Whitney Houston’s Comeback Goes As Well As Can Be Expected By Stuart Heritage on Thursday,

With her new album I Look To You, Whitney Houston has a lot to prove. OK, actually that’s a lie – she doesn’t.

Whitney Houston only needs to prove three things. That she can sing, that she’s beaten drugs, and that she doesn’t need loved ones to remove hard-to-reach faecal clods from her rectum with their fingers.

Yesterday Whitney Houston marked her comeback with a TV performance. And it was a total success, provided that your definition of success involves a woman breathlessly speaking the lyrics of her songs like an asthmatic being chased up a hill by an angry dog.

Whitney Houston has had a rough few years, hasn’t she? She became so addicted to crack that she reportedly spent her entire life either trying to punch imaginary demons off her shoulder or locking herself away in her bathroom, which also apparently doubled up as a sort of dildo repository. But that’s not all.

In addition to her addiction, Whitney Houston also became the target of a schoolgirl crush from Osama bin Laden and – thanks to the reality TV show Being Bobby Brown – became primarily famous for being the woman who needed her husband to ease out dried-up poo-clumps from inside her bottom.

Now normally that would be enough – we don’t know about you, but if were known as the world’s leading constipated, terrorist-wooing crack addict then we’d be able to retire happy – but not for Whitney Houston. Whitney’s starred in enough horribly generic movies to know that no story is complete without a triumphant comeback at the end. So that’s what she’s done.

Whitney’s comeback album I Look To You has been several years in the making, and it was finally released on Monday. Now, admittedly there hasn’t been much of a marketing push behind it – almost as if the record label is slightly embarrassed by it – but that doesn’t matter. As soon as Whitney Houston unleashes that voice – that famous, soaring, pitch-perfect voice – in public, then everyone will fall in line behind her.

Whitney Houston knows this, which is why she gave a special performance yesterday on Good Morning America. And, by christ, it was special. Here’s a video…

Whitney Houston is right – she is every woman. Or, at the very least, she’s every exhausted-looking drug-obliterated tone-deaf amateur karaoke night woman with the lung capacity of a pneumonia-stricken field mouse. But that still sort of counts.

As you’d expect, Whitney Houston’s Good Morning America performance has drawn criticism from every quarter, taking her to task for letting the backing singers do most of the work, for speak-singing the ballads like an out-of-shape Isaac Hayes impersonator and for failing to sing large chunks of other songs entirely.

But you know what? Even a terrible, breathless, erratic, out-of-tune Whitney Houston is better than no Whitney Houston at all. Because at least now she’s got an album out she won’t feel the need to rush-release yet another cobbled-together greatest hits album for Christmas. At least this will be easier to ignore.

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