Dionne Warwick’s bizarre clairvoyant experience
Mysticism and superstition have been a regular theme throughout popular music for decades. Seemingly, every artist has their own superstitions surrounding performing or recording, but some musicians lean further into the world of mysticism and spirituality. One such unlikely artist is Dionne Warwick, whose clairvoyant experience proved harrowingly true.
Hailed as one of the biggest American stars of the 20th century, Dionne Warwick rose to prominence as a gospel singer in the early 1960s before being discovered while performing backing vocals for The Drifters. Given a helping hand along the way by one Elvis Presley, Warwick soon became a stalwart of the US charts, regularly appearing across the Atlantic in the UK charts, too.
In addition to her acclaimed musical career, Warwick is also known for her work as an actor and television presenter. Among her credits, the singer was noted for her work with the Psychic Friends Network, a call-in show that was fairly popular in the 1990s. On the phone-in show, Warwick would connect callers with clairvoyants – akin to Limmy’s ‘Paraside’ sketches, but with Dion Warwick.
Far from being a case of Warwick simply agreeing to any job that presented itself, the Psychic Friends Network show explored the singer’s genuine passion for the mystical and supernatural. Speaking to The Daily Mail back in 2015, Warwick explained, “What started me off was when I spoke to a clairvoyant back in 1987, and she predicted I would win two Grammy Awards that year.”
While the prediction that one of the most popular and well-respected artists in the US might win some Grammy Awards might seem like a fairly obvious one, this psychic experience deeply affected the singer. “It freaked me out, but I was hooked”, Warwick revealed, leading to her involvement with Psychic Friends Network during the 1990s.
As Dionne explained in the interview, she did end up winning two Grammys for her popular tracks ‘Déjà Vu’ and ‘I‘ll Never Love This Way Again’. However, this is where the supernatural influence strays a bit. Both those tracks won Grammy Awards in 1980, a full seven years before Warwick claims a clairvoyant predicted that she would win them. Whether it’s a case of misremembering dates or simply a psychic who was very behind on trends, Dionne’s conviction with regard to clairvoyance is somewhat tainted by these conflicting accounts.
Regardless of whether Warwick’s experience with the supernatural did, in fact, predict her Grammy wins, she is not the only musician to have flirted with the psychic world. Michael Jackson, for instance, was said to have regularly employed psychics throughout his career. At one point, Jackson even employed a personal psychic, Jillian Lane, who worked for the pop star up until his death in 2009. Then again, Michael Jackson is perhaps not the best figure to use for a benchmark of normality.
