Oprah Winfrey & Whitney Houston简介：

Oprah Winfrey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American media personality, Academy Award–nominated actress, television producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African American of all time, and was once the world's only black billionaire.[ She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale study claimed broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream. By the mid 1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help fads, she is generally admired for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.

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Whitney Houston
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (born August 9, 1963) is an American recording artist, actress, and former model. A relative to several prominent soul singers, including her mother Cissy Houston, cousins Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick, and godmother Aretha Franklin, Houston began singing at Baptist church as a member of the junior gospel choir and accompanying her mother in concert and went on to back artists like Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan. In 1983, near the end of Arista's first mega-successful decade of operation, Clive Davis was taken to a New York nightclub where Whitney was performing and signed her on the spot.

Two years went into the making of her debut album, but the results were worth it. The self-titled Whitney Houston (February 1985) launched Arista's second decade, and yielded a string of hits including three consecutive #1 singles. A year to the month after its release, she hit number one on the album charts. It eventually sold over 13 million copies in U.S. alone, making it the best-selling debut album ever by a female solo artist. With the highly anticipated release of her second album Whitney (June 1987), she made history as the first female artist to enter the Billboard Album Charts at #1. The new album soared past 9x Platinum on the strength of four #1 chart-toppers. This established Whitney as the only artist ever to have seven consecutive #1 hits, surpassing a record previously set by the Beatles and the Bee Gees. Her third powerhouse album I'm Your Baby Tonight, released in November 1990. The album became an international multi-platinum best-seller.

Following her marriage to fellow singer Bobby Brown, Houston appeared in her first starring role in the feature film The Bodyguard in 1992. The film's original soundtrack won Album of the Year at the 36th Grammy Awards in 1994, and became the world's best-selling soundtrack. Its lead single, "I Will Always Love You", became one of the best-selling singles of all time. The Bodyguard Soundtrack Album has sold more than 42 million copies worldwide. At 17-times platinum in the U.S., it is the biggest selling motion picture soundtrack album in history.

After the success of The Bodyguard, her film work continued with Waiting To Exhale (December 1995), The Preacher's Wife (December 1996) as a main role in these films.[4] In 1998, Houston finally issued her fourth studio album, My Love Is Your Love, her first in eight years.

In 2001, it was announced that Houston had signed a new deal with Arista worth $100 million, requiring six albums from the singer. In 2002, Houston released her fifth studio album, Just Whitney the following year with her sixth studio album One Wish: The Holiday Album being released in 2003. Amidst widespread media coverage of personal and professional turmoil, Houston's marriage to Brown ended in 2006.

Houston is one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 140 million albums and 50 million singles, worldwide. She is ranked as the fourth best-selling female artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 54 million certified albums. Known as "The Voice" for her "powerful, penetrating pop-gospel" vocals, she has been listed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.