because Houston was (and still is) everywhere. Even though what’s in this book may feel like it’s all been covered before, even though there may be repetition, even though the narrative can lag some, you’ll be left with earworms and sadness.
