John Legend Remembers Whitney Houston

John Legend Remembers Whitney Houston

Leon Morris/Lester Cohen/WireImage

I first heard Whitney as a young child on her debut album.  I knew "Saving All My Love" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." I knew as a kid who loved music and particularly loved singing that she was one of the best singers I knew of at the time. Her voice was so pure and powerful. She had so much control and range and expressive ability. She was amazing.

I was so sad when I heard she passed. I was sad for her family. I was sad for Clive [Davis], because I know he took so much pride in his efforts to help her come back. And I was sad for the fans and the music community because we really lost one of the greatest singers we'll ever hear.  She was that good. 

I've had family members go through problems with addiction and struggle to come back. You always hope they will pull through and come out healthy on the other side. In the past couple years, we got the sense that Whitney was doing better and may be able to return to good health and success.  It's so tragic that it had to end this way.  But the beautiful thing about music is it never dies.  We'll always have Whitney because we'll always have her beautiful music.

As told to Rolling Stone

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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