Not *a* voice. *The* Voice. Whitney Houston was born into soul royalty -- her mother Cissy was Aretha's backup singer; her cousin was Dionne Warwick; Aretha herself was her godmother -- and she surpassed them all. Her 1985 debut album produced three number-one singles. The follow-up, Whitney, produced four more. She was beautiful, poised, impossibly talented, and the industry couldn't wait to tear her down.

I Will Always Love You was Dolly Parton's song first, a gentle country goodbye. Whitney took it and turned it into a showcase for what the human voice is capable of -- that long, held note on "you" before the final chorus, suspended in the air like it was refusing to come down. The Bodyguard soundtrack sold 45 million copies. The song held number one for 14 weeks. No ballad has ever dominated like that.

The tabloids came for her. The marriage to Bobby Brown. The drug addiction. The reality show. The Diane Sawyer interview where she admitted to using cocaine, marijuana, pills, all of it. The voice that had seemed invincible began to crack. The comeback attempt -- I Look to You in 2009 -- showed flashes of the old power but couldn't sustain it. She died in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton in 2012, the night before the Grammys. The coroner ruled it accidental drowning, with heart disease and cocaine as contributing factors. She was 48.

Her daughter Bobbi Kristina died three years later, found face-down in a bathtub at 22, in circumstances that echoed her mother's death. The Houston family tragedy is a cycle that never broke. But the voice -- put on I Will Always Love You. Put on I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Put on the national anthem she sang at the 1991 Super Bowl, with the Gulf War still fresh and the country afraid, and Whitney's voice cutting through all of it like a blade of light. The Voice was real. The rest was what the world did to it.