Day 118: Whitney Houston - Whitney
Strange time of year, especially as I’m spending some of the period between Christmas and New Year by myself. I’m knitting, watching old films, watching old episodes of RHONY, cooking, eating, and that’s about it – it’s fun for a while, but fairly quickly it starts to feel like Groundhog Day. Time has stopped, only I remain, knitting. I need to venture out tomorrow to remind myself that there’s still people in the world.
Album cover courtesy of Arista Records
Today, I thought I’d choose a rock-solid classic to accompany me doing some chores, so I went with Whitney Houston’s second album, Whitney, not to be confused with Whitney Houston’s debut album, Whitney Houston. Do I think she could have thought about the names a little bit more just for clarity’s sake? Sure, but who gives a hoot, it’s Whitney, she can do whatever she wants. Personally, I think she should have gone full hog and just named the third one Houston.
Whitney was released in 1987 and it became an immediate smash hit: it was the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, and the record stayed top of the charts for eleven weeks, becoming the first album in almost ten years to do so, with its predecessor being Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. However, it wasn’t a hit among critics and it received mixed reviews, with some critics deeming it formulaic, impersonal and boring.
Here’s a question, and since I wasn’t alive in the ‘80s, I’m genuinely asking: was there so much good music going around that you could hear “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and think “meh, average”? Because even by today’s standards, that song is a banger. Some of the other reviews are either more baffling, with Rolling Stone’s review of Whitney saying that it is “sometimes hard to locate an emotional heart in Houston’s songs” and deems “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” as a cornier, schmaltzier reprisal of “The Greatest Love of All.”
My takeaway from this is that the ‘80s must have been much cooler than I think if even Whitney at her peak is boring. Even if this record was released today, it would still be a hit – maybe as an ‘80s novelty act, but still. It’s 53 minutes of poppy R&B and soulful ballads that, I will admit, isn’t maybe the most inventive, but there’s a time and a place for formulaic, classic, universally appealing pop, when it’s done well by a talented artist. And no one can deny that Whitney has talent.
Critics didn’t like Led Zeppelin, critics found Whitney to be boring. As much as people say we live in an era of poptimism and we don’t know how to critique anymore, sometimes I think they were just nitpicking for the sake of it. Granted, I am too much of a poptimist on this blog, but what can I say, I like trying to connect with people’s art. And it’s a blog – genuinely, who cares.
Whitney is a polished album of pop-perfection, and I don’t hold that against it. It’s a great album when you can appreciate it for what it is. “Love Will Save the Day” and “So Emotional” are phenomenal, I also love the criminally underrated and Motown-inspired faster-paced track “Love Is a Contact Sport,” which has a saxophone solo performed by Kenny G.
I can’t help it, I love Whitney. It comes with the territory of being spiritually attuned to hun culture, give me three glasses of pinot grigio and I will cry at videos of Whitney Houston. For me, Whitney is a very clear 9/10.