Brandy was a child star in the 1990s, and she had the opportunity to sing with some of the biggest stars in music. In her new memoir, Brandy: Unsung, out this week, she reflects on all of those memorable moments. But one moment stands out: when she worked on Cinderella in 1997 and got to sing with Whitney Houston onscreen as part of their song “Ever Ever After.”
But for a moment, the two stars had to rely on their voices to get through a difficult scene. “The first time we actually sang together in Cinderella was when we were standing outside of this castle, freezing our butts off [in England] at five in the morning,” Brandy recalled. “We were supposed to be singing and dancing with these big fake wands that were supposed to make us fly.
And because I was sick and had laryngitis at the time, I couldn’t sing at all. So she took my hand and sang ‘A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes’ with me — it was magical! I started crying because it was amazing that she would do that for me. It was such an intimate moment.”
Brandy And Houston Chemistry Was Off The Charts
Houston and Brandy sang a duet of “When You Believe” for the 1997 movie, which in turn became one of Houston’s best-selling singles ever with more than 2 million copies sold.
It was also filmed at a time when both Houston and Brandy were suffering from illnesses that would eventually take their lives—Houston died in 2012 at age 48 from accidental drowning in her bathtub after years of substance abuse issues; Brandy’s death was caused by heart failure related to lupus erythematosus in June 2012. But on set during filming they were able to forget about what they were going through and just be themselves together as friends.
