In the spirit of this evolving post, I spent some time reviewing the tape of some of the operatic divas and divos mentioned above. Just in case I was missing something.
Nope, I still stand by Whitney.
Here's why:
1) From my layman's untrained ear, her voice has as much power and tone as the divas -- and probably more range. It is possible that a machine that scientifically measures these elements of sound could settle the debate empirically, but even so, I suspect it would be close, even if she doesn't win outright.
2) But music isn't meant to be empirically measured by a sound-analyzing machine. Music has always been part of a social context.
Whitney's voice resonated with millions and millions of regular people. The type of people who watch the Super Bowl on TV and go to baseball games with their kids. When America needed someone in 1991 to perform a wartime anthem at the SB -- notably (and this has been documented) after Roseanne's disgraceful (George HW Bush's own words) performance, we called on Whitney -- and she delivered. She's the voice of probably two American generations.
And even today, if you played any one of her signature songs in any given bar in the developed world, I'll bet more people than not can identify her voice.
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