Timmy84 said:

Gunsnhalen said:

People are just never satisfied

Can't believe people bitched she was doing music to white... after that it was to black. Smh

Yeah they said she was "too pop" in the beginning and then got "too R&B". What the hell should she be?

That's what happens when you try to play every side of the fence, including the senior citizen crowd. Hell, she did it to herself. If she had just made some bad ass funk from the very beginning, she wouldn't have had all these different audiences and wouldn't have had that problem.

Why is it that when somebody's black people always start this "too white, too black" thing??

I never hear that with a white person.

Should the color of your skin decide what kind of music you should make???

vainandy said:

Timmy84 said:

Yeah they said she was "too pop" in the beginning and then got "too R&B". What the hell should she be?

That's what happens when you try to play every side of the fence, including the senior citizen crowd. Hell, she did it to herself. If she had just made some bad ass funk from the very beginning, she wouldn't have had all these different audiences and wouldn't have had that problem.

Why would she do bad ass funk?? I mean, she can hardly dance, her voice has nothing to do with funk, give me one reason why she would do funk?

She could have even done classical, but bad ass funk? Why?

robertlove said:

vainandy said:

That's what happens when you try to play every side of the fence, including the senior citizen crowd. Hell, she did it to herself. If she had just made some bad ass funk from the very beginning, she wouldn't have had all these different audiences and wouldn't have had that problem.

Why would she do bad ass funk?? I mean, she can hardly dance, her voice has nothing to do with funk, give me one reason why she would do funk?

She could have even done classical, but bad ass funk? Why?

cause vainandy secretly has a crush on her and wanted to see her get down

robertlove said:

Why is it that when somebody's black people always start this "too white, too black" thing??

I never hear that with a white person.

Should the color of your skin decide what kind of music you should make???

Of course not, but let's not act brand new here.

Throughout history it has been mostly black artists that have done R&B music and the pop side has been occupied by a predominately white crowd. Has there been some mixing and flip-flopping? Of course.

With Whitney, the black audience felt she had been "taken away" from them and went "too pop." They went from cheering her on and calling her the second coming in 85-87 to booing her and calling her a sell-out in 88-89.

But what I want to know is, who determines what is "pop" and what is "R&B" and who make the decision of what kind of person (white, black, mexican etc.) sings whatever type of genre.

Whitney just sang music. She wanted her music to reach all people and it did. I don't know why people get so upset at the music she did. Clive Davis knew what sold and what didn't sell in his mind and Whitney went with it until deciding to do a compromise on I'm Your Baby Tonight. The music industry has had a weird racial history depending on their views on music by artists of different colors. Like when Ray Charles' original version of "What'd I Say" was not played as much due to its supposed strong sexual content (during the Eisenhower era) but they played versions by "whites", Ray made a comment about how them doing this made the assumption that "whiter sex was cleaner than blacker sex" though eventually the original got more airplay on pop stations afterwards. I just think it's just music. The industry just thought (and to a degree still thinks) that whoever is a shade darker is an R&B artist (even if their music isn't) and a shade lighter is a pop artist (even if THEIR music isn't).

robertlove said:

vainandy said:

That's what happens when you try to play every side of the fence, including the senior citizen crowd. Hell, she did it to herself. If she had just made some bad ass funk from the very beginning, she wouldn't have had all these different audiences and wouldn't have had that problem.

Why would she do bad ass funk?? I mean, she can hardly dance, her voice has nothing to do with funk, give me one reason why she would do funk?

She could have even done classical, but bad ass funk? Why?

Whitney did like funk but she knew her limits. Besides gospel, pop and R&B was her forte. Doing funk music would've been totally out of her element. Plus her mother was Cissy Houston and her cousin was Dionne Warwick and she fit whatever they did compared to Chaka or even Aretha.

Terrib3Towel said:

robertlove said:

Why is it that when somebody's black people always start this "too white, too black" thing??

I never hear that with a white person.

Should the color of your skin decide what kind of music you should make???

Of course not, but let's not act brand new here.

Throughout history it has been mostly black artists that have done R&B music and the pop side has been occupied by a predominately white crowd. Has there been some mixing and flip-flopping? Of course.

With Whitney, the black audience felt she had been "taken away" from them and went "too pop." They went from cheering her on and calling her the second coming in 85-87 to booing her and calling her a sell-out in 88-89.

But what I want to know is, who determines what is "pop" and what is "R&B" and who make the decision of what kind of person (white, black, mexican etc.) sings whatever type of genre.

Good Question.

I think the industry does. The industry labels which stars are R&B and which stars are POP. You have specific stars that only play on R&B stations likewise with POP stations and some play on both. We have award academys like the Grammys, Ama's etc who label African Americans pop stars as being R&B and vice versa which is not fair to the artists that exactly make R&B or other genre specific music (country, rock, etc). The public has a choice whether or not they want to feed into the labels and majority of the time they do. Anybody with a good ear for music and broad taste knows the formula behind these nominations and the dividing of the radio stations by genres. Most casual listerners dont have that though

robertlove said:

vainandy said:

That's what happens when you try to play every side of the fence, including the senior citizen crowd. Hell, she did it to herself. If she had just made some bad ass funk from the very beginning, she wouldn't have had all these different audiences and wouldn't have had that problem.

Why would she do bad ass funk?? I mean, she can hardly dance, her voice has nothing to do with funk, give me one reason why she would do funk?

She could have even done classical, but bad ass funk? Why?

Oh, she didn't have to make funk if she didn't want to. There's no problem with that whatsoever. Then why promote it on R&B radio then when funk is what was dominating it at the time? Teena Marie began her career making funk and was played on R&B radio only. If little miss goodie good wanted to make adult contemporary pop, that's fine too but promote her the same way they did Teena but in reverse. They should have put little miss goodie two shoes on pop and adult contemparary stations where she belonged and kept her off R&B radio completely. Well, she wouldn't have been nearly as successful? Hell, I don't care. That would have been her problem.

vainandy said:

Oh, she didn't have to make funk if she didn't want to. There's no problem with that whatsoever. Then why promote it on R&B radio then when funk is what was dominating it at the time? Teena Marie began her career making funk and was played on R&B radio only. If little miss goodie good wanted to make adult contemporary pop, that's fine too but promote her the same way they did Teena but in reverse. They should have put little miss goodie two shoes on pop and adult contemparary stations where she belonged and kept her off R&B radio completely. Well, she wouldn't have been nearly as successful? Hell, I don't care. That would have been her problem.

But what about Soul Train and/or Video Soul playing Huey Lewis, Don Henley, Van Halen/David Lee Roth, Madonna, J Giles Band/Peter Wolf, Michael Bolton, Bus Boys, Duran Duran, etc. You can't really say that Van Halen is "blue eyed soul" either. Other acts that started out doing R&B/soul/funk had started doing more pop/crossover music before Whitney's album came out like Lionel Richie, Peabo Bryson, Aretha Franklin, Kool & The Gang, Tina Turner, Natalie Cole, Roberta Flack, and Jeffrey Osborne. Even Teddy Pendergrass was going in a more pop direction around the time of his accident.

MickyDolenz said:

vainandy said:

Oh, she didn't have to make funk if she didn't want to. There's no problem with that whatsoever. Then why promote it on R&B radio then when funk is what was dominating it at the time? Teena Marie began her career making funk and was played on R&B radio only. If little miss goodie good wanted to make adult contemporary pop, that's fine too but promote her the same way they did Teena but in reverse. They should have put little miss goodie two shoes on pop and adult contemparary stations where she belonged and kept her off R&B radio completely. Well, she wouldn't have been nearly as successful? Hell, I don't care. That would have been her problem.

But what about Soul Train and/or Video Soul playing Huey Lewis, Don Henley, Van Halen/David Lee Roth, Madonna, J Giles Band/Peter Wolf, Michael Bolton, Bus Boys, Duran Duran, etc. You can't really say that Van Halen is "blue eyed soul" either. Other acts that started out doing R&B/soul/funk had started doing more pop/crossover music before Whitney's album came out like Lionel Richie, Peabo Bryson, Aretha Franklin, Kool & The Gang, Tina Turner, Natalie Cole, Roberta Flack, and Jeffrey Osborne. Even Teddy Pendergrass was going in a more pop direction around the time of his accident.

I wasn't happy with "Soul Train" during that era either. The show's last really great year was 1982. There was also a lot of talk back then of Don taking the "soul" out of "Soul Train". Even the dancers (mainly the ladies) became more stiff and started dancing more like they belonged on "American Bandstand" rather than "Soul Train".

As for those other artists you mentioned, where did anyone say little miss goodie good was the first to crossover. Hell, the majority of the black disco acts crossed over to pop radio which is how I discovered them in the first place and also the reason I converted over to R&B radio after disco's "death". No, ain't nothing wrong with crossing over and being on both pop and R&B radio when the crossing is good. It's when the crossing is bad that it's a problem. The artists you listed that have crossed over are all good ones. I hear nothing in their sound before little miss goodie good came along that even resembles her sound in the least. And there's nothing wrong with a little stray adult contemporary R&B song every blue moon played among the better songs. But when there becomes enough adult contemporary R&B that entire full fledged adult contemporary R&B stations start popping up all over the country, then things have definitely changed for the worse because full stations of it never existed before miss goodie goodie made her impact because there wasn't enough of it to fill full stations.

vainandy said:

I wasn't happy with "Soul Train" during that era either. The show's last really great year was 1982. There was also a lot of talk back then of Don taking the "soul" out of "Soul Train". Even the dancers (mainly the ladies) became more stiff and started dancing more like they belonged on "American Bandstand" rather than "Soul Train".

As for those other artists you mentioned, where did anyone say little miss goodie good was the first to crossover. Hell, the majority of the black disco acts crossed over to pop radio which is how I discovered them in the first place and also the reason I converted over to R&B radio after disco's "death". No, ain't nothing wrong with crossing over and being on both pop and R&B radio when the crossing is good. It's when the crossing is bad that it's a problem. The artists you listed that have crossed over are all good ones. I hear nothing in their sound before little miss goodie good came along that even resembles her sound in the least. And there's nothing wrong with a little stray adult contemporary R&B song every blue moon played among the better songs. But when there becomes enough adult contemporary R&B that entire full fledged adult contemporary R&B stations start popping up all over the country, then things have definitely changed for the worse because full stations of it never existed before miss goodie goodie made her impact because there wasn't enough of it to fill full stations.

But radio mostly plays what the majority wants to hear. The "adult contemporary R&B" and "quiet storm" became popular with "buppies" who didn't care as much about the rap that was becoming popular with the younger audience. Kenny G was really popular with the "buppie" R&B audience, but probably not cool with the average person who bought 2 Live Crew or UTFO. Kenny G really popularized "smooth jazz" which was sort of the style of early Sade, then Anita Baker. Kenny was on Arista. Kenny's earlier music had a little R&B/funk to it, but Clive smoothed it out. Expose (also on Arista), was doing freestyle dance music originally, but Clive took them in a more pop direction. The music Jermaine Jackson was doing on Arista is different than what he was doing on Motown. Aretha Franklin's Arista records became more "pop". See a pattern? The "buppies" and the younger rap audience usually didn't buy the same records. That younger R&B audience were more likely to buy New Jack Swing like Al B. Sure! instead of Rene & Angela or Whitney Houston. This is how Bobby Brown became popular on pop radio without an AC sound. He even did the theme song to Ghostbusters 2. They wouldn't have done that with an act only popular with an R&B audience.

MickyDolenz said:

vainandy said:

I wasn't happy with "Soul Train" during that era either. The show's last really great year was 1982. There was also a lot of talk back then of Don taking the "soul" out of "Soul Train". Even the dancers (mainly the ladies) became more stiff and started dancing more like they belonged on "American Bandstand" rather than "Soul Train".

As for those other artists you mentioned, where did anyone say little miss goodie good was the first to crossover. Hell, the majority of the black disco acts crossed over to pop radio which is how I discovered them in the first place and also the reason I converted over to R&B radio after disco's "death". No, ain't nothing wrong with crossing over and being on both pop and R&B radio when the crossing is good. It's when the crossing is bad that it's a problem. The artists you listed that have crossed over are all good ones. I hear nothing in their sound before little miss goodie good came along that even resembles her sound in the least. And there's nothing wrong with a little stray adult contemporary R&B song every blue moon played among the better songs. But when there becomes enough adult contemporary R&B that entire full fledged adult contemporary R&B stations start popping up all over the country, then things have definitely changed for the worse because full stations of it never existed before miss goodie goodie made her impact because there wasn't enough of it to fill full stations.

But radio mostly plays what the majority wants to hear. The "adult contemporary R&B" and "quiet storm" became popular with "buppies" who didn't care as much about the rap that was becoming popular with the younger audience. Kenny G was really popular with the "buppie" R&B audience, but probably not cool with the average person who bought 2 Live Crew or UTFO. Kenny G really popularized "smooth jazz" which was sort of the style of early Sade, then Anita Baker. Kenny was on Arista. Kenny's earlier music had a little R&B/funk to it, but Clive smoothed it out. Expose (also on Arista), was doing freestyle dance music originally, but Clive took them in a more pop direction. The music Jermaine Jackson was doing on Arista is different than what he was doing on Motown. Aretha Franklin's Arista records became more "pop". See a pattern? The "buppies" and the younger rap audience usually didn't buy the same records. That younger R&B audience were more likely to buy New Jack Swing like Al B. Sure! instead of Rene & Angela or Whitney Houston. This is how Bobby Brown became popular on pop radio without an AC sound. He even did the theme song to Ghostbusters 2. They wouldn't have done that with an act only popular with an R&B audience.

Timmy84 said:

I remember reading about a rock band signed to Arista called Happy The Man. They didn't go anywhere, and they thought Arista didn't know what to do with them. A few of Arista earlier big acts were Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick, and Air Supply, so I guess that was their main market.

One of my favorite songs and videos by Whitney.

MickyDolenz said:

Timmy84 said:

I remember reading about a rock band signed to Arista called Happy The Man. They didn't go anywhere, and they thought Arista didn't know what to do with them. A few of Arista earlier big acts were Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick, and Air Supply, so I guess that was their main market.

I think from day one Arista was always a pop label. That's why people like Phyllis Hyman and Angela Bofill fell out of place. Had it not been for Narada Michael Walden, Angela Bofill would've been just as upset as Phyllis over how she was produced. Narada's also the reason Whitney got hot. In fact he stopped working for Stacy Lattisaw and Angela once Whitney (and Aretha) started working with him.

Timmy84 said:

I think from day one Arista was always a pop label. That's why people like Phyllis Hyman and Angela Bofill fell out of place. Had it not been for Narada Michael Walden, Angela Bofill would've been just as upset as Phyllis over how she was produced. Narada's also the reason Whitney got hot. In fact he stopped working for Stacy Lattisaw and Angela once Whitney (and Aretha) started working with him.

Stacy was on a label called Cotillion, which is part of Atlantic. I don't know what kind of contact she had with Clive Davis there. I think Johnny Gill was on that label too. Later, they both were signed to Motown. It's interesting that Clive signed and worked with rock acts when he was with CBS, but went in another direction when he got his own label.

MickyDolenz said:

Timmy84 said:

I think from day one Arista was always a pop label. That's why people like Phyllis Hyman and Angela Bofill fell out of place. Had it not been for Narada Michael Walden, Angela Bofill would've been just as upset as Phyllis over how she was produced. Narada's also the reason Whitney got hot. In fact he stopped working for Stacy Lattisaw and Angela once Whitney (and Aretha) started working with him.

Stacy was on a label called Cotillion, which is part of Atlantic. I don't know what kind of contact she had with Clive Davis there. I think Johnny Gill was on that label too. Later, they both were signed to Motown. It's interesting that Clive signed and worked with rock acts when he was with CBS, but went in another direction when he got his own label.

Narada didn't have any contact with Clive either when he and Stacy worked together in 1980. If I'm not mistaken Clive and Narada started collaborating together around 1983 and I think the first artist Clive hooked him up with was Angela ("Too Tough").

Timmy84 said:

Narada didn't have any contact with Clive either when he and Stacy worked together in 1980. If I'm not mistaken Clive and Narada started collaborating together around 1983 and I think the first artist Clive hooked him up with was Angela ("Too Tough").

I have that album. Narada produced the songs on side 1, and Angela produced side 2.

this is what i think of that song....

But what I want to know is, who determines what is "pop" and what is "R&B" and who make the decision of what kind of person (white, black, mexican etc.) sings whatever type of genre.

Record companies,local radio and store outlets.I think they judge R&B sales on urban radio play and how much a song/album is seliing at local record stores in the ghetto black neighborhoods.

Nothing wrong with 80s pop Whitney.Fuck the Soultrain/apollo theatre inbred crowd.