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Whitney Houston has dampened expectations of her much-anticipated comeback after singing with a hoarse and cracking voice during her first public performance in years.

The belting force and staggering range of her heyday were nowhere to be seen with Houston, 46, pointing the microphone at the crowd each time high notes approached and apologising for her rasping performance.

She told the 5,000-strong crowd gathered in New York’s Central Park, to see her promote her first studio album in six years, that an interview with chat show queen Oprah Winfrey had damaged her voice.

“I'm so sorry. I did Oprah. I've been talking for so long. I talked so much, my voice... I shouldn't be talking. I should be singing.”
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Filmed for a Good Morning America episode that went to air in the US yesterday, the concert calls into question recent predictions that the singer could be back to form after the end of her tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown and an arduous battle with drug addiction.

Critics had been warm about, if not truly excited by, the onetime Bodyguard star’s I Looked To You, released in the US this week.

The Washington Post called the album “a finely calibrated, just-modern-enough mix of mom-friendly club bangers and dauntless ballads”, while The New York Times decided: “She’s tentatively climbing back into the pop machinery, no longer invincible but showing a diva’s determination.”

Houston’s disappointing live show, which saw her sing four songs, is the latest in a long line of problems faced by the singer.

Pop’s golden girl during the Eighties, she tamed charts around the world with the hits How Will I Know and Greatest Love of All, before going on to win six Grammy Awards.

In 1992 she starred opposite Kevin Costner in the box office hit film The Bodyguard, gleaming a string of hits, including I Will Always Love You, from the soundtrack.

But after marrying R & B singer Brown the same year, she began making headlines for the wrong reasons. Rumours of drug and marital problems swirled and the singer failed to appear at a string of high-profile appearances, including the 2000 Academy Awards.

Efforts to rescue her reputation backfired, with an interview by Dianne Sawyer, in which the singer famously denied drug allegations by professing “crack is whack”, proving especially damaging.

After divorcing Brown in 2007, she resumed public appearances and announced plans to make her first studio album in six years.

She is expected to reveal details of her long battle with drugs for the first time in The Oprah Winfrey Show interview, being billed as “"the most anticipated music interview of the decade”, scheduled to screen in the US on September 14.

I Looked To You is released in the UK on October 19.


Cindibaby.