A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston

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No. It wasn't, "Are you okay with this?" I had to be okay with it, because we had already said what was best for us, what was best for the journey.

A superb teaching, novel-like book about love that protects but does not possess. We may think we’re not ready for this, but we are. . . . I so admire the dignity of this woman. And her beauty.” Whitney Houston is as big a superstar as the music business has ever known. She exploded on the scene in 1985 with her debut album and spent the next two decades dominating the charts and capturing the hearts of fans around the world. One person was there by her side through it all. By the others, she doesn’t only mean the legions of fans; she means those who profited directly from Houston – the business associates and layers of family who, Crawford contends in the book, bled the singer so dry that she had no option but to keep going on tour, even as her drug abuse left her physically vulnerable. Cocaine had been part of the two women’s lives as teenagers, until Crawford’s mother had found out and yelled at her to quit. It took Crawford a while, but she did. At the time, Houston had vowed to quit, too. With awful poignancy, Houston once told her: “Cocaine can’t go where we’re going.” Imagine if Whitney grew up with a mother who who affirmed her both in her relationships and in her talent. Parents who didn’t use her religion as a whip to beat her spirit down and pretended she didn’t know her kids were drowning their pain in drugs. She would have been even greater than she was.
Affirmation and Self Esteem is so crucial to feeling worthy of love. The only thing she thinks about now with regret is a phone message Houston left not long before her death, that Crawford accidentally deleted after a few seconds, before she had a chance to hear it play out. “When I heard that tone, her voice was different. The way she said my name: “ Robyn.” She says this very softly; it was the only part of the message she heard. At the time, Houston was booked to go on another international tour, which horrified Crawford. “Because I had heard she had gone to rehab. And the first thing out of my mouth was: ‘She can’t do that.’ I wish I’d found a way to get to her. But she was waiting for me, and I was waiting for her. Whitney had a lot of pride. She wasn’t a pitiful person.” She adds: “It wasn’t meant to be.”I read this book in 6 hours. Contrary to popular beliefs this book is not a “tell-all” book. It’s a book about Robyns life, before and after she met Whitney Houston. And since Robyn met Whitney in her teens, and was with her for 20 years, it is understandable that Whitney would be a part of her story. This honestly to me is the most real, raw, and honest version of Whitney Houston that I have read since her death. Robyn talks about Whitney in a loving way, but also discuss both of their struggles with drug use and Whitney’s self-esteem issues (which we already knew). However, the portrayal of Whitney Houston was not negative as in the most recent documentaries and biographies. I believe that this book will provide Whitney Houston fans with the knowledge and understanding of maybe the reasons why Whitney chose to use drugs at such a young age and was never able to quit. Unfortunately it was secrets and the feelings of abandonment and loneliness that failed this Fallen Angel. Coincidentally, it’s the truth (portrayed in this book) that could’ve set Whitney Houston free.

The vital, honest, and previously untold story that provides an understanding of the complex life of Whitney Houston.” Through it all, what’s clear is that Robyn loved Whitney (and vice versa), and she probably gave up too much of her life for Whitney, and she finally had to let go and find a healthy life of her own. Surprisingly, the films agreed on several things: Houston was an uncommon vocal genius, perhaps without professional peer; Houston’s career hit a precipitous decline during her marriage to Bobby Brown; Houston was in constant battle with her drug addiction. The tragic arc of Houston’s life — she died in 2012, at the age of 48, of an accidental drowning complicated by heart disease and cocaine use — isn’t much up for debate, or denial. Did she know how to grieve for Houston? “That was rough. I really felt my insides just fall. And I had a lot of emotions. I was angry, the way it happened. The stuff I was hearing; I had spoken to people who were there on the floor… ” Since Whitney's death in 2012, Robyn has stayed out of the limelight and held the great joys, wild adventures, and hard truths of her life with Whitney close to her heart. Now, for the first time ever, Crawford opens up in her new memoir, A Song for You.

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Not at all. I really wanted this to work for my friend. I wanted whatever vision she dreamed for herself—I wanted her to be happy. Look, I heard the rumors about Bobby just like she did. I didn't know anything else about him beyond what everyone else knew. That he was a womanizer, that he was over here with this one, that one. But he was obsessed with Whitney. Later on, though, I realized that Bobby never knew Nip. He never got to be her friend. But while A Song For You outlines Robyn’s relationship with Whitney, it is also a love letter to Robyn’s family: her mother Janet, her brother Marty and her younger sister Bina. She captured a striking balance between the chaos that surrounded Whitney and the Houston family – the drug addiction of her two brothers Gary and Michael, her complicated relationship with her mother Cissy and father John – with the tenderness the Crawford family had for each other. Crawford was born in Newark, New Jersey, but grew up as one of three siblings in East Orange, New Jersey. Crawford's mother left her father due to his abuse. [4] Both her mother, Janet Crawford, and her brother, Marty, were diagnosed with HIV, and both died of AIDS related illness in the ’90s. [5] Relationship with Whitney Houston [ edit ] So when you found out she was marrying Bobby, how was that for you? Were you like, "Okay, how's this going to affect us? Do I got to deal with this dude?" I remember in the documentary Can I Be Me, there’s footage of him trying to pal around with you. And you seem a little annoyed with him.