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Download 3 Great Whitney Houston Mashups

corban — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:00:12 +0000

In the days after Whitney Houston’s untimely death, the Internet sprang to action to find ways to pay tribute to her immense, singular talent and the music it produced. None were better than the isolated Houston vocal from “How Will I Know,” but below we have three other mash-ups featuring Whitney’s music that have made the rounds recently. Also, check out Gordon Voidwell’s new video, which is a remake of Whitney’s “How Will I Know” clip.

Girls Cover Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”

tom — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:59:27 +0000

At the Laneway Festival in Singapore this past weekend, Girls frontman Christopher Owens paid tribute to the fallen Whitney Houston by playing a solo version of “I Will Always Love You,” the Dolly Parton song that has belonged almost entirely to Whitney since 1992. Big singalong on this one, naturally, and Owens deserves credit for singing the song tenderly while knowing full well that he shouldn’t attempt any big notes. Watch a fan-made video below.

The 10 Least Boring Moments From The 2012 Grammys

tom — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:44:07 +0000

Barely 24 hours before this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony began, Whitney Houston, a woman who’d once seemed like a cyborg engineered to win as many Grammys as possible, was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room. Houston was exactly the sort of artist who the Grammys are built to honor — enormously talented, ridiculously popular, showy in a way that people in the cheap seats could hear just fine, willing to completely ignore any youth-culture musical trends. She was Grammy royalty before her demons brought her down, and the show should’ve bent itself into pretzels to honor her legacy. It should’ve opened with Mariah Carey or Adele or Dolly Parton or maybe even Beyoncé belting out “I Will Always Love You,” and it should’ve thrown tons of clips of her in, every time it went to commercial. That didn’t happen.

Grammys 2012 Comment Party!!

amrit — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:55:24 +0000

It’s the 2012 Grammys! The Stereogum crew is over at my house, there may or may not be pizza and beer involved, and on the off chance you are experiencing something similar at yours, we have decided to put up a post for us all to congregate and talk shit about Adam Levine. This year’s proceedings will be steeped in bittersweet reminiscence for the glorious career of the the late, great, Whitney Houston, but there is obviously plenty of room for the well-timed Skrillex joke. Although, Skrillex is probably having a better time than any of us: the wub-step crown prince has socked away three Grammys already, which is more Grammys than any of us have won (yet). Other winners from the pre-televised portion of the evening include Kanye, who’s also taken three (Best Rap Album and both Best Rap Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for “All Of The Lights”); Bon Iver’s Bon Iver (Best Alternative Album); Tinariwen for Tassili (Best World Music Album); and Foo Fighters with three (for Best Rock Album, Rock Song, and Hard/Rock Metal Performance). And for the Videogum contingent, Louis C.K. took home a statue for Best Comedy Album (Hilarious). Nice! And now, it’s time to watch a whole bunch of other people that we mostly don’t care about win things. Yeah! We’ll continue our dialogue in the comments — see you down there.

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

tom — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 02:03:07 +0000

Whitney Houston, one of the biggest pop stars of the ’80s and ’90s, has died, as ABC News reports. The cause and location (UPDATE: location was the Beverly Hilton Hotel) of her death haven’t been reported yet. She was 48, which is just impossibly sad.

Houston comes from a musical family; mother Cissy is a gospel music legend, Dionne Warwick is a cousin. Aretha Franklin was her godmother. She started out singing backup for Chaka Khan before Clive Davis signed her to Arista as a solo artist in 1983. She released her self-titled debut album in 1985, which was a massive success and the beginning of an absolute monster run that kept going through the late ’90s. The version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that she sang at the Super Bowl in 1991 ended up being released as a pop single that made the top 20, which is ridiculous, and her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” sold four million singles and ended up breaking all sorts of pop records. She also acted in big movies like The Bodyguard and Waiting To Exhale. Commercially, she was an absolute juggernaut.

Watch Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Cover Whitney Houston

tom — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:28:49 +0000

A tipster recently let us know that Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. covered Whitney Houston’s 1987 nugget “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” quite possibly my wife’s favorite song in the entire history of the universe, at a recent Bowery Ballroom show. As it turns out, Dale have been covering the track live for at least a few weeks, and somebody in Denver caught pretty good video of it. Listen to the maybe-ironic cover and marvel at the duo’s garish jackets below.

My Brightest Diamond Sings Whitney Houston

Stereogum — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:32:24 +0000

You know how when you’re at the karaoke bar and your one friend that really thinks she can sing grabs the mic and does some Whitney and thinks its gonna sound really good but it really doesn’t? Well, then you’re one friend isn’t Shara Worden. Reader David sent this clip of MBD down in Brazil doing the Houston version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” being corny and still showing off that North Texas opera education (dig the transition into the modulation!). And this is the second Stereogum-beloved siren we’ve come across on YouTube engaged in international karaoke in recent months (last time it was Björk in Paris doing 2Unlimited). So much in common! Except here Shara is amazing, and there Björk was wasted.

Don’t Call Me, Whitney

Scott — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:39:02 +0000

AP reports that Bobby Brown will no longer be sticking his hand up Whitney Houston’s constipated ass. So to speak. Their fourteen-year marriage “which withstood drug addiction, Brown’s numerous arrests, the decline of Houston’s once-sparkling image and domestic abuse allegations” is over. Hell to the yes.

It’s not all frowns for Whitney though. There’s always Osama. And crack!

Osama Hearts Whitney

Scott — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:18:31 +0000

If you thought you heard all the crazy Whitney Houston stories, check out today’s NY Post:

Osama bin Laden has more on his mind than just the destruction of the United States – the world’s most wanted terrorist is obsessed with Whitney Houston, so much so that he’s even mulled a hit on her hubby, Bobby Brown.
Kola Boof, 37, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden’s sex slave, writes in her autobiography, Diary of a Lost Girl, which is excerpted in the September Harper’s: “He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.”

Boof – who wrote for the soap opera “The Days of Our Lives” until she was axed last month – continues, “He said that he had a paramount desire for [Houston] and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting.”

Boof says bin Laden couldn’t stop talking about his favorite singer and had lofty plans for her. “He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives.”

But bin Laden’s murderous side also emerged in his fantasies about the pop superstar.

Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited

Scott — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:20:07 +0000

Next week Verve re-releases Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited, a collection of English adaptations of songs by the “singer-songwriter-Pygmalion-actor-filmmaker-author-entertainer-agitator-gambler-lady’s man” Serge Gainsbourg.

For a long time, all the British knew about him was his romp on vinyl with Jane Birkin on “Je T?aime Moi Non Plus,” a single banned by the BBC, condemned by the Vatican, and yet which topped British charts in 1969. They also knew that he got Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani and Vanessa Paradis ? four landmarks of the French feminine ideal seen from outside France ? to sing, and that he shocked Whitney Houston on live television. He is therefore widely remembered in Britain as a sex maniac with, as his album title says, a cabbage for a head.

There will never be another. Here are the Serge fans who signed up for what Verve calls “the fifteenth anniversary of his last lungful of Gitane smoke.”

Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited
1. Franz Ferdinand & Jane Birkin – “Song for Sorry Angel (Sorry Angel)” (MP3)
2. Cat Power & Karen Elson – “Love You (Me Either) (Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus)” (OLD ‘GUM POST)
3. Jarvis Cocker, Kid Loco – “I Just Came to Tell You That I’m Going (Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’E)” (WIN MEDIA)
4. Portishead – “Requiem for Anna (Un Jour Comme Un Autre – Anna)”
5. Faultline, Brian Molko & Francoise Hardy – “Requiem for a Jerk (Requiem Pour Un Con)”
6. Michael Stipe – “Hôtel (L’Hôtel Particulier)”
7. Tricky – “Au Revior Emmanuelle (Goodbye Emmanuelle)”
8. Marianne Faithfull – “Lola R. For Ever (Lola Rastaquouere)”
9. Gonzales, Feist & Dani – “Boomerang 2005 (Comme Un Boomerang)”
10. Marc Almond & Trash Palace – “Boy Toy (I’m the Boy)”
11. Placebo – “The Ballad of Melody Nelson (La Ballade De Melody Nelson)”
12. The Rakes – “Just A Man With A Job (Le Poinçonneur des Lilas)”
13. The Kills – “I Call It Art (Le Chanson de Slogan)”
14. Carla Bruni – “Those Little Things (Ces Petits Riens)”

If you only know Gainsbourg from the Luna or MC Solaar take on “Bonnie & Clyde,” this comp is a good next step. Then you’ll be ready for “Lemon Incest,” Serge’s questionable duet with then thirteen-year-old daughter Charlotte. (Her album 5:55, featuring Air, Jarvis, and Nigel Godrich, is out in a few weeks everywhere except America.)

Get Revisited at Amazon.com

Serge, Whitney. Whitney, Serge: