Popcorn Noises

You Either Love Love or You Don’t

In the wake of her death, Valentine’s Day seems as appropriate a time as any to write something about Whitney Houston. I think it’s fair to say that she—at least our idea of her, the her portrayed in the songs she sang—loved love. She did not love it like Celine Dion, who makes it a shrine, draping it in crimson silk on a silver pedestal surrounded by sleeping multiracial cherubs, but as a quality of a person like hair or fingernails. She was not in thrall to love itself, in other words. She did stuff with it. Love was a thing to pledge, save, take back, and even turn on yourself, actions you might just as easily ascribe to her gargantuan voice. I suppose some credit goes to Dolly Parton for writing the song this way, but notice how the big chorus of “I Will Always Love You” puts a much greater emphasis on “I” and “you.” Those notes are stretched out as tonal bookends of the phrase while “love” is sung on a quick jump between chords. Houston emphasized those differences heavily, embellishing the long notes with vibrato and melisma so you knew they mattered to her. Her legacy to love was thus relational, not abstract, a more important hair to split than we might think.

On a personal note, I would not count myself a ‘fan’ of Whitney Houston or other singers who could be clustered next to her. I’m a straight white dude who likes indie rock (not that any of those things should be considered occlusive, mind you), but because of my age and middle-class upbringing it’s almost impossible for me not to have a cursory knowledge of her hits. Her voice bled and belted from every radio, airport terminal, dentist’s office, and TV awards show around when I was a kid, and not because anyone in my family was into her either. She had achieved such a ubiquity as to be inescapable, a laudable pop culture feat in itself but also a phenomenon with odd side effects, like engendering a sense memory whereby even someone like me can remember the lyrics to “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay” after not hearing it for thirteen years. For me, Whitney Houston is a prime example of how music worms its way into our brains long before we develop the agency to reject it. It may not have any conscious bearing on your tastes as an adult, but it’s there, echoing in the folds of your grey matter. Regardless of what other sounds you pile on top of it, all it takes is a few bars of melody to instantly call it to the surface. You can think of that same huge Bodyguard chorus as a promise—a threat, even—to everyone in her global audience: I will always be in your head, in the form of this song, waiting to be released again from your memory. I don’t know if I’d call it love, but it sure is potent, eh?