Episode #44 | 11.12.19
Whitney Houston: Cracks in the Mirror, Crack on the Mirror, and One Fateful Choice
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In this episode
Whitney Houston was The Voice. A stunning beauty. An early MTV star and leading actress. But when she passed away in a hotel suite bath, the music industry gala downstairs that she was supposed to attend went on without her. How did it all come to this? The drugs and her husband Bobby Brown weren’t answers. Just ways to avoid the question: what was the private tragedy of Whitney Houston?
Sources
Inside Clive Davis’ ‘Surreal’ Pre-Grammy Gala, by Shirley Halperin
Whitney Houston & Last Night’s Pre-Grammy Party, by Jane Fonda
Whitney Houston’s Death: 9 Surprising Details in Coroner’s Report, by Kevin Dolak and Sheila Marikar
The Devils in the Diva, by Mark Seal
Production of a Lifetime: Whitney Houston and Clive Davis, by Jacob Bernstein
The Soul of Whitney, Essence Interview 1990, by Joy Duckett Cain
Whitney Houston’s ‘Lesbian Romance’ and the Tyranny of the ‘80s Closet
‘I saw Whitney and Bobby Brown smoke crack in front of their five year old daughter’ by Ryan Parry
Whitney Bobby Drugs and Death… by Polly Dunbar and Paul Martin
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Music
Score by Jake Brennan.
Mixed and Engineered by Sean Cahalin.
Disgraceland theme song, "Crenshaw Space Boogie" written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak