I'm spinning this album after a year or so. This is Whitney at her best, it was modern, sexy and vocally strong. Her image and career were in top form, she had a hot tour! she had finally gone from MOR to cool urban/pop.

The production is what really stands out from other Whitney albums. It maybe flawed and have some filler (the album was wrtitten, produced and recorded in 6 weeks!!) and she may not write or produce like other Diva's. but this album to me sounds like what every new female r&b (Ciara, Ahanti, Monica, Brooke Valentine, Beyonce and so on)singer in the last 5 years has tried to do and failed it sounds like the prototype

I wish she would come back with another album like this! Hopefully with Clive back on board her new album will be her "comeback" record. Can't wait!

her image and music were spot on during this era, Whitney was finally cool









[Edited 7/21/05 7:50am]

My Love Is Your Love is easily her best album. If you think you're going to find any crappy 80's stuff here, you're wrong. This was the album that really made me a fan.
[Edited 7/21/05 7:40am]

Leather dresses. Stark R&B beats. Attitude. Everybody love everything about New Whitney. But then there was always more to the diva than fluffy ballads, argues Peter Lyle.

The most memorable moment at this year's super-slick and otherwise eminently forgettable Brit Awards was not strictly part of the ceremony. It came when one gushing young TV presenter was doing the usual post-event rounds, reeling off predictable questions at any worn-out celeb she could ensnare. "How did it feel to meet one of Abba?", "Did you ever imagine you'd be in the same building as Robbie?", "Just how excited are you to be in London's hallowed Docklands?". While bouncing between pop stars, she bumped into Whitney Houston, who doesn't turn up just anywhere, whose presence as a Big American Star proved that Britain was Pop Music Central once more. Backed by a battalion of leather-wrapped dancers, she had belted out her slinky, stroppy new single 'It's Not Right But It's Okay' - a record which, three months later, was still haunting the UK top 40 and about to be displaced by an equally anthemic follow-up, 'My Love Is Your Love'. Then she won nothing, providing yet more evidence of what fantastic shape British pop was in.

"So Whitney," the presenter enthused, "how did it feel to perform at the Brits?" Whitney looked down with those sleepy eyes, smiled weakly, muttered, "It was cool," and moved on.

It wasn't strictly a put-down, but it was a response that said, I've had better parties in my swimming pool. I've won a million more important awards. Your little show was cool, but I'm cooler in every possible way. I'm so cool that I really don't care if you know it or not.

Whitney, you see, has never ever questioned her own coolness. Some of the rest of us have always stuck up for it too, but the things she got up to didn't always make it easy. Now, in the wake of the strange, spontaneous success of 'It's Not Right But It's Okay', we can go public.

For Whitney Houston, 35-year-old mother, mistress of big, mawkish ballads and airbrushed Eighties icon is now running things on the proverbial street.

"I don't want to say she lost it," says David Bry, Senior Associate Editor of American black music magazine Vibe, "but people were considering her in the Celine Dion arena. Almost Barbra Streisand. Music for your grandma. Now people see her as a very credible woman."

Why, though? And how did Whitney come to stand for everything that was wrong and insincere about corporate Eighties pop music, anyway? She was the girl who grew up hanging round at now-legendary Aretha Franklin recording sessions, whose mum had sung backing vocals for everyone from Aretha to Elvis, and whose cousin was Dionne Warwick. She was a beautiful, 5ft 8in former model with endless legs and an even more extensive vocal range. For her first album, her record label coupled first-choice songs with the biggest-name producers to guarantee global superstardom. Everything was eerily professional.

'Whitney Houston', the 1985 debut, and 'Whitney', the 1987 follow-up, duly did the business. She racked up a Beatles - and Bee Gees - busting seven consecutive number ones. The trade-off was the fracturing of her relationship with her black American audience. Because of the structure of the charts and radio networks in the States, it was always going to be almost impossible to sustain an equal standing with both 'pop' (i.e. mainly white) and 'urban' (i.e. mainly black) listeners. To get on the rigorously policed playlist of mainstream radio was effectively to exclude herself from niche urban stations. The fact that Whitney never apologised for scaling the heights of pop did little to bridge the gulf. Her sex-free, silkily -produced songs of perfect love existed in the cultural vacuum of mass-market pop convention. She was simply, shamelessly, a superstar.

Then came Mariah Carey, who crashed into the US top 20 in 1990 using many of the same producers and backed by a similarly merciless marketing campaign. Soon after, there was Celine Dion who has in turn managed to make Mariah's performance look understated. Celine opened the floodgates: now we have 14-year-old country singers expressing eternal love over great oceans of ghastly strings. Whitney no longer stands for everything fake and emotionally manipulative in contemporary entertainment, simply because there are a dozen other starlets out there doing it better. Anyone who feels he need to rail against anodyne American pop should realise there are far more deserving artists than Whitney to pick on.

Meanwhile, Whitney's been more reserved. Not only have her ballads become less histrionic, her releases have been much more sporadic, while she's managed to make a decent fist of movie roles in the likes of The Bodyguard and Waiting To Exhale. These days, Whitney is staying out of our faces - so much so, in fact, that her new work is being embraced like an old long-lost friend.

Such is her standing now that Missy and Wyclef have helped out on 'My Love Is Your Love'. But this isn't an attempt radical reinvention. She tried the makeover approach before, in 1990, when she released 'I'm Your Baby Tonight', on which LA & Babyface provided an equivalently urban edge. And nobody fell for it. You can't buy credibility so brazenly unless people quietly realise they've been waiting for an excuse to like you again. What we're finally hearing now is the collision of Whitney's personality - hugely confident, less-than-wholesome - with her pop songs. We're hearing love songs about deceit, disappointment and world-weariness that have nothing to do with 'My Heart Will Go On', 'Hero', or 'How Do I Live'. 'It's Not Right But It's Okay' was all the nudging people needed to remember that, however sentimental and simplistic her songs, Whitney was never a boring woman.

A brief recap of Whitney's amorous antics over the years makes that clear. Early in her career, Houston was romantically pursued by Eddie Murphy and Robert DeNiro. Yet, despite all that swarming testosterone, it was widely rumoured that her relationship with a long-term female friend and personal assistant was far more intimate than either let on. So persistent was this allegation that, when Whitney married off-the-rails teen star Bobby Brown, some assumed that Whitney was faking happy heterosexuality, more interested in a career leg-up than a leg-over. Yet, following the birth of their child, rumours of severe relationship problems, and sightings of Brown checking out other women and checking in to drying-out clinics, they split up and then got together again. Such resilience suggested that theirs was not a suspect, Lisa-Marie-and-Jacko-style celebrity matrimony. Furthermore, it was emphatically, publicly messy.

Throughout it all, Whitney has endured. In fact, she has never acted like anything other than the biggest pop star in the world. But we are now aware of enough faults and strains to make her stardom palatable. We know that, though she may be blessed with perfect limbs and powerhouse lungs, a vast pad and an Olympic-sized pool, she's been through it. We also know that she's not the youngest, most marketable commodity on the pop block anymore. What;s the point of getting indignant about superstar Whitney Houston's reported feud with superstar Mariah Carey as they duetted on 'When You Believe' when Brandy and Monica have already indulged in a far more public rivalry?

Then there's the soothing effect of time. The night she infuriated right-on thinkers everywhere by taking the stage at 1988's Nelson Mandela tribute concert and insisting that it was "just a birthday" - thus undermining the purpose of the event, but ensuring her continued good standing with right-wing middle America - is distant memory. (Following the Mandela concert, Nelson himself said from prison that Whitney's performance had been his favourite part of the show.) And now a tune about coming out of a troubled relationship intact is still echoing around a hundred British cities in a million different mixes.

At this year's Brits, Natalie Imbruglia scooped two awards that could have gone to Whitney. But Whitney was built to last.

Those of us who still mope around the kitchen to the polished, perfect pop of 'Didn't We Almost Have It All' are still smiling. We know what counts in the long run.

But what does vainandy think of this album?

She definitely looked good but at the end of the day the only liked about four songs.

The thing that was interesting about the album was it kind of flopped intially and was a case of an album coming back after strong singles (and even stronger remixes). Sadly, while "Just Whitney" did charted well based on her scandlous interview with Diane Sawyer, the record company made to attempt to follow it up with remixes or any kind of strategy to promote the album to....well, anybody! The same thing happened with her greatest hits CD....nearly all the songs were singles but they really weren't pushed at all!

I think that MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE is her best album also...I think this album will be able to withstand the test of time a little bit better than her previous works....the remake of Stevie's I WAS MADE TO LOVE HER was EXCELLENT!

Ah...Back when there was still hope. A very good album. Whitney looked great. The repeated damage from years of hard drinking and drug abuse 2 her instrument were only beginning 2 take their toll. Her last good record. Those were the days.

The singles surely were very good. I heard the album a few
times and can't recall anything so either I just forgot or
I wasn't very impressed.

My fav whitney tune is easily "My love is your love" with
"It's not Right but it's OK" coming close second.

My fav whitney tune is easily "My love is your love" with
"It's not Right but it's OK" coming close second.[/quote]

twink69 said:

This is one of her best albums to date.

It's her only 'good' album.

Is there a "white label" remix album of tracks from this disk?

i like to have hot sex to "oh yes", followed by pink cashmere and joy in repetition

I loved this album for the moment it was out. Kinda dated now but still her best to me too.


I really really liked "I Learned From The Best" an underrated jem.

I loved her afro in the video too, a very intimate with the fans Whitney.

Now you know I wouldn't be caught dead owning a Whitney Houston album, but from what I heard of it on the radio and saw in videos, I definately saw her attempting to become more R&B. This doesn't impress me any though because she waited until R&B, as a whole, had become just as weak as she is before she went after R&B. Sure, it was easy for her then because she was a major contributor for R&B's weakness so the "Queen of Weak R&B" was simply returning to show all the other new weak singers who the real queen was.

Her attempt at R&B actually turned me off more because, once again, she was a follower rather than a leader. She had already been booed at the "Soul Train" awards by people that considered her "too white". I would have been impressed more if she continued on with her little watered down pop she was famous for instead of trying to "become black" only after being accused of being "too white". At least she would have had a mind of her own and would have had the guts to stick by it, whether people like me liked it or not.....I would have admired her for that even if I didn't like her music. Instead, she let the booers influence her just like she had let her producers influence her ealier, which led her to being booed in the first place. She has absolutely no backbone whatsoever. The only backbone she has ever showed is sticking up for that lowlife husband of hers and that's only because she's lost her damn mind.
[Edited 7/21/05 23:20pm]

vainandy said:

i'm so glad you were never the one to write my job assessment

I'm not as bad as I appear to be sometimes. Most of the time, I'm pretty laid back. However, when it comes to music, I can definately by brutal because music is something I truly love and I refuse to accept anything but the very best.

vainandy said:

Like: Bad Times I Cant Stand It?

You know it!!

vainandy said:

and and and...."Just The Way You Like It" Dub??

(do da wobot do da wobot)

Those guys definately turned that one out.

Isn't she a total junkie nowadays? I heard her teeth have fallen out... She's on the meth i hear...

I like a few songs on this album...


"It's Not Right But It's Okay"
"I Learned From The Best"
"My Love Is Your Love"


It's a consistent album.Too bad it was overshadowed by her drug problems.

DavidEye said:

Agreed. This album was he best album. Also, her supporting tour was on point b/c all her clothing was designed by Bob Mackie.
[Edited 7/22/05 8:23am]

In my area,there was a serious problem with her tour to promote this album.She was all scheduled to play at the Chronicle Pavilion (a local venue),the audience were in their seats,holding their tourbooks,waiting for the show.Then,there was an announcement...


The show is cancelled! Refunds available at the box office





On a local R&B station the next day,angry fans were calling in and critizing her.The DJ had a harsh message for her: "Hey Whitney...It's NOT right and it's NOT okay".The venue later sued her...lol...it's obvious that her drug problems were starting.

My cousin saw her in ANtwerp during the MLIYL period.
She was late & cut the gig short 2 only 40 minutes.
That includes her off stage time...people were pissed
off & the press was all nasty about her voice...She
kept pausing during 'IWALY' & just skipped the high
parts all 2gether...


I *HEART* Whitney.
"Whitney ain't NEVER gonna b Fat!"
[Edited 7/22/05 3:38am]