Whitney Houston‘s former vocal coach has revealed more sad details about the years leading up to her accidental death.
Gary Catona began working with the singer in 2005 and has asserted that she was “horrified” by how poor her voice had become as a result of nasty habits like smoking and drug use. In a recent interview, the world-class vocal expert revealed:
”She was horrified by it. When someone is a singer at that level, their voice is so much of who the person is. She identified with her voice. It was not possible for Whitney to be affected very deeply, psychologically and emotionally, by the fact she couldn’t sing.”
Although he says her voice eventually returned to about 75%, she never allowed it to fully recover because “she’d take off,” as he continued:
”As her voice started returning, lo and behold, her personality began changing, just as I predicted. She became more confident, she became who she really was – funny, charming, an intelligent person. Her self-esteem began rising. But what would happen was that I would work with her, and she’d get her voice back to some extent, and then she’d take off. She’d try to sing here, or she’d try to sing there. Rather than getting her voice back completely, which would have secured her legacy, she got caught up in her lifestyle again and she began practicing the habits which were not beneficial to her voice.”
It’s impossible to say what was going on in her head, but it sounds like the quality of her voice really affected her psyche and could have lead to depression.
We wish every day that things turned out differently, but all we can do now is hope that other talented singers use Whitney’s music as an inspiration and her life story as a precautionary tale.
[Image via WENN.]