14 DAY TRIAL // The European leg of Whitney Houston’s much-anticipated tour is not going as well as fans and her management might have expected, what with lukewarm reviews and a few dates being pushed back because of a respiratory infection already. Over the weekend, the diva performed live at London’s O2 Arena and that too went rather bad, as People magazine informs, citing reports in the British media.
Ever since Whitney took her show on the road to promote her latest album, “I Look to You,” much has been written about her closing number, her incredibly popular “I Will Always Love You” powerhouse ballad. There’s no denying that the singer no longer has the same vocal range that she had, say, ten years ago and fans know that when they buy tickets to see her perform live. However, few are prepared to see her falter several times until she gets it not right, but in an acceptable manner, the report says.
“Whitney Houston may have performed her megahit ‘I Will Always Love You’ at her sold-out London concert on Sunday – but apparently scores of her fans didn’t share the sentiment. Despite paying up to $170 a ticket, disappointed concertgoers streamed out of the singer’s show at the O2 Arena after Houston failed to hit the high notes and she rasped her way through several attempts at the song. To her credit, the singer, 46, knew she was disappointing the crowd, and she shook her head and tried to reassure the audience,” People says.
“‘Oh, it’s going to come,’ Houston announced mid-song. ‘I wanna do it – but [my voice] just doesn’t want to. I have long talks with her. Well, tonight she’s getting a little temperamental.’ Houston, whose European tour has been plagued by her respiratory illness, also blamed her vocal troubles on the venue's air-conditioning, which she told fans ‘turned my soprano off.’ (Houston also cited the a/c as the cause of similar problems at her Birmingham, England, show weeks before.),” the publication further reports.
The Daily Mail and The Sun labeled the London performance nothing more than a complete and utter disaster, saying it went from bad to worse and could not even begin to compare to the kind of shows Houston could put on before her drug problems. Other fans, though, saw the silver lining to the cloud, saying it took courage to get up on stage to perform old hits when Whitney was perhaps the first person to know her voice was not what it once had been. Moreover, seeing Whitney Houston perform live reinforced the conviction that she remained one of the best artists of the moment, putting to shame countless other so-called pop “singers” who were touring the world.