Don’t call it a comeback

I’ve been here for years

All the drama and the pain

And all the tears

—Whitney Houston, “Salute”

In 1985, Whitney Houston made her MTV-ready debut, the latest product spit-shined to perfection by legendary hitmaker Clive Davis. Back then, it was hard to match the glamour quotient—and she made for great copy: She was polished, pristine, the scion of entertainment royalty, possessing a squeaky-clean rep and cover-girl looks. Dubbed “The Voice,” her vocals were indeed a thing of wonder, clarion bell clear, hitting stratospheric notes with stunning precision.

The hits and the awards came tumbling in—with over 170 million records sold—making her one of the greatest selling pop acts. Ever. When she sang “I’m Every Woman,” it was hard not to believe her.

Then she went off script.

It’s hard to say which came first, the man or the addiction, but the resulting combination was … disastrous. The glamour girl was replaced with a strung-out looking doppelganger more famous for the drama than the music. It looked as though she was following the script of a different narrative: The doomed diva, soon to go the route of that other Davis protégé—Janis Joplin—done in by too much, too many, too soon, too late.

Whitney and Bobby: Say what? Theirs was a match made in Clive Davis’ worst nightmares. Bobby Brown was a plebian, crass; she was of the patrician class. Or so we thought. Lord knows Bravo’s Being Bobby Brown (2005) showed us a side of Houston that we’d never seen before: the down and dirty Whitney, the chitterlings and cornbread, “crack is whack” Whitney. He called her his “boo.” She called him the “King of R&B,” a grandiose moniker that had precious little to do with reality. Their reality TV show was some sort of modern day Amos ‘n Andy, if, that is, Amos and his sidekick made a mint selling records and lived in a ghetto fabulous mansion in suburban ATL.