Whitney Houston singles poll

the one i posted without thinking on fb when i learned of her death was "my love is your love". i spent all day yesterday relistening to most of her discography while writing about her though and...i might go for..."i have nothing", which i didn't expect

i'm a little stumped on whether to add to the inevitable deluge of "I Wanna Dance" votes or throw some support to "It's Not Right But It's Okay"

You Give Good Love
Saving All My Love For You
How Will I Know
Greatest Love of All
I'm Your Baby Tonight
My Name Is Not Susan
I'm Every Woman
I Have Nothing
Run To You
It's Not Right But It's Okay
My Love Is Your Love
I Learned From The Best

the winner should be one of these

"how will i know" is kind of like if "i wanna dance..." was a zillion times better imo

"it's not right..." is certainly in my top 5 and will doubtless have a good deal of support of its own

BTW I agree that "I Have Nothing" is the secret standout song on the Bodyguard soundtrack. Maybe I should re-listen to these before I vote.

"I Have Nothing" is pretty essential

"how will i know" is one of my all time favorite songs but i want to pick one song from each one of her eras

i will definitely need to really listen to her catalog at some point but my kneejerk pox is:

I Wanna Dance With Somebody
It's Not Right But It's Okay
Saving All My Love For You
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Have Nothing
Million Dollar Bill
How Will I Know
I'm Every Woman
Heartbreak Hotel (with Faith Evans and Kelly Price)
I Will Always Love You

It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Never Gonna Be (with Aretha Franklin)

It certainly wasn't on the pop chart

prob "it's not right but it's okay" but i love "i wanna dance with somebody." also had forgotten how much i liked "love will save the day."

"How Will I Know" is "Who's Zoomin' Who" improved. You had to be in the fall of '85 to know what an aural impact this thing had.

I'm very fond of "All at Once" (cowritten by Jeffrey Osborne!).

Didn't We Almost Have It All
So Emotional
Where Do Broken Hearts Go

the worst of her big hits imo

add in "So Emotional" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and that's my bottom 5

lol I can't read

"So Emotional "Shoop Shoop (The Exhale Song)"

why do you hate i wanna dance with somebody so much, dan? ;_;

he fears her hair in the video

i don't get that shoop song at all. i don't hate it, i just don't understand. waiting to exhale soundtrack is fine by me though because of brandy's "sittin' up in my room"

haha i was going to mention her i wanna dance with somebody hair as the potential reason

"how will I know" by a mile for me

haven't heard everything though

I only learned a few weeks ago that Annie Lennox wrote "Step by Step."

oh i like that one, too. but it's one of the remixes that i like.

So Emotional
Where Do Broken Hearts Go

I honestly don't remember these songs at all when I could easily call everything else she did from that decade to mind. Very strange.

lol I could probably write an essay

- the irritation of a song about dancing sung by someone who couldn't dance to save her life
- her first actually irritating vocal, devoid of the character necessary to sell those terrible lyrics
- the awful, awful video (the hair is not an insignificant part of the antipathy, but also the vacant miming of manic happiness that read more pathetic and controlled)
- the contrast between her initial breakthrough singles, particularly the vastly superior up-tempo "How Will I Know?" and this unappealing frothy nothing
- the sheer ubiquity of the song at the time of its release
- the number of horrible cover versions and dance routines girls my age put on to it
- that every single released from the album managed to be progressively WORSE than the song that preceded it

also can I just say how fucking lucky Mr Ned Raggett is to have "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?" excised from his memory, because those songs fukkin SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

- her first actually irritating vocal, devoid of the character necessary to sell those terrible lyrics

come on the "don't you wanna dance say you wanna dance don't you wanna dance" part is sung so exuberantly!

voted My Love Is Your Love

the vacant miming of manic happiness

this is what frightened me about her for years and still does

i feel like "so emotional" was huge, too, like i remember her winning a bunch of awards for it when i was a kid. it was so confusing to me. even then i knew it sucked.

I mean "So Emotional" isn't emotional, like, at all.

Every song from Whitney except "Love Will Save the Day" hit #1 on the pop chart.

come on the "don't you wanna dance say you wanna dance don't you wanna dance" part is sung so exuberantly!

IMO it only reads as exuberant if you are looking at her glassy-eyed rictus grin in the video, and even then only if you're being charitable

otherwise it's just unsubtle honking on a bridge akin to the second chorus of "I Will Always Love You" where she brays really flatly

xpost -- Song or single? We're not talking Thriller here...

no i hate the video, but i found out about her death on Saturday night when i was out, and then when i was driving home they played "i wanna dance with somebody" and "million dollar bill" on the radio and i was struck anew by how infectiously happy "i wanna dance with somebody" sounds! i had been feeling that her death was kind of surreal. that was the moment i got sad.

single, mais oui

i am v biased in favor of upbeat songs about dancing, tbf. madonna's "into the groove" is the best song in history, maybe.

To me "Greatest Love of All" is more horrifying than "I Wanna Dance." Her self-regard is chilling.

Her self-regard is what sells "GLOA"! That and the voice.

Horseshoe, I agree re: "Into the Groove"!

i wanna dance with somebody

Now that we're sharing Whitney experiences, let me mention that one particularly moronic teacher in sixth copied the lyrics in perfect Palmer handwriting, photocopied it, and distributed it as a graduation poem.

Saving All My Love For You

more people should just post song titles that could double as declarative statements itt like lamp and j0rdan

"Could I Have This Kiss Forever" (with Enrique Iglesias)

I have never heard this but I assume it is terrible

i only realized much later that "saving all my love for you" is sung from the pov of a woman having an affair with a married man. i don't know why it surprised me; it just seemed out of place with the smooth AC sound.

that makes the song that much more awesome IMO

more people should just post song titles that could double as declarative statements itt like lamp and j0rdan

― some dude

We Didn't Know

yeah i think "saving all my love for you" is my favorite of the early ballads.

my actual shortlist:

Saving All My Love For You
How Will I Know
Greatest Love of All
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Have Nothing
It's Not Right But It's Okay

no one's voting for "My Name is Not Susan"?

i like that song, but no

xp that's exactly it, it's a good song, but it misses her whole essence.

I suppose it's one of her most understated vocal performances, so if you don't like vocal overstatement it might be a default choice.

yeah "my love is your love" has long been the whitney song of choice for people who don't actually like what whitney houston was all about.

i mean, it's still a great song, but still.

Wasn't "The Star Spangled Banner" from 1991 Super Bowl intro released as a single (and a minor hit)? May be her best vocal performance; certainly it's the best I've ever heard it sung.

it was, and it charted again after 9/11. but she had 51 singles and it seemed like the odd one out that would make sense to cut from the poll options.

Fuse is running Whitney videos all day today, just heard "If I Told You That" for the first time and it was pretty good!

Wasn't "The Star Spangled Banner" from 1991 Super Bowl intro released as a single (and a minor hit)? May be her best vocal performance; certainly it's the best I've ever heard it sung.

I kind of hate this actually! The national anthem is the national anthem and is kind of destroyed by soft-rock backing.

Missed this but would have voted "How Will I Know" like everybody else.

what about a dubstep backing

I actually thought the instrumental arrangement was impressive - lots of interesting and unusual chord changes and such to go with the vocal flourishes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHmdu_I_0zI&feature=fvst

Rob Sheffield's twelve favorite Whitney songs.

"Million Dollar Bill" (2009)

Whitney’s last shot was a return to the original Eighties game plan, except at this point, her vocals were too ravaged for either pop or soul.

For anyone not aware of this, her funeral service is all over the television right now.

When I was in...probably sixth grade and listening to pop radio incessantly, I awoke to "Love Will Save The Day". The sun was just coming up and the light was slightly violet through the window and everything felt very calm and peaceful as the vibraphone came in and it really did feel like love might save the day. It's still one of my more idyllic childhood memories.

I wish my radio station had played "Love Will Save the Day."

yeah "my love is your love" has long been the whitney song of choice for people who don't actually like what whitney houston was all about.

I actually do like what Whitney was all about, and it's still my favorite of her singles. That song just puts me in a good place.

whitney....
this was incredible... much (very very much) as i have always loved Whitney, 'I will always love you' is the one song of hers that I never really loved, certainly never felt, didn't appreciate - and also about the very single song i haven't listened to after she died.
to suddenly hearing it now, after all those thousands? of times i heard it, and now feeling every little part of it. it was me, not Whitney, that hadn't gotten it. the most beautiful thing she's ever sung. beautiful.

guess this belongs in the Whitney Houston R.I.P. thread

I just heard My Love Is Your Love again for the first time in I don't know how long. Catchy as hell, that one!

wow for some reason i had no idea that "i have nothing" was titled "i have nothing," it was easily my favorite whitney hair salon jam when i was a kid

I heard her Jermaine duet on quiet storm a few weeks ago.

I Have Nothing has been on my Spotify playlist for the last five years or so.

"I Have Nothing" is the squarest, greatest song of all time.

Good thing Brad heard it at the beauty parlor, for the women would need hair implants after Whitney blasts the chorus.

"I Have Nothing" is tres pretty and one of the two Whitney songs, along with "Exhale," that I continued to groove to even during those ill advised years of indie snobbery where I was obligated to regard Whitney as The Enemy.

My top fifteen. Thanks for help, some dude.

I don't really need to look very much further
I don't want to have to go where you don't follow
I will hold it back again this passion inside
I can't run from myself THERES NOWHERE TO HIIIIIIIIIIIDE
YOUR LOVE! I'll RE MEM BER! FOR EV ER

we should do a legit ballot poll on Whitney so we can show Alfred all the ways he is misguided

This is a refrain he often hears.

Alfred: Wrong on Whitney, Wrong for America

giving me ALL THE RONG THAT I'LL EVER NEEEEEED

YOUR LOVE! I'll RE MEM BER! FOR EV ER

Don't make me clooooose--

*does shoo hand gesture*

--one more door!

Greatest Love of All	0

Admittedly, Toni Erdmann wasn't out yet when this poll was done but ... damn.

I'd have voted for her version.

Sandra Hüller's?

wtf alfred, no "i have nothing"?

*reads last few posts before the thread bump* ah

i guess i don't understand what more you could even want from whitney if "i have nothing" isnt yr pinnacle or at least top 5

there are other value judgements at play that i guess i dont fully understand?

or yr heart is a lump of coal, either or :)

now imagine Glenn Frey singing "I Have Nothing"

'It's Not Right But It's Okay' still rules.

The album version, yes.

Alfred revise your opinions4u on "I Have Nothing".

Or must I emerge in you there.

DONT WALK AWAY FROM MEEEEEEE

How's this for a poll: Cinematic covers of "The Greatest Love Of All"--Loren Dean in SAY ANYTHING VS. Sandra Hüller in TONI ERDMANN?

Alfred revise your opinions4u on "I Have Nothing".

Or must I emerge in you there.

― Tim F, Wednesday, June 7, 2017

emerge away

Her most depressing song.

RONG

All this discussion about her worst single and no mention of One Moment In Time?

this thread is an abomination

...because "How Will I Know" wasn't a total sweep?

NOW i mean