Memorial Page for Aaliyah (née Aaliyah Dana Haughton)

Aaliyah Dana Haughton (born 16 January 1979 in Brooklyn, New York; died 25 August 2001 near Marsh Harbour, Abaco, Bahamas) was an American singer, actress and dancer. In little more than seven years as a recording artist she released three albums, carried two feature films, and reshaped the sound of R&B so thoroughly that the music after her did not sound like the music before her. She was twenty-two years old.

A name to live up to

Aaliyah was born in Brooklyn on 16 January 1979, the younger of the two children of Diane and Michael “Miguel” Haughton. Her father worked in a warehouse; her mother had been a singer and stayed home with the children. Her name is the feminine form of the Arabic “Ali” and means “highest, most exalted one, the best”. Aaliyah simply called it beautiful, said she was very proud of it, and that she tried every day to live up to it.

When she was five the family moved to Detroit. She grew up there with her older brother Rashad; there her mother enrolled her in voice lessons, and there she first sang for other people — at weddings, in the church choir, at charity events. She attended Gesu Elementary, a Catholic school, and in first grade she was cast in the school production of Annie. After that she knew what she wanted to be.

The ten-year-old who lost

In 1989 Aaliyah appeared on the nationally broadcast talent show Star Search and sang My Funny Valentine. She did not win. The appearance made her hungry all the same: she began auditioning, and her mother decided to drop the surname. At eleven she stood on stage in Las Vegas beside Gladys Knight, who had been married to her uncle Barry Hankerson. The rapper Tupac Shakur, who saw her sing at one of those concerts, wanted to sign her.

At school she was teased for being small. Her mother told her to be glad of it, and by fifteen Aaliyah had learned to love her height. Of the children who teased her she later said: “You always have to deal with people who are jealous, but there were so few it didn’t even matter. The majority of kids supported me, which was wonderful.” Her best-known line is another one: “The most important thing is to think highly of yourself, because if you don’t, no one else will.”

For her audition at the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts she sang Ave Maria in Latin. She was accepted, majored in drama, and graduated in 1997 with a perfect grade point average. She explained why: “I wanted to keep that 4.0. Being in the industry, you know, I don’t want kids to think, ‘I can just sing and forget about school.’” If music had not worked out she intended to teach music, music history or drama — “when you pick a career it has to be something you love”.

Fourteen, and in the studio

At twelve Aaliyah signed with Blackground Records, her uncle’s label. She recorded her first album at fourteen. Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number was released on 24 May 1994, reached number 18 on the American album chart and sold more than three million copies in the United States. Back & Forth reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at the top of the R&B chart; her reading of the Isley Brothers’ At Your Best (You Are Love) reached number six. Critics were already describing what would remain her signature: a held-back, almost whispered voice over hard beats.

What happened to her at fifteen

On 31 August 1994, in Rosemont, Illinois, a marriage certificate was issued linking Aaliyah to R. Kelly, the singer and producer of her first album, twelve years her senior. The certificate listed her as eighteen. She was fifteen. Her parents had the marriage annulled in February 1995, and in 1997 Aaliyah petitioned a court in Cook County to have every record of it expunged. She cut every professional and personal tie and never spoke about it publicly again. Damon Dash, who was with her in the last year of her life, later said she would not discuss it even in private — only that he had been a bad man.

Her mother Diane said everything that went wrong in Aaliyah’s life began there. Her cousin Jomo Hankerson remembered that the industry made her the guilty party: after an album that had sold millions, it suddenly became hard to get producers for the second record at all. He never understood why the anger was directed at her, given her age. In 2021 a federal jury in New York convicted R. Kelly on nine counts, among them racketeering and the sexual exploitation of a child; Aaliyah’s case was central to the trial. In June 2022 he was sentenced to thirty years in prison.

She was fifteen. What came after, she built anew with other people.

Starting over with “One in a Million”

In 1996 Aaliyah left Jive Records and signed with Atlantic. For her second album she brought in two young people who had released nothing of their own yet: Missy Elliott and Timbaland. Missy Elliott has described how nervous the two of them were — Aaliyah already had a multi-million-selling album, they were just starting out. She had expected to meet a diva.

“She came in and was so warming; she made us immediately feel like family.” — Missy Elliott

One in a Million appeared first in France on 13 August 1996 and in the United States two weeks later, where it sold more than three million copies. It is the record that rebuilt R&B for the years that followed: chopped, stumbling rhythms, cold synthesisers — and over them a voice that never pushed. Aaliyah described her own singing most precisely: “My signature style is breathy, tone-y, airy. It’s simple but I can ride a crazy track.” She later called her sound “street but sweet”.

The Oscars, the cinema, and the record set by “Try Again”

On 16 January 1997, her eighteenth birthday, the episode of New York Undercover aired in which she appeared as a musical guest. That same year she sang at the Children’s Benefit Concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York and became the face of Tommy Hilfiger. For the animated film Anastasia she recorded Journey to the Past. The song was nominated for an Academy Award, and on 23 March 1998 Aaliyah performed it at the 70th Academy Awards — the youngest singer to have performed at the ceremony up to that point. She was nineteen.

In 1999 she landed her first film role: in Romeo Must Die she played opposite Jet Li. The film opened on 24 March 2000 at number two at the American box office. Aaliyah was also executive producer of the soundtrack, contributing four songs, among them Come Back in One Piece with DMX.

One of those songs was Try Again. In the chart week of 17 June 2000 it jumped from six to one on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first song in American chart history to reach the top on airplay alone, never having been sold as a single. Eleven years after the talent show she lost, the girl from that stage was at number one. On 7 September 2000 the video won two prizes at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York: Best Female Video and Best Video from a Film. The song also brought her a Grammy nomination.

How she sounded, how she was

Aaliyah was a soprano, but she rarely sang loudly. Rolling Stone described what was remarkable about it: beyond her flexibility and crisp range, it was her almost preternatural poise — she always seemed to be holding her power in reserve. People who worked with her sometimes met something else entirely. The producer Daryl Simmons watched her do operatic warm-up exercises before a session: “It was the furthest thing I would have ever thought that she could do. It just blew my mind.”

Her look was as particular as her singing: baggy trousers, sunglasses, a great deal of black, and the hair falling over her left eye — her mother’s suggestion, which became her signature. “Being a little edgy and sexy is me,” she said. “My image isn’t a put-on.”

She named her influences as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Sade, Janet Jackson, Donny Hathaway, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand and Whitney Houston. Thriller was her favourite album, and she said nothing would ever top it. She was Catholic and went to church when she was at home; in 2001 she described herself as mostly a homebody who liked “the simple things in life”.

Her family was almost always with her. From 1995 her father was her manager and her mother assisted him; her brother Rashad and her cousin Jomo Hankerson were with her while she worked. Her friend Kidada Jones said that in Aaliyah’s last year her parents had given her more freedom, and that she had spoken about wanting a family of her own.

The red album and the roles that were coming

For her third album Aaliyah went to Australia. By day she filmed her role as Queen Akasha in Queen of the Damned, from the novel by Anne Rice; by night she recorded in the studio. Aaliyah was released in the United States on 17 July 2001 and entered the album chart at number two. She had larger plans: the biggest tour of her career, her role as Zee in the two Matrix sequels, for which she had already shot part of her scenes, and the lead in a remake of Sparkle that Whitney Houston intended to produce. Houston later remembered how enthusiastic Aaliyah had been about that film.

25 August 2001

On 21 August 2001 Aaliyah announced the Rock the Boat video shoot on television. The shoot ran first in Miami, then on the Abaco Islands of the Bahamas. She finished earlier than planned and did not want to wait for the return flight booked for 26 August.

On the evening of 25 August 2001 a twin-engine Cessna 402B took off from Marsh Harbour Airport bound for Florida. Nine people were on board. The aircraft was overloaded by more than four hundred kilograms and carried one passenger more than it was certified for; another pilot heard him warn the party about the weight before being talked round. Shortly after lift-off the aircraft came down about sixty metres beyond the end of the runway. No one survived. The investigation found that the pilot was not approved to fly that aircraft: he had claimed hundreds of flying hours he had never flown, and traces of cocaine and alcohol were found in his body. Aaliyah’s parents sued the aircraft’s operator; the case was settled out of court.

The farewell

The funeral Mass was held on 31 August 2001 at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan. The procession set out from the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, the casket carried in a glass, horse-drawn hearse; an estimated eight hundred mourners walked with it. Among those at the service were Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Gladys Knight, Lil’ Kim and Sean Combs. After the Mass, twenty-two white doves were released — one for each year of her life.

Her brother Rashad delivered the eulogy.

“Aaliyah, you left, but I’ll see you always next to me and I can see you smiling through the sunshine. When our life is over, our book is done, I hope God keeps me strong until I see her again.” — Rashad Haughton

He then read the names of the other people who had died in the aircraft — Luis Morales III, Eric Forman, Anthony Dodd, Scott Gallin, Keith Wallace, Christopher Maldonado, Douglas Kratz and Gina Smith — and asked the mourners to pray for them as well. As her mother Diane and the other guests left the church, they sang One in a Million. Aaliyah was laid to rest at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, north of New York City.

What happened afterwards

In the week after her death the album Aaliyah rose from number 19 to number one in the United States. The video for Rock the Boat, which she had filmed in her final days, premiered on television on 9 October 2001 and became the most watched episode in that programme’s history. More Than a Woman reached number one in the United Kingdom in the week ending 19 January 2002, making Aaliyah the first female artist to top the British chart posthumously. She was displaced there by George Harrison with My Sweet Lord — the only time in British chart history that one deceased artist has replaced another at number one.

Queen of the Damned opened on 22 February 2002, entered the American box office at number one, and is dedicated to her; her brother Rashad had had to re-dub some of her lines. In December 2002 I Care 4 U was released, a collection of familiar and previously unreleased songs. A portion of the proceeds went to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, which supports cancer research: the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer Research Program and a cancer centre in Harlem. The fund still exists today.

On the first anniversary of her death people gathered in Times Square for a candlelight vigil, radio stations across the country played her music, and millions observed a moment of silence.

Aaliyah in the German-speaking countries

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Aaliyah became known above all for Try Again.

• Try Again: number 5 in Germany (eighteen weeks, gold), number 8 in Switzerland, number 19 in Austria.
• The album Aaliyah: number 9 in Germany and forty-one weeks on the chart, gold; number 6 in Switzerland, gold there too; number 21 in Austria, plus an Echo nomination.
• Miss You reached number 8 in Germany in 2003, and the album I Care 4 U reached number 2.

On 14 May 2000 Aaliyah was in Berlin. That single day is the source of the few freely licensed photographs of her that exist.

What remains

One in a Million is regarded as one of its decade’s most influential R&B albums, and critics have described Aaliyah’s way of singing — quiet, displaced, sliding around the beat rather than over it — as the template for a whole generation after her. In 2001 “Aaliyah” was among the hundred most popular names given to newborn girls in the United States.

On 24 September 2023 she was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in Detroit, the city she grew up in. Rolling Stone places her at number 40 on its list of the two hundred greatest singers of all time. On her birthday in January 2025 Mattel released an Aaliyah doll; that August the previously unreleased song Gone appeared. On 5 July 2026 the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans closed with an evening Missy Elliott had put together in her honour — thirty years after One in a Million, twenty-five years after her final album. Aaliyah’s mother Diane and her brother Rashad had given it their blessing; Mýa, Ryan Destiny, Normani, Chlöe and Sevyn Streeter sang her songs.

Above her plaque the wall carries the name of her father, Michael “Miguel” Haughton, who died in 2012 and was laid to rest beside her. Roses and flower arrangements stand in front of it, and photographs brought by strangers are taped to the gate. A quarter of a century after her death, people still bring flowers to Aaliyah.