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Awards and achievements
Whitney Houston has been honored with several awards and accolades recognizing her worldwide success through the music and movie industries. Houston is the most awarded female artist of all time, according to Guinness World Records, with 2 Emmy Awards, 6 Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. She won 6 Grammy Awards from 26 nominations from 1986, when she earned her first Grammy "Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female," to 2000, sixth Grammy "Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female." Houston was nominated a total of six times in the general field of the Grammys, including four Album of the Year nominations: Whitney Houston (1986), Whitney (1988), The Bodyguard Soundtrack (1994) and Waiting to Exhale Soundtrack (1997). At the 36th annual Grammy Awards in 1994, she won "Album of the Year" and "Record of the Year" for "I Will Always Love You." In the American Music Awards history, Houston got 37 nominations and won 22 awards, including two special awards ― Award of Merit (1994) and International Artist Award (2010). She holds the all-time record for the most AMAs of any female artist, and shares the record with Michael Jackson for the most AMAs ever won in a single year with 8 wins at its 21st ceremony of 1994. Houston has 30 Billboard Music Awards including 10 awards during the pre-ceremony era ― the awards ceremony was first held in 1990. In 1986, Houston became the first black female artist to earn "Top Pop Artist of the Year"(later renamed to "Artist of the Year") and her debut album was the first album by a female artist to achieve "Top Pop Album of the Year" (later "#1 Album of the Year" or "Billboard 200 Album of the Year") in Billboard year-end charts history. She swept 11 Billboard Music Awards in 1993, setting a record for the most wins in one ceremony. In addition, she is the first and only artist to win "#1 Album of the Year" two times, and "#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Album of the Year" three times: Whitney Houston (1986), I'm Your Baby Tonight (1991), and The Bodyguard (1993). Houston shares the record for the most WMAs won in a single year with Michael Jackson, 50 Cent and Lady Gaga, winning five awards at the 6th World Music Awards in 1994. Houston received a total of 7 Soul Train Music Awards including three special awards: "Sammy Davis, Jr. Award as Entertainer of the Year" (1994), "The Quincy Jones Award" (1998), and "The Artist of Decade, Female" (2000).

In May 2003, Houston placed at number three on VH1's list of "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era," behind Madonna and Janet Jackson. She was also ranked at number 116 on their list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time." In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, ranking Houston at number nine. Similarly, she is ranked as one of the Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time by VH1 in September 2010. In November 2010, Billboard released its "Top 50 R&B / Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years" list and ranked Houston at number three whom not only went on to earn eight No. 1 singles on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, but also landed five No. 1s on R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

Houston's debut is currently listed as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine and is on Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Definitive 200 list. In 2004, Billboard picked the success of her first release on the charts as one of 110 Musical Milestones in its history. Houston's entrance into the music industry is considered one of the 25 musical milestones of the last 25 years, according to USA Today in 2007. It stated that she paved the way for Mariah Carey’s chart-topping vocal gymnastics. In 1997, the Franklin School in East Orange, New Jersey was renamed to The Whitney E. Houston Academy School of Creative and Performing Arts. In 2001, Houston was the first artist ever to be given a BET Lifetime Achievement Award.

Houston is also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums and singles worldwide. Although she has released relatively few albums, she is ranked as the fourth best-selling female artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 55 million certified albums sold in the US alone.

She holds an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Grambling State University, Louisiana.

Critical reception
The New York Times's Jon Pareles wrote about the song, "Ms. Houston sings with easy confidence about a love that would survive homelessness, World War III and Judgment Day." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone, in his review of Houston's My Love Is Your Love album, called the song "the excellent title track", adding "Wyclef gives Houston the sexiest Bob Marley rip-off he's ever written."

Chart performance
Houston's rendition of "I Will Always Love You" debuted at number forty on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles and number fifty-eight on the Hot R&B Singles, the chart dated November 14, 1992. The single topped the Hot 100 a mere two weeks later, becoming Houston's tenth number-one of the chart, and the following week also reached number-one on the Hot R&B. The single spent 14 consecutive weeks at the top position of the Hot 100 from November 1992 to March 1993, which at the time was all-time record. It became Houston's longest run at number one, smashing her previous record, which was three weeks with 1986's, "Greatest Love of All." It is also the longest running number one single from a soundtrack album.

It also dominated various other Billboard charts, spending 14 weeks at the top of Billboard Hot 100 Single Sales chart and 11 weeks at number one on its Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song also stayed at number one for five weeks on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and for 11 weeks on the Hot R&B Singles chart becoming the longest running number one on the R&B charts at the time, and remained in the top 40 for 24 weeks. It became Arista Records' biggest hit. The song was number one on the Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and R&B chart simultaneously for a record-equaling five weeks; Ray Charles' I Can't Stop Loving You in 1962 achieved the same feat on the same charts.

Houston's single sold approximately 400,000 copies in its second week on the summit, making it the best-selling song in a single week (taking the record from Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"). It broke its own record in the following three weeks, peaking at 632,000 copies in the week ended December 27, 1992, Billboard the issue date of January 9, 1993 (the week it broke its own record for most copies sold in a single week for any song). The record was broken by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997/Something About the Way You Look Tonight", selling 3.4 million in the final week of September 1997. "I Will Always Love You" was certified 4&times; Platinum in the U.S. for shipments of over 4 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 12, 1993, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in the RIAA history. According to Nielsen SoundScan, as of 2009, the single sold 4,591,000 copies, and became the second best-selling physical single in U.S. alone, only behind Elton John's single in 1997.

Houston's single made a massive international success, peaking at number one of the singles charts in almost all countries, including the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles, spent 13 weeks at the top. The single also hit pole position for ten weeks in Australia, five weeks in Austria, seven weeks for Belgium, eight weeks in France, six weeks in Germany, eight weeks in Ireland, two weeks in Italy, six weeks in Netherlands, 11 weeks in New Zealand, nine weeks in Norway, six weeks in Sweden, eight weeks in Switzerland, and ten weeks in the United Kingdom. Houston's 10-week reign in the U.K. set the record for the longest run at the top by a solo female artist in the history of the British singles chart. It is the only single to have ever topped the U.S., the U.K. and Australian singles charts for at least ten weeks. In the United Kingdom, the single sold over 1,450,000 copies, becoming the tenth best-selling single of 1990s, and was certified 2&times; Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on January 1, 1993. It was certified Platinum for shipments of over 500,000 copies by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) in Germany. In Japan, "I Will Always Love You" sold over 810,000 copies, staying for 27 weeks on the chart, and became the best-selling single by a foreign female artist at the time, though the single did not top the record chart unlike most other countries.

The song stayed at number one in the United States throughout January and February in 1993, making it the first time Billboard didn't rank a new number one single until March of the new year. Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also the year-end single of 1993 in the U.S. Similarly, in the U.K., Houston's version was ranked the number one single of 1992, and then made the countdown again in 1993 where it was ranked number nine, marking the first time any artist or group had the same single ranked in the top 10 of the year-end review two years in a row. In Australia, it was the number 17 single of 1992 and the number two song of 1993.

Only a few hours after Houston's death on February 11, 2012, "I Will Always Love You" topped the U.S. iTunes Charts. Also, that same week after her death, the single returned to the Billboard Hot 100, after almost 20 years, at number 7, becoming a posthumous top-ten single for Houston. It debuted on the Billboard Hot Digital Singles Chart at number 3 on the chart dated February 25, 2012 with over 195,000 copies downloaded. In the United Kingdom, the song charted at number 10 the week of Houston's death.