On Whitney Houston, Black Middle Class Girls, and the Reagan Years
Beautiful post by caille.
Forget her voice for a minute. Think about what she looked like.
Rail thin, smooth skin, winning smile, mischevious almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones — she looked like the model she had been. Conventionally and undeniably beautiful. Clive Davis recognized that those physical attributes would make it easier for her to be a cross-over success, as long as her beauty wasn’t sexualized. So he packaged her as if she had been the Fourth Supreme. She wore long, glamourous gowns and furs; her hair was in a perfect French twist. Then she would stand up so straight before the microphone, like a well-behaved child at a recital. Small wonder our parents wanted us to be just like her….
On today’s Fresh Air, songwriter Bret McKenzie talks about writing the songs for the new Muppet movie: “They take it very seriously, and sometimes in the studio, they kind of ‘Method’ Muppets, where in between takes, they stay in character. So I’m in the studio, we do a take and then we’re like, ‘Can you do it again? Just a little more energy?’ and then they talk back to you as Fozzie the Bear. So it’s like I’m having a conversation with the Muppet in there. Pretty strange, very surreal job.”
In our theater school Method assignment to study and inhabit an actor/character, I chose Marlon Brando (not very Method of me). For the project, I dressed my then-five-year-old sister in a Longshoreman’s shirt and newsboy cap and made her act out the famous “I coulda been contender” scene with me (since I was Marlon and she was my “brudder,” Charlie, she should have been wearing a trench coat and fedora but whatever).
She dutifully learned her lines and piped them out in the cutest little girl’s voice you ever did hear (though in the video, you can clearly see me jabbing her in the ribs when she forgot ‘em).
“I had some bets down on ya. You saw some money.”
Good golly we’ve got to track down that video.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track on “How Will I Know.” (via capucha:jakefogelnest)
(via thebeanandthebear)
I don’t roll with less than 200 bottles of polish on any given day.
I don’t roll with less than 200 bottles of polish on any given day.Beyonce’s manicurist needs a Tumblr.
As if Potbelly turkey on thin-slice multigrain wasn’t enough, I ran into my Daily Show crush, John Oliver,* filming a segment on the street.
* You heard me.
I think ‘Oh my god, I thought I was fat?’ What is my problem?
I think ‘Oh my god, I thought I was fat?’ What is my problem?Meryl Streep, on looking back at her old films. A variation on Nora Ephron’s unforgettable quote: “Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six.”
The whole Fresh Air interview is wonderful.
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