- Label
- RCA
- Release date
- 19th October 2009
- Genre
- Pop/Soul
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Soul legend looks to bounce back from the dark side
Few superstars have crashed and burned so spectacularly in recent years as Whitney Houston, the soul diva who spiralled from multi-million-unit-shifting ubiquity to the drugged-out, diminished wreck glimpsed on Being Bobby Brown.
It looked pretty bad back there for a while, but now errant ex-hubby Brown is gone and Houston is cleaned up, airbrushed and poised for a major-league comeback with this album produced by her long-time label chief and mentor, Clive Davis.
It’s a decidedly mixed bag, with Houston style-hopping from skittish R&B disco tart on the Alicia Keys-penned Million Dollar Bill to portentous gospel on I Didn’t Know My Own Strength. The title track is a trademark 1980s shoulder-heaving power ballad as Houston congratulates herself on having come through her recent hard times unscathed.
In truth, she hasn’t: that legendary voice is ravaged from her excesses and is pitched in a markedly lower register than before. Yet on its US release, I Look To You registered the highest first-week sales of any of her albums. Maybe – just maybe – Whitney Houston is poised to make one of the great pop comebacks of all time.
More to try:
Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul
Mariah Carey: The Emancipation of Mimi
Alicia Keys: Songs In A Minor
