'''Whitney Elizabeth Houston''' (born August 9 1963) is an iconic American pop and R&B singer, actress, film producer, occasional songwriter and former fashion model. Houston's debut album was released in 1985 to considerable critical and commercial success, and within the next three years she released a record seven consecutive number-one hits on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. She was one of a few African-American artists whose videos were put into heavy rotation on MTV during the mid to late 1980s.
Houston continued her success in the 1990s with the release of several films and their corresponding soundtrack albums, the most popular of which was ''
The Bodyguard'' (1992), which became one of the best-selling albums of all time and produced her hit signature song "I Will Always Love You" (a cover of Dolly Parton's original). Her record sales during the next decade were modest, and her personal life became the subject of controversy because of allegations of drug abuse. Houston has sold over 160 million albums worldwide, 70 million being singles, and she is one of the best selling females ever.
[http://www.whitneyhouston.com/bio/] She has won twenty-one American Music Awards (a record for a solo artist).
Biography
Early years
Houston was born in East Orange, New Jersey to John and Cissy Houston. Although she was a Baptist, she attended a Catholic high school.
Houston's mother, first cousin (Dionne Warwick) and godmother (Aretha Franklin) were all established Gospel/R&B/Soul singers, and at the age of eleven Houston started performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist church in Newark, New Jersey, and would later go on to accompanying her mother in concert. After singing background on her mother's 1978 album ''Think It Over'', she started as a back up singer for many other established acts, such as Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson, and Lou Rawls.
She was featured as the lead vocalist on the Michael Zager Band's single "Life's a Party" in 1978, and Zager was so impressed that he offered to obtain her a record deal but she declined. In the early-1980s, she started appearing as a fashion model in various magazine advertisements and snagged the cover of ''Seventeen'' magazine. During these modeling years, she also continued to balance her burgeoning singing career by working with producers Michael Bienhorn, Bill Laswell and Martin Bisi on an album they were spearheading called ''One Down'', credited to the group Material. It was planned to contain eight songs, each one featuring a different lead vocalist. Houston contributed the ballad "Memories," which received favorable reviews from ''The Village Voice'' when the album debuted.
1983–1991: Early music career
thumb|left|180px|''Whitney Houston'' (1985)
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