经济学人:悼念惠特妮•休斯顿 (2/2)
/collect/201608/02/20120218_OBP002_003.jpgSummary:
流行歌手惠特妮•伊丽莎白•休斯顿于2月11日逝去，享年48岁，让我们用来怀念这把美妙的声音吧...
HINTS:
Sweetheart
"The Star-Spangled Banner"
White House
Superbowl
Gulf
Bobby Brown
Houston
MTV
Michael Jackson
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For some years she held the post of America's Sweetheart, pretty, God-fearing and patriotic. She went to the White House to discuss youth projects, and set up a foundation to fight illiteracy. Her rendering of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Superbowl in 1991, during the Gulf war, cuddly as a teddy-bear in a white tracksuit, was so joyously rousing that it was reissued in the wake of the September 2001 attacks. But she was bad, too. She liked to shock and cuss, saying that anyone who claimed that recording songs was creative, rather than commercial, was a fucking liar. Her private life grew raunchy, with marriage to bad-boy Bobby Brown in 1992 propelling her into a whirl of boastful sex, violent rows and cocaine. Her sequinned act was just a performance, she said. Bobby, by contrast, she could be real with. As for what "real" meant, she was either her own best friend or her worst enemy, she said once. "The biggest devil is me."
Through it all, there remained an anodyne constancy about the songs. Miss Houston had placed herself, or been placed, so solidly in the mainstream that she could not easily wriggle out of it. There was a point to this. It allowed her to break onto MTV and the late-night chat shows, forging a new path for black women as Michael Jackson had done for the men.美丽、虔诚、爱国，惠特妮曾一度被誉为“美国甜心”。她是白宫座上宾，受邀参与讨论青年计划。她设立自己的基金会，专门从事扫盲工作。1991年，她在超级碗现场高唱美国国歌《星条旗飘扬》。当时适逢海湾战争，那天，她穿一身白色运动服，可爱得像一只泰迪熊。但她的歌声激昂，充满欢乐。“9•11事件”之后，这首单曲重又发行。但惠特妮却有叛逆的一面，时有惊人之举，还经常爆出粗口。她说录单曲其实只为商业利益，那些号称录歌是为了创作的人“都是他妈的骗子”。她的私生活混乱不堪。1992年，她嫁给“坏小子”鲍比•布朗，此后传出一系列丑闻。性、暴力、可卡因与她形影相随。她说外表的体面只不过是做戏，只有和鲍比一起时，她才会袒露真我。何为真我？她曾如此解释：我要么是自己最亲密的朋友，要么是自己最可怖的敌人，“最大的恶魔是我自己”。
不论私生活如何，惠特妮的歌风却始终如一，一贯得甚至有几分沉闷。惠特妮已成功侧身主流，这虽不一定是她自己愿意的，但她的确已抽身不出。这么说是有道理的，她的歌让她上了MTV频道和深夜谈话节目，为大众所认可，并为黑人女性闯出一条新路，其重要性不亚于迈克尔•杰克逊对黑人男性的意义。
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