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Whitney houston debut album9/12/2023 ![]() The strategy is not so different from that behind Hollywood’s blockbuster sequels: this is How Will I Know II. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” Whitney‘s first single release, was written by the same team (George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam) and “loved, produced and arranged” (as the credits have it) by the same producer (the ever-competent, never-surprising Narada Michael Walden) that scored with “How Will I Know.” Not taking any chances, the songwriters have simply come up with a clever anagram of their original hit, and Walden has glossed it over in an identically perky style. Instead of using Houston’s initial triumph as a springboard to more challenging work, Davis and his team of producers have turned it into a luxury prison - an airless, inflexible but expensively appointed cell designed to keep out new ideas.Īt its most stubborn and unimaginative, this approach results in new material that is barely distinguishable from Houston’s old hits. Executive producer (and Arista president) Clive Davis may have been determined to make this follow-up a norisk venture, a multimillion-dollar sure thing, but the result is smug, repressive and ridiculously safe. Instead, the formula is more rigorously locked in than before, and the range so tightly circumscribed that Houston’s potential seems to have shrunk rather than expanded. Like Houston’s debut, this is a mess of an album that succeeds in spite of itself.īut if Whitney works - and its entry at Number One on Billboard’s pop LP chart is a strong indication that this album could surpass its predecessor’s multi-platinum sales and cut-by-cut chart accomplishments - it’s not because it makes dramatic improvements on the first LP’s winning formula or gives Houston a chance to attack a broader, more adventurous range of material. But after several listens, it’s nearly impossible to dislodge Whitney from your brain. On one hearing, it’s easy to dismiss Whitney Houston’s new album as overcalculated, hollowed-out pop product, so suffocated by professionalism that only the faintest pulse of soul remains. ![]()
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