For kids like me who were in elementary school when Whitney Houston got big, she wasn’t so much a singer as a touch point for the times. She was everywhere. She had a million great videos, with more youthful smiles and a broader color palette than Nicki Minaj (and quite often bra-less, my 12-year-old self wants to mention). She performed live on VH1 and MTV all the time, with a voice so powerful that it could kow-tow the Warrants and Whitesnakes that surrounded her. She broke records set by the Beatles, and was very much the template for the female R&B pop stars that grew to control the charts today–she controlled them too, but she did it single-handed, and she did it first (well, second, but Michael Jackson wasn’t a woman, and he’s proved far less influential 25 years later than Houston). And even if Mariah Carey did come shortly afterwards to kind of wipe away Houston’s gains by doing the same thing bigger and better, heck, she never got to cover Dolly Parton or get carried offstage by Kevin Costner while wearing Egyptian/Metropolis/ Blade Runner gear.

And of course, Mariah Carey never got embroiled in a purposeful copyright infringement acid house club track by an early version of the KLF!

I know there are dozens of things to make fun of about Whitney Houston, even discounting the past decade’s debauched reality shows and cocaine quotations. And there are many horrific things about the music industry that Houston either perpetuated or created in her own image, and I would have been a much happier teenager if the world had embraced, say, Dinosaur Jr. or Public Enemy with the fervor it gave to her brand of soulful-sounding but often vapid pop. But perhaps it’s a better world for her having been in it. I’ll always associate the age of my own innocence with the sound of her voice, and the way she looked on the small screen. Whitney, you will be missed.

-Dan Collins

Our man Geoff from Pizza! and Big Whup now has a second solo release, this time an EP of cover songs!

There’s everything from Mariah Carey to Michael Stipe on here (oh, and a cameo with Michael Nhat), so download it before he gets famous and Warner Brothers makes him remove the link!

Download: Fool’s Gold + Mariah Carey “Surprise Emotions” (Wallpaper mash-up)

Eric Frederic of Wallpaper. dropped Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” into Fool’s Gold‘s “Surprise Hotel” to create this little beauty, the first in a bi-weekly series of releases from Wallpaper.’s latest project, SiSTRS from different MiSTERS.

From the press release:

“When I first heard “Surprise Hotel,” I felt all these little thought bubbles effervescing in my brain. There is a lot to take in, on a musical level. The original vocal coats this exuberant track with a calm, peaceful beauty. So I started combing the universe for a vocal that seemed as wilin’ out as those guitar parts and roughly the same tempo and / or key. Turns out Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” is already in the exact same key (the relative minor) and dances atop the rhythm section like it was born to. This is the first segment of SiSTRS from different MiSTRS.” —Eric Frederic