Whitney Houston or Aretha Franklin

Whitney

Whitney, Aretha screamed.

The poll feature too challenging?

It’s Whitney - not even close.

Who cares, they're both dead.

Whitney but to me no one can do those Aretha tracks from the Motown 60s like Aretha. I can’t imagine anyone else singing You make me feel or Respect. Even though Respect is a cover.

Aretha Franklin- The One, The Only, THE QUEEN!!

All Bow Down, Bitches

R6 Hardly. Vastly overrated.

It's okay to like both, each for different reasons.

I have never heard a better singer than Whitney. I hate when people act like Mariah Carey is on the same level. she isn't and never will be

Gladys Knight (and Whitney) had better voices. I really don't understand Aretha's appeal. Or Billie Holliday for that matter.

Whitney just had a beautiful ass voice with pitch perfect runs. Not even the Queen’s runs can compare.

Junkie Lesbiana Whitney was great in her reality show!

Whitney - never was an Aretha fan (she seemed more like a star role in a church choir)

Aretha’s problem is that she lived too long. Whitney would have turned into the same bloated mess with a memory of a voice had she lived another 15 years.

There is a Whitney Houston documentary on Netflix right now that’s actually really well done. It’s intimate with a lot of scenes from the 80s and her prime in the 90s. Whitney seemed like she had a lot of integrity independent of her addiction with substance abuse. And she candidly says Paula Abdul is singing off key ON THE TRACK, I hollered 😂.

[quote]Or Billie Holliday for that matter.

Sacrilege!

R14 Aretha kept her voice all the way until death. Whitney Houston’s voice was completely shot during the last 2-3 years of her life. She performed somewhere in Western Europe a couple years before her departure, and was literally boooed— by people paying to see her in concert. That’s crazy.

R17 “literally”

Oh, dear

Nippy was also a class act. And corrected her for bashing another artist like that. If only she could have accepted Whitney’s lesbianism and bisexuality.

R17, Aretha kept a voice, it wasn’t her original voice - the great one.

Cynthia Erivo is a better singer than Whitney and Aretha here. Her voice is a true instrument.

R21 Check my target commercial you British dyke.

R21 Hi Cynthia!

Whitney had a great voice, but rarely had an opportunity to do much with it. Most of her singing is emotionally uninvolved because the material is so bland.

I like Cynthia Erivo a lot, it’s those Freddie Kruger press-on nails I can’t get over.

Definitely Whitney. Aretha didn't have that much range.

Whitney had a wonderful tone and pop voice - Aretha was the Queen of Soul, not Pop or anything else.

Aretha definitely had the soul thing - but her voice was very overrated. She screamed a LOT.

Whitney by a hundred million miles.

Koko Taylor.

R19 Nippy was Whitney’s nickname. Perhaps you meant Cissy?

Agree with R24. And Houston's career is full of screaming and oversinging. But that seems to be popular these days.

Aretha wasn't perfect, but at her best she was miles ahead of Houston. Anyone who thinks Franklin didn't have range is a moron.

As for Erivo, she has an impressive voice, but it has a cold, steely sound.

Not even close as far as a true beautiful voice overall. Whitney without a doubt.

R29 yes that’s right. I meant Cissy.

Of course Aretha had range. This is the best cover of this song btw.

I loved Aretha’s voice, but Whitney was way better overall.

They are different singers with different voices and different catalogs from different time periods. I love them both for different reasons.

R35 Different

They were both wound up being awful.

Whiney was terrific in her early years with fun light pop like "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" plus she was physically beautiful.

But she devolved into a caterwauling mess. All vocal gymnastics. No regard to sincerely interpreting lyrics. There were some exceptions but it was mostly downhill from "I Will Always Love You".

Whitney was dumb as a box of rocks but Aretha was smart though, 1000 times more sophisticated musically than Whitney. Just listen to "Until You Come Back To Me", Whitney could never do something like that. But she too would up being so undisciplined later in her career.

Aretha by a mile.

Whitney didn’t have much range in terms of the type of material she could cover. I heard her sing Stormy Weather as a tribute to Lena Horne and she turned it into one of her 80s Pop ballads. Whitney’s biggest problem was her lack of musical intelligence and sophistication (the two things that made cousin Dionne superior). She never mastered singing all of the African American genres like Aretha. Sure, she can sing those Diane Warren Pop ballads better than anyone, but I could never imagine her doing a Jazz session or getting down and dirty with a Blues tune. Her voice had its limitations, and without the Gospel pedigree, she’d sound a lot closer to Audra McDonald.

Aretha also has the better discography that will stand the test of time. Whitney’s best material was always her singles. Outside her singles, her albums had mostly forgettable fillers.

Aretha. Aretha. Aretha.

No one comes close.

[quote] Whitney Houston

Gowns. Beautiful gowns.

R30, I find Cynthia has a childlike sound. It’s just the sound of her voice, she can’t do anything about it.

R37 is correct with Whitney was a dope. Uneducated musically or anything else, and that’s a big turnoff for me. In a fleeting moment, Natalie Cole said she and Whitney were close friends. What did they talk about, drugs? For all of Natalie’s troubles, she was an intelligent and well educated person unlike Whitney.

Whitney by far

[quote]She never mastered singing all of the African American genres like Aretha.

This is Aretha going full blown "showbiz" ....tossing this off with joy and humor. You could imagine her stopping a Broadway show. I wish she had recorded Fats Waller's tunes. Anyway, Whitney could never switch genres and do something like this.

Whitney was extremely talented but her songs were mostly boring.

I present the obvious alternative to such needless upset.

Fucking bullshit.

My favorite Aretha song is Chain of Fools and no way could Whitney have done it better.

Aretha held her own singing Nessun Dorma at the Grammys.

Aretha is a marvel. Her recording catalog, from the early 60s on Columbia all the way to her latter days on Atlantic in the mid-70s, is unmatched. Her vocals, the arrangements, the musicianship -- there is no other singer that comes close in terms of artistry. She had an influence on the art of popular music singing that cannot be measured. She is deservedly and universally rated as maybe the best singer in popular music. I like other voices more but Aretha's preeminence cannot be denied.

I love Whitney's voice, her instrument, in its prime, is still unparalleled. It is probably my favorite voice. She has live performances that are jawdropping. However, her catalog is not a match for her extraordinary vocal gift. For that reason, she will never approach Aretha's position in the popular music firmament.

[quote] Cynthia Erivo is a better singer than Whitney and Aretha here. Her voice is a true instrument.

Oh, honey...if you think so...uhh...I just don't know what to say to that.

^^^ Ok, I've recovered...Cynthia Erivo is a talented and accomplished singer.

Whitney could never swing this Jazz standard with such skill and musicality. Again, she never mastered all the African American genres like Aretha, and for that reason alone, Aretha is the superior artist to Whitney.

[quote]She is deservedly and universally rated as maybe the best singer in popular music.

Let's appreciate her for what she could do well. Calling her "maybe the best singer in popular music" is a wild stretch.

[quote]She had an influence on the art of popular music singing that cannot be measured.

And a lot of that is negative. She gave us that flowery melisma and the caterwauling that has infected so many singers and it has been the death of good singing.

Definitely Whitney.

Whitney 100%

Whitney didn't have these giant flopping udders though...

Aretha had two kids by age 13. Trash.

[quote] I heard her sing Stormy Weather as a tribute to Lena Horne and she turned it into one of her 80s Pop ballads...but I could never imagine her doing a Jazz session or getting down and dirty with a Blues tune.

Indeed. That was her blindspot. She did not have an affinity for standards or the discipline to learn to interpret those songs effectively. I saw her sing "How Long Has This Been Going On?" at a tribute show. She was in her vocal prime but her phrasing, pacing and lack of feeling made it a very underwhelming performance. She COULD sing those songs wonderfully and effortlessly but never had an interest in learning that songcraft. If her life had not been so turbulent I think she could have eventually been as outstanding as Dionne or Natalie Cole with that material.

[quote]Aretha had two kids by age 13. Sexually abused.

FIFY r57.

R37/R53, popular consensus is obviously at odds with your lonely, personal thoughts.

Aretha had soul. Whitney tried, bless her heart. She shouldn’t have been booed out of the Soul Train Awards, but the fans had their reasons…I don’t know what was wrong with Whitey being a purely pop sensation. Many blacks from the 1960s found no shame not being on the Atlantic or Motown label, and they were beautiful vocalists.

[quote]popular consensus is obviously at odds with your lonely, personal thoughts.

She had enormous talent, could do it all, but the overwhelming bulk of her output was "soul" making her, in the end, a niche artist. And there's nothing wrong with that, hat's not taking anything away from her. So let's not exaggerate by calling her the greatest singer ever.

Aretha, a niche artist? No.

I love Cynthia Erivo but pretty difficult to put her into this category just yet. IMHO.

Aretha, hands down.

[quote]"maybe the best singer in popular music"

Oh please.

Sinatra, Judy Garland, Nancy Wilson, Tony Bennett, Streisand, Dinah Washington, Carmen McRea, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Dionne Warwick, Rosemary Clooney etc....Aretha had her place among the greats, but the BEST? No.

r66 all of those singers you listed are indeed great but with the exception of Dionne and Streisand they are all from a different generation. I would say Aretha is the best of the rock/pop/soul generation.

Here's another example of Whitney taking standards such as Loverman and My Man and turning the tunes into a showcase of vocal pyrotechnics. Cousin Dionne would have never displayed such showy vulgarity in her interpretations.

[quote] all of those singers you listed are indeed great but with the exception of Dionne and Streisand they are all from a different generation. I would say Aretha is the best of the rock/pop/soul generation.

If you are putting it into that context, then yes, a good argument can be made.

Whitney..I dont even really like Aretha though zi admire the talent.

r68 in the audience, disapproving of "such showy vulgarity."

Could you even imagine any current singer doing a standard like "My Man" on an awards show today? We've lost a lot in our culture, regardless of how Whitney sang the song.

R68 Whitney sings those songs as if she has no idea of what they're about. Her phrasing is non existent. I also heard her destroy "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess.

[quote] [R68] in the audience, disapproving of "such showy vulgarity."

😂 No, I admire Whitney and consider her the best Pop singer of my generation (I'm a millennial who was born in 1982). But I also love standards, Jazz, blues, and various genres. Whitney attacked all genres the same way and never learned how to interpret them properly.

It reminds me of what a critic once said about her singing in the 1980s: "The music could all be just noise, and Houston will still sing each song with such tuneful indifference."

Arethas mammaries got too fucking big. Listening to her I wondered where her nipples had wandered today. Too much of a distraction

R56, Whitney chose sensible B+ implants to replace her -As.

Whitney wins. No contest there. Plus, wasn't Aretha an infamous cunt?

Yes, R77. Whitney was an infamous drug addict.

R72 Beyonce Knowles.

Obviously a divisive question - I'm just glad nobody has said screaming through her nose Patti LaBelle is better than both.

Aretha Franklin, without question. And why wasn't this a poll, OP?

I like Celine Dion better than both of them.

I am the greatest singer in the world!

R83 Ya stiffff.

Aretha is greater but Celine Dion has wide appeal. Aretha does not.

Aretha was a megacunt. I remember he making a big show out of refusing to sing at Clive Davis Aids benefit in the late 70s

Whitney did appear.

Late 80s

R68, that is one of her most spectacular vocal performances. I can understand why a purist would not appreciate her treatment of those songs. She bends standards into her pop/gospel idiom. She is only about 27 or 28 in that clip. If she had survived -- and had a different life -- she would have refined her style of singing standards into a more dramatic Barbra Streisand/Lena Horne mold that would have been dazzling.

[quote] Aretha was a megacunt. I remember he making a big show out of refusing to sing at Clive Davis Aids benefit in the late 70s

That never happened.

Ri’s not here

Re’s*

Girl I got to GO!

^^Jump jump jump on that dick!

R89, every DL thread now has a this-never-happened poster like you.

Yeah, r94, and DL has always had idiots who fabricate stories to further a narrative that Black women are homophobic. Your slander has no place in this discussion.

Whitney had it ALL. She is so missed.

Both are great with their own distinctive styles they both have strong roots from their gospel background which is their common similarity.

Whitney became mega famous quickly in a way that wasn't there for Aretha. Whitney could act well enough based on The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale so I'm guessing if there was a need she could have been directed to learn the classics. On the other hand, no one was asking Aretha to spend her time starring in movies.

R98 Honey I used to look like Halle Berry.

Whitney was beautiful and Aretha was not, especially after she got fat. Very limiting when it comes to starring roles in films.

Aretha had soul. She wins.

Aretha and her soul. I was in second grade and heard Spanish Harlem on the radio and it stopped me in my tracks.

[quote] Whitney was an infamous drug addict.

Really? What a revelation! Nothing gets by you captain obvious. Meanwhile, everyone else in show business is an innocent girl scout. 🙄

WHITNEY, no contest.

R103 = Lisha M Minnelli