Album: My Love Is Your Love (Arista)
Songwriters: K. Karlin, T. Savage and C. Schack
Hit #1: February 13th, 1999 (7 Weeks)
It had been eight years (a century in music industry time) since Houston had released any new non-soundtrack-affiliated material, and within that time frame hip hop had replaced traditional R&B as the Black music of choice. Anxious to distance herself from the big pop ballads that had come to define her in the '90's, Whitney opted for a hip, street-oriented makeover on 1998's My Love Is Your Love. For this album, Houston got her groove back, dissing and dismissing no-good boyfriends over swift urban beats handled by the likes of Missy Elliott, Rodney Jerkins, Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill.
Following a seemingly can't-miss duet with Mariah Carey (the banal "When You Believe") that actually did miss, Houston hooked up with new-school influencees Faith Evans and Kelly Price for My Love's next single, "Heartbreak Hotel".
The song found the three women teaming up to fling acid on pitiful excuses for men everywhere. They lie, they cheat and they don't come home at decent hours in the night; Whitney don't play that. Refusing to shed anymore tears, the always regal Houston calls up her fellow R&B buddies to help her write a stinging goodbye letter. "All I really wanted was some of your time/ Instead you played with my emotions and you made me cry/ What you do to me/ Can't take what you did to me," they pen. If he's truly the dog they have described, he'll probably shrug off the note without care, but "Heartbreak Hotel" is less about him than it is about the strength that arises when women come together and hold eachother down during the lowest of lows.
A flurry of rousing, "I ain't gon' take it no more"-type ad-libs ended the "'Waiting To Exhale' on wax" diva fest on a high note, with Whit, Faith and Kelly excitingly challenging eachother to bring out their respective bests vocally. For any fan of true female R&B singers, the song was an instant favorite and it ignited a youthful interest in the career of a icon whose Jersey-raised rough-and-tough edge had typically been kept out of the studio.
"Hotel", which would score two Grammy nominations (Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance By A Duo or Group) by the end of the year, led off a string of R&B-pop hits that helped My Love Is Your Love sell over four million copies. Unfortunately, it would also signal an end to her commercial heights and the beginnings of a neverending streak of
bad publicity, as her troubled marriage to Bobby Brown, heavily-gossiped drug use and erratic public behavior became far more entertaining than anything she could come up with in her music.
DL: "Heartbreak Hotel" (YFH)
1 comments:
Damn Whitney can not only sing the girl is FINE as hell. Good to see lately she will ALWAYS be something fine to look at. Can't wait for her to come back and show all these girls how it's done. She is missed.
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