Singer Whitney Houston found dead in hotel room at 48

LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

Beverly Hills police Lt. Mark Rosen told reporters outside the Beverly Hilton that Houston was pronounced dead that afternoon in her room on the fourth floor of the hotel.

"There were no obvious signs of any criminal intent," Rosen said.

Houston's publicist, Kristen Foster, said the cause of death was unknown.

Houston's end came on the eve of music's biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It's a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy pall on tonight's ceremony.

Her longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday, and a representative of the show said it would proceed.

In a statement, Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said Houston "was one of the world's greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades."

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen. Her hits included "Saving All My Love for You," "How Will I Know," "The Greatest Love of All," "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "I Will Always Love You."

Her success carried her to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey. But by the end of her career, Houston became a cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted, and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's 2005 reality show, "Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack," was often parodied.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You," but her attempts at live performances went awry.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.