My latest for Capital: Anatomy of a performance: Whitney Houston sings ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ January 1991.
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- “I don’t cook and I don’t care.” — Ann-Margret
- “Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its best is a grand corrective.” –Jessie Redmon Fauset
- “I’ve had my best times trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across a sawdust floor. I’ve always loved high style in low company.” — Anita Loos
- Substack: An interview with screenwriter Bonnie Gross about her script Lady Parts
- “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, / Hath put a spirit of youth in everything …
- Substack: On Radu Jude’s latest, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
- “After all, when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden, God was probably naked as a jaybird too!” — Bettie Page
- “Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.” — Charles Grodin
- “What is important is to continue believing in the Irish language as a vibrant creative power while it continues to be marginalised in the process of cultural McDonaldisation.” — poet Michael Davitt
Recent Comments
- Jay G on March 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- sheila on “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- Clary on “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- Lyrie on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on “Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.” — Charles Grodin
- Stevie on “Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.” — Charles Grodin
- Bradford Lowell Drake on The Books: “Thomas Jefferson : Author of America” (Christopher Hitchens)
- David Benson on “For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth…” — Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine
- Sheila on March 2024 Viewing Diary
- Biff Dorsey on March 2024 Viewing Diary
- Robert Valente on For Joseph Cotten’s birthday: Gaslight: His Listening Is Active
- Anne Whitehouse on 2023 Books Read
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- Jessie on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” Happy Birthday, Poet Christopher Smart
Categories
Archives
-
Really? Lip synching? I’m not so sure she was — there are some really subtle pushes at the very end where she is pumping her arms in seems reflected in the “braaAaaVe….”
If she was, no matter. Truly stirring.
thanks
That’s what I mean. Yes. No shit “no matter”! It’s an amazingly coherent and synched up performance. Shes probably singing over a track which is why the breath is there.
I remember this! Which is amazing considering how little I remember. I also remember it because I was the opposite of a fan of hers…my taste in music simply excluded her genre. I always could appreciate her talent but I didn’t truly connect with her own songs. But I do remember being truly blown away by this performance.
And, um, it’s one thing to rag on Ashley Simpson for lip synching…the point being that she probably didn’t even sing on the original recording. We’re going to complain because Whitney Houston SANG THAT SONG THAT WAY???? Get over it.
Speaking of your genre, bren, I was in an elevator today with a dude wearing a Minor Threat T-shirt.
Lip synching is part of being a professional. You sing in the movies, you have to lip synch convincingly. When you do it right, nobody would question you. It’s when you feel that someone is trying to pull something over on you that there is a problem.
She BRINGS IT.
This is a clip that has been going around in the last 2 days – Whitney’s isolated vocal track for How Will I know. This is what this woman sounded like. This is without autotune, without 5 vocal tracks laid down to beef up her sound – this is a live track. Her voice was astonishing.
But that she could back it up with a performance of such vitality at that Super Bowl …
This is like Judy Garland level of connection.
As a matter of fact, when the Capital guys asked me to write the piece – I thought immediately of Judy Garland singing Battle Hymn of the Republic on her TV show a couple of days after JFK was assassinated. Now that was clearly a live track – but why I thought of it is that Judy was stepping into a moment huger than she was … a national moment … and she used her own performance as a way to give her audience a catharsis. That’s what Whitney does here.
// Which is amazing considering how little I remember. //
hahahaha
Boone, go to school.