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. But after several listens, it's nearly impossible to dislodge Whitney from your brain. Like Houston's debut, this is a mess of an album that succeeds in spite of itself.
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. 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. 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 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.
At its most stubborn and unimaginative, this approach results in new material that is barely distinguishable from Houston's old hits. "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. The strategy is not so different from that behind Hollywood's blockbuster sequels: this is How Will I Know II. Houston's first new material in two years was bound to get quick pickup, but "I Wanna Dance" beat her own previous record for a rapid rise up the charts, leaping into Billboard's Top Ten in just four weeks and hitting Number One soon after. In showbiz, at least, familiarity does not breed contempt.
But rewarding the strategy means settling for more of the same, which is virtually all Whitney has to offer. Although mixmaster-producer Jellybean Benitez joins the ranks, the rest of the producers on Whitney are also contributors to the previous album: Kashif, Michael Masser and Walden, who checks in with seven of the eleven cuts. Masser reprises the show-tune schmaltz of "The Greatest Love of All" in his even cornier "Didn't We Almost Have It All." Kashif, reduced to one track, shrugs off the lovely but
This self-titled release launched Whitney Houston into the mainstream with a phenomenal number of hits. Everything that established this vocalist as the belter she is appears here: "You Give Good Love," "How Will I Know," "Saving All My Love For You," and "The Greatest Love of All." It's not visionary material, but it's catchy and it made Houston a star.
