Whitney Houston - I will always love you

Whitney Houston was perhaps the most famous female singer on the planet, who influenced several generations of popular music and whose impressive vocal range will live on. She managed to combine gospel and soul into an operatic wagnerian bombastic voice, virtually creating a genre unto itself, she scaled unsurpassable heights. We love our heroes tragic, we have to raise them up, in order for them to fall, but Houston dealt with a deal (in many cases, quite literally), dealing with constant legal issues, drug problems and more. But when all is said and done, does this superfluous, the music is what matters, and is it any good? Houston's voice inspired virtually every female pop singer around today, and ended up creating the 'plastic white-girl soul' voice which everybody uses today. But we can't hold her account for that, just like we can't blame Lightnin Rod for 50 Cent, or The Dead Kennedys for Greenday.

For the A Side, we have Houston's immortal cover of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You. After an Acapella introduction, the lushly produced backing music fades in under Houston's eternally warbling voice. The notes are being hit, and the force of the voice pushes it past the bland territory into the field of meaning. There's heart in here, but it's kinda hidden under the warbling. We get traces of 80's saxaphone and electric piano plinky plonks, and Houston's amazingly over-extended vowels, tretching out so that words like 'I' and 'You' last around six seconds each. Her voice is kinda like soft honey, it's very silky smooth. I haven't seen The Bodyguard, and have no intention to, so how this plays out in a filmic sense is something I will never know, but I do know that she really punches out those words. In the end, the track kinda bubbles away to silence after the real big chorus.

Church Organs and plonky eighties pianos introduces us to the lounge gospel stylings of the B side, Jesus Loves Me, which is one of the least remarkable songs I've heard. there is nothing really to talk about it, it's a gospel track, but lacking the oomph and passion found in many black gospel choirs. The sterile production does nothing to help either.

Now, this really isn't my kind of music, I must admit, but music is made to be listened to, and listen to it I did. I can't say I like it, but I can appreciate I Will Always Love You, and understand why it's a classic, but the B side is just wallpaper music, total filler.