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closeWednesday, Sep. 02, 2009
It's not right, but it's OK
PODCAST: Our critics talk about Whitney Houston’s first CD release in seven years.
By Preston Jones and Christopher Kelly
Let the media circus begin: This week, Whitney Houston released I Look to You, her first studio album in seven years, which features collaborations with Akon, R. Kelly and Alicia Keys. The question on everyone’s mind: Has the troubled diva finally moved past a decade of drug addiction, spousal abuse and custody battles? Our critics try to cut through the hype and diagnose the curious case of a once-angelic songbird who these days sounds more like a downtrodden blues singer.
Christopher Kelly: She’s over the crack. She’s over Bobby Brown. She’s ready to reclaim her place in the spotlight. Does she succeed?
Preston Jones: She does and she doesn’t. The final three tracks on this album are really interesting — For the Lovers, I Got You and Salute. Those songs put Whitney Houston in an exciting new context. They’re edgier, they’re more daring than the goopy, swooping ballads and midtempo stuff that you find in the early part of the album.
Unfortunately they come after about a half-hour of the same old stuff. I feel like Whitney Houston and Clive Davis — who orchestrated this whole comeback — played it a little too safe. We all know Whitney can knock out ballads with the best of them, so I don’t think she needs to prove that again. I would have liked to have seen her take more chances.
Why are they being so careful, especially when they’re pairing her with people like Akon and R. Kelly as songwriters and producers — and then coming up with such middle-of-the-road, plain-vanilla results?
C.K.: I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but I liked this record better than you did. It starts out with what I think is an unexpected song, Million Dollar Bill. It’s a collaboration with Alicia Keys, who co-wrote and co-produced it. You would expect from Whitney an anti-relationship song, but this is the opposite: It’s about celebrating a man who treats you like a million dollar bill. It’s very upbeat, and it’s very fun, and it got me hooked into the album. I agree that the record is uneven, but I think there are enough little carrots here that kept me interested.
P.J.: That’s the thing. There are tracks like Million Dollar Bill, and then it goes into a lull, and then it perks back up again. She worked with a lot of younger artists to write it, and it’s almost like she’s being treated with kid gloves: They seem afraid to push her. I just wish she’d been pushed a little more, especially now that her voice has changed. That was the thing that really jumped out at me. Her voice sounds really ravaged now. She used to have this beautiful soprano, clear as a bell, octaves to the sky. Now it sounds like she’s been dragged through the gutter.
C.K.: I thought I was listening to Patti LaBelle. She really has to belt it out. Her voice has become lower and more gravelly.
P.J.: Right, and the voice is not used to as much effect as it could be. That’s why I like those songs at the end of the album. It takes that voice and puts it into these interesting songs — it’s not a Whitney Houston you’ve heard before.
C.K.: I want to talk about the Diane Warren-penned song, I Didn’t Know My Own Strength. If that title doesn’t give away the goose, nothing does. This isn’t the swooping, soaring Greatest Love of All. But listening to it — and knowing what Whitney Houston has been through — I was touched by it. It’s this classic ode to self-reliance.
P.J.: It is a moving song. But I don’t feel like she has any connection to it. It’s Whitney Houston singing a song. I wanted more of her. I wanted her to put across the pain and uncertainty and all the stuff she’s been going through.
C.K.: How do you think I Look to You is going to do, in terms of putting Whitney Houston’s career back on track? I think the one thing it’s missing is that big, galvanizing single that will carry her onto the charts.
P.J.: The landscape has changed so much just in the seven years since she released her last album. You have all these young singers — Beyoncé, Leona Lewis — who are out there approximating what Houston did 20 years ago. You can’t compete if there are people half your age out there doing the same thing.
I’d be interested in seeing if they took those more unconventional tracks and put those on the radio. I think that might hook people into the record. Just the fact that she has the album, she’s out there promoting it — that’s enough for this record. That will get her back on course. And it’ll be the next album — if she should make another one — where we’ll see her take that next step and do something a little bit different.
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