A Nice Pair: Whitney Houston

It’s Sunday and it’s time for…say it with me…A Nice Pair – books and music that go well together! This week we’re featuring another vocal powerhouse, Whitney Houston, and we’re pairing the 30th anniversary edition of The Bodyguard soundtrack with the memoir A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since The Bodyguard movie. Whitney Houston co-executive produced and recorded six songs for the soundtrack and it was her feature film acting debut. The album became the best-selling soundtrack of all time. It earned Whitney three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year, and swept numerous other awards shows. “I Will Always Love You,” the first single from the film, is the biggest-selling single by a female artist in history, and stayed at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a record-breaking 14 weeks. The movie was the second highest-grossing film of 1992.

As a parallel to all of that success, we now know that Whitney lived a life of very high highs and very low lows. Since Whitney’s tragic death in 2012, her best friend Robyn stayed out of the limelight and kept her memories private. In recent years, she’s decided to open up and her memoir details how their lives and friendship evolved from when they first met in the 1980s. It’s been described as deeply personal and heartfelt, just like Whitney’s own lyrics.