News Whitney Houston has died

[JEL]

can you really proclaim, that age alone can damage the voice of a professional singer?

I didn't say age alone was the factor, but a contributing factor.

I posted 2 informative videos on the very subject, which also touches the physical aspects of this issue.

Your body ages every year, that includes your vocal chords.

From http://www.realsimple.com/health/first-aid-health-basics/12-health-mysteries-explained-10000001144108/page6.html:

Why Do Lips Thin as You Age?
The older you get, the less collagen you produce. And collagen, a protein that supports the body’s soft tissue, is what gives lips their pleasing plumpness, says D’Anne Kleinsmith, M.D., a dermatologist in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

It is no surprise that agility, bodily elasticity, softness of breasts and skin and face etc diminishes as you grow older.

When Whitney sang at her best, she was young. She sang in a style that was probably as hard on the voice as you could get without singing death-metal-trash type music (you know, where they growl (and other things) more than sing: http://youtu.be/tpNzKZQy1Pk )

As they also explained in the coaching-videos I posted, she may also have sung too much and pushed her voice when she shouldn't have. The "I will always love you" song, the way Whitney sang it, is really a vocal-chord killer even when you sing it at the best of times. Then imagine she sang it night after night, concert after concert, on the road never getting enough sleep between going from city to city while on tour, in damp environments, then in dry environments, in warm southern california one day and in cold rainy windy canada the week after, then going to europe and getting her sleep-schedule screwed up by time-zone differences, singing even if she had a cold or the flu. All these things combined, then it's just no wonder her voice went away on her.

It's just a natural thing for singers who do a lot of hard live acts:

Pat Benetar, rock, LIVE:

more important is, that such people train their voice and care extremely for it.

Whitney may have taken less care of her voice, and possibly herself, than what would have been optimal, but had she sung Leonard Cohen songs, or moody jazz-songs, nobody would have even hinted about her voice not being ok.

Whitney, at 48, as we have seen in the examples of her late live-performances already posted, would have been fully able to sing this type of music:

Karrin Allyson, smooth jazz

I'm fairly sure that neither Pat Benetar nor Karrin Allyson could pull off "I will always love you", so expecting Whitney, at 48, to be able to is just not fair.

You can destroy a voice just through bad technique; drugs may not have anything to do with it.

Exactly.

This thread is the final result of her drug abuse

Please FADEC, you know this is just more conjecture and jumping to premature conclusions. It's not fitting, IMO, for somebody claiming to adhere to scientific standards. You may believe you know all there is to know about Whitney, and maybe you do, I don't know how close you were to her, but I would still like us all to just let the coroner do his job. Be patient and respectful please. Whitney may have been a 'public' person, but she's still a human being.

Just because we have an internet-connection and a tv doesn't make us experts on the private life or escapades of all the stars.

Prejudice is NOT fact.

One report said Feher had undergone extensive tests a month prior, including an EKG, and that nothing unusual was found.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17971296

 

[FADEC]

Just because we have an internet-connection and a tv doesn't make us experts on the private life or escapades of all the stars.

I understand that you like her. But because of this you obviously refuse to admit that she has destroyed herself. It's a fact, and not just because journalists like to write about it.

She was not private on the red carpet, onstage, and in interviews. She was a world star. And because of it, everybody could see and hear in her voice that something was going on with her for years. This was neither due to aging, or "just through bad technique". It was because of excessive drug abuse. And she admitted drug abuse. But even if she had not, it was clearly visible and audible without the need for "scientific standards".

 

[JEL]

I can see it's a religion to you to degrade her. End of talk.

 

[FADEC]

I can see it's a religion to you to degrade her. End of talk.

Don't be miffy

I don't degrade her. I just mention what she did to herself, and which has contributed to her early death very likely. One just doesn't accidentally die at 48 after such an excessive life.

An EKG, if it was just one, is not really meaningful by the way. If you want to be sure, you have to undergo a series of EKGs over a certain period of time. Same for blood analysis. Even if you find something accidentally, during a one-time routine check, it doesn't mean anything until a serious of tests either show if it was just a snapshot or constant issues.

---------- Post added at 03:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:49 PM ----------

Whitney Houston's family was told by L.A. County Coroner officials ... the singer did not die from drowning, but rather from what appears to be a combination of Xanax and other prescription drugs mixed with alcohol ... this according to family sources.

http://www.tmz.com/2012/02/13/whitn...cription-drugs-drowning-atlanta/#.Tz54VVHTSqw

 

[Urwumpe]

I can see it's a religion to you to degrade her. End of talk.

Now, that is a real peri-trollium.

 

[SiameseCat]

I'm fairly sure that neither Pat Benetar nor Karrin Allyson could pull off "I will always love you", so expecting Whitney, at 48, to be able to is just not fair.

I don't see why not, actually. The voice doesn't change drastically with age, assuming you take good care of it. If you have to completely change your repertoire, that's because you've ruined your voice, not because of natural aging. I think that Whitney's vocal problems were essentially her fault, either due to drugs, not taking care of her voice, or both.

BTW, Adele, who just won a whole bunch of Grammys, has already had surgery on her throat (and she's only 23; age had nothing to do with her problems). Its not uncommon for singers to damage their voices relatively early in their careers.

 

[Izack]

Its not uncommon for singers to damage their voices relatively early in their careers.

Very true. I'm sure straining one's voice all over the place like Adele (or Houston...) contributes to that, too.

At any rate, she's dead now, so it's a bit late to be discussing this, no?

 

[FADEC]

Livestream to Whitneys funeral:

http://www.livestream.com/aplive

---------- Post added at 09:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 PM ----------

So that was a nice funeral. Did anybody else watch it?

I liked it. It wasn't too big and too small either. The music was nice and the speech of Kevin Costner was one of the highlights. For those who missed it or want to see it:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA3E-svx3i4"]WHITNEY HOUSTON FUNERAL KEVIN COSTNER GIVES EULOGY ABOUT WHITNEY AT FUNERAL 18TH FEB 2012 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[ky]

So that was a nice funeral. Did anybody else watch it?

Yep, I watched it, it was pretty good, Kevin Costner's speech was hilarious.

 

[JEL]

 

[ky]

CNN has confirmed that Whitney Houstons death was caused by drowning, heart disease, and cocaine, the last of the three doesn't surprise me.

Source: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/2...disease-cocaine-use-killed-houston/?hpt=hp_t1

 

[Urwumpe]

CNN has confirmed that Whitney Houstons death was caused by drowning, heart disease, and cocaine, the last of the three doesn't surprise me.http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/2...disease-cocaine-use-killed-houston/?hpt=hp_t1

Well, for me it is a small surprise, since she was supposed to be clean. But Cocaine doesn't really leave you.

 

[Napalm42]

No surprise to me at all.

 

[JEL]

"drowning, heart disease, and cocaine" ?? So which one was it? Drowning, heart disease, OR cocaine.

Listing all 3 as cause is just nonsense. It has nothing to do with science or truth.

---------- Post added at 03:39 ---------- Previous post was at 03:36 ----------

You might as well say the cause of death was from taking a bath then

 

[mojoey]

"drowning, heart disease, and cocaine" ?? So which one was it? Drowning, heart disease, OR cocaine.

A bit of everything...Heart Disease can stem from cocaine usage, which she was known to do. If she was in bad shape, she could have passed out and slipped under the water and drowned.

 

[JEL]

Heart Disease can stem from cocaine usage

No. That's just not true.

 

[FADEC]

No. That's just not true.

Who says so and based on which knowledge?

The white powder made from the leaves of the coca plant triggers the release of dopamine (a chemical that brings information to the nervous system), then prevents its reabsorption. While users of the illegal drug report euphoria, confidence and clarity, it can also cause permanent heart damage and heart attack.

http://heartdisease.about.com/lw/Health-Medicine/Drugs-and-treatments/Cocaine-and-the-Heart.htm

 

[Tommy]

No. That's just not true.

Tell that to Len Bias.
Oh, wait, he can't hear you because he's dead. Nevermind.

 

[garyw]

"drowning, heart disease, and cocaine" ?? So which one was it? Drowning, heart disease, OR cocaine.

Listing all 3 as cause is just nonsense. It has nothing to do with science or truth.

---------- Post added at 03:39 ---------- Previous post was at 03:36 ----------

You might as well say the cause of death was from taking a bath then

Not really. It was multiple causes. The ACTUAL cause was drowning which itself was caused by her passing out from cocaine usage. The autospy also found signs of heat disease but it wasn't a contributing factor.

 

[JEL]

Who says so and based on which knowledge?

Myocardial ischemia occurs when blood-flow to your heart muscle is decreased.

The decrease in blood-flow reduces your heart's oxygen supply.

Reduced oxygen supply can damage your heart muscle.

Cocaine can effect blood-flow, but does not itself cause cellular damage to the heart.

Let's just get these things right, in the spirit of science.

The NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL of MEDICINE

Not really. It was multiple causes. The ACTUAL cause was drowning which itself was caused by her passing out from cocaine usage. The autospy also found signs of heat disease but it wasn't a contributing factor.

Then we are taking about the series of events that led to THE cause of death. If she drowned, the cause of death would be drowning.
If we begin to speak of multiple causes we get a sophism that literally anything can be derived from.

"The drowning was caused by her passing out from cocaine, which use was caused by bad parents, which parenting style was caused by racism in society, which form was caused by the predominance of white settlers in the founding days, whose presence in north-america was caused by an exodus from Europe, a land-mass that was caused by tectonic plate movement, a planetary dynamic that was caused by planetary forming in the cosmos, a space that was caused by the so-called 'big bang', an event that was caused by something yet unknown = cause of death unknown"

This may seem pedantic, but it's important when trying to determine issues such as the explicit danger of, for example, cocaine use. If the cause of death is drowning, then we can conclude that had she not been in a tub full of water she might possibly have survived (not necessarily, but possibly). Had she perhaps passed out on a floor or a couch or a bed or somewhere else, where she wouldn't get her head under water, she may have come to again.