Clive Davis, Music Executive Who Shaped Whitney Houston's Career, Dies at 94

Clive Davis, who died Tuesday at ninety-four, spent a lifetime doing something that resists easy description: he listened to voices before they knew what they were, and helped them become what the world would eventually recognize as inevitable. From Whitney Houston to Alicia Keys to Mariah Carey, his career was less a series of business decisions than an ongoing act of faith in human potential. The modern architecture of pop and R&B music bears his quiet signature, built not in a single moment but across decades of patient, visionary work.