Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston

THE REVIEW

It had been a long time since I listened to an album like this. I (re)discovered it by chance in my rather large library. For heaven's sake, I already knew who Whitney Houston was and what she did. I knew she had a beautiful voice, a certain charisma, and a certain fame, but I never bothered to listen to her properly.

Then one fine day, I set about cataloging my library on iTunes and came across this modest-looking album. I put it into my Macintosh's CD player and started renaming the tracks. Then I got to the part where you have to write the genre of the tracks, so I started playing them... it was love at first "listen." I suddenly found myself in the presence of melodious, smooth, and soft sounds, with Whitney Houston's superb voice on her debut album and some masterful arrangements. And then I asked myself (once I had recovered) how I could have ignored the existence of such a beautiful album for all this time? Thanks to iTunes, maybe I’ll rediscover other albums like this. Songs worth noting are especially track no.1 (You Give Good Love), track no.4 (Saving All My Love for You), the pop ballad no.6 (How Will I Know), and track no.7 (All at Once). The sounds naturally hark back to the synthetic sounds of the legendary '80s and still retain some residual elements of the never-fully-dead Disco music (I recall the album is dated 1985).

The genre presented is a mature Funk-pop aimed at an adult audience (they are all love songs) and easily danceable. I'm sorry that Whitney has ruined herself lately by abusing every drug that exists on earth, but I cannot deny her fundamental role in pop music, both as a great performer and as a masterful voice. I hope she recovers and releases a good album soon (not like the last two/three).