From Frank Sinatra to Britney Spears, some of the world's biggest musical artists have performed residencies in Las Vegas. Whitney Houston is set to become the first artist to stage a Vegas residency from beyond the grave.
Titled An Evening With Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Concert, the show will run from October through to April of next year at the Harrah's showroom with near nightly performances.
Approved by the Whitney Houston estate, the show has been in the works for five years. It was brought to life by BASE Hologram, a company that specialises in creating lifelike holograms. The company was behind recent hologram shows featuring likenesses of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.
A 2020 European tour of the hologram show was halted by the pandemic after a handful of UK shows. Reviews were far from kind, with Entertainment Weekly's critic writing "This could never be mistaken for a live Whitney Houston show. With tacky and outdated graphics — blue smoke, clouds, thunder, flames — the design and production value was more befitting of a cruise ship singer than one of the greatest performers of all time."
The show recreates the image of the singer from various stages of her career. The hologram is accompanied on stage by a real life band and dancers.
"In 2011, Whitney and I discussed her idea of an intimate, unplugged concert tour. It was a project we called ‘Whitney Unplugged’ or ‘An Evening with Whitney,'" said Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law and executor of her estate. "While Whitney’s no longer with us, her voice and legacy will live on with us forever. ‘An Evening with Whitney’ is another chance for us to relive and celebrate the talent that we were so lucky to receive for more than three decades and we’re excited to bring this cutting-edge musical experience to the fans who supported the pop culture phenomenon that was Whitney Houston because they deserve nothing less."
"It’s a complicated mix of disciplines if you will," Base Hologram Productions CEO Marty Tudor said of the show. "I could’ve made Whitney fly around stage if I wanted to, but she didn’t. One of the things that’s really critical is we want to be authentic. To me, it’s creepy and eerie if you make the artist do something they never would’ve done. But if you are authentic and live within the rules of who they were, this is a celebration of her legacy."
The idea of bringing performers back from the dead was first tested during 2012's Coachella when Snoop Dogg was joined on stage by a hologram of the late rapper Tupac Shakur. In the decade since, hologram performances have been steadily growing in popularity.
This of course raises the murky ethical question of whether it's morally acceptable to profit from a dead artist in such manner, and whether or not the show taints their legacy.
This question was raised last week with the release of Roadrunner, a documentary about the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. The documentary features voiceover narration from Bourdain, most of it taken from archive recordings. However, some of the voiceover was recreated digitally, with the late chef speaking words he never actually uttered. Director Morgan Neville drew the ire of fans for failing to disclose employing such a tactic.
A similar debate was had in 2016 upon the release of Star Wars prequel Rogue One. That movie featured a digital recreation of actor Peter Cushing, who passed away in 1994. Many viewers found it distasteful and a little creepy. Plans to make a movie starring a digitally resurrected James Dean were scrapped following a public backlash.
It seems Hollywood and the music industry have their hearts set on bringing celebs back from beyond the grave. The moral debate looks set to continue for quite some time.
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