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- [00:00]
Emily Lordy
Are you overwhelmed by the current state of the world?
- [00:03]
Podcast Host
Do you need a reason to laugh? Well, do I have a podcast for you. I'm Grant.
- [00:07]
Emily Lordy
And I'm Maya.
- [00:08]
Podcast Host
And we're. Well, I Laughed, a podcast that does a deep dive into your favorite special little interest areas.
- [00:15]
Emily Lordy
And even though the topics might not always be lighthearted, we do our best to find the funny and the mundane moments.
- [00:21]
Podcast Host
Well, I Laughed. New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your shows, because, well, I left.
- [00:28]
Emily Lordy
And we hope you do too. At Amica Insurance, we know it's not just what's inside your home that matters, it's who you share it with. That's why we work even harder to protect it. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.
- [00:59]
Podcast Host
Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely overanalyze all of your favorite pop stars and then rank them in the official pop pantheon. This is your host, DJ Louis xiv. A couple quick housekeeping notes up top. We are still looking for a couple new audio editors to join our team. Freelance. Is that you? Is that someone you know? We're ideally looking for people that are familiar with the show, so hit us up@poppanttheonpodgmail.com if you are an audio editor looking to collaborate with new clients. We also have our main Pop Girls Dance party coming up next week, Friday, February 27th at the Parkside Lounge in the East Village. Grab your tickets in the show notes of this episode or by going to poppantheonpod.com don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to it now. Follow us on social media at PoppantEonpod. Buy our merch at PoppantTheonpod.com and subscribe to our patreon at patreon.com potpantheon where we do weekly bonus episodes of this show. You can also get the audio only directly in the Apple Podcast app. All right y'.
- [01:59]
Emily Lordy
All.
- [01:59]
Podcast Host
The title gave it away when we put out requests asking what y' all want to hear. One of the biggest artist a sides that has always come up perennially is of course the Voice herself, Whitney Houston. And finally, we have arrived at that series. I'm going to lay out a little bit about how this series is going to unfurl. This series will happen in four parts. Today's episode, episode one, will focus on Whitney's early life and her first run of albums, 1985's Whitney Houston, 1987's Whitney, and 1990s I'm youm Baby. Tonight the second episode will focus primarily on Whitney's soundtrack run from 1992's The Bodyguard through the Preacher's Wife, and the final episode will cover Whitney's late 90s blockbuster My Love Is yous Love, her later period work, and of course some of the tragedy of her later life. The fourth episode will be a tier ranking episode where we will be debating where Whitney Houston falls in the pop pantheon. This has been an incredibly moving, insightful, uplifting, sad, tragic, exalting divine journey for me, prepping for this and getting to record with all of our amazing guests. I hope you're all as excited about embarking on this journey as I am and without further ado, here is pop Whitney Houston Part 1 We talk about talent as a gift, an endowment bestowed from the divine which we are to cherish, thrive on, and if we are able, share generously with the world. For Whitney Houston, her universal anointment as the Voice, perhaps the single greatest singer to ever grace the charts and this earth certainly operated that way, a blessing from God which she employed to touch the hearts of billions and became her ministry on this earth. But talent can also be a burden and maybe even a curse, a heavy load which at times we don't want or may even be unable to bear. Whitney Houston's story captures this too. The godly, the tragic, immense generos and ego, repression and unbridled freedom, blessings and unbearable weight, and perhaps most clearly, the duality of struggle and sheer glory inherent in possessing a once in a lifetime talent.
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Emily Lordy
How will I know if he really loves me I say I'm pray with every heartbeat I fall in love whenever we meet I'm asking you cause you
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Podcast Host
know about this Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey to a musical dynasty. Her mother, Sissy, started her career when she was a child as part of the Drinkard Sisters, the first gospel outfit in history to sign with a major record label. Later, Sissy founded a girl group, the Sweet Inspirations, who worked as session singers for Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley, and scored a top 40 hit of their own with Sweet Inspiration. Sissy later struck out on her own and scored a couple minor solo hits. The matriarchy surrounding Whitney also included her first cousins, the legendary singers Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick, and Leontine Price, another cousin who became one of the first black performers in American opera. Then there was her godmother, Blossom's lead singer, Darlene Love, and the Queen of Soul herself, Franklin, to whom the Houstons were closely connected. Whitney's parents, Sissy and her husband John were devout Baptists and Whitney began singing in the church choir. Once she had announced her own intentions to sing professionally at age 9, Cissy took it upon herself to train Whitney. By 14, Whitney had joined joined her mother's backup band, playing live gigs and occasionally singing solo. Next came her own stint doing background vocals for everyone from Lou Rawls to Chaka Khan. Throughout her teens, Whitney was offered numerous recording contracts off the back of her transcendent voice, a technically flawless marvel of clarity, tone control and power. But her parents insisted she first finished high school in 1983, the year Whitney turned 20. Legendary Arista Records chairman and quote the man with the golden ears Clive Davis, heard Whitney perform at a New York City jazz club and insisted insisted on signing her, beginning one of the most successful pairings in music business history. Whitney's first credited appearances were a pair of duets, a soul ballad, Hold Me with Teddy Pendergrass, which was a top 10 R&B and AC hit and take Good Care of My Heart, a duet with then paramore Jermaine Jackson. On Valentine's Day 1985, Whitney Houston released her debut self titled album. Sales were initially soft but were soon lifted by a powerful array of singles, each laser targeted to steadily grow her audience. First was the quiet storm burner Give Good Love which broke Whitney with black audiences before gradually hitting the top five of the Hot 100. But then came the Clincher, a trio of number one hits, the smooth AC ballad saving all My Love for your, the exuberant dance pop number How Will I Know and Greatest Love of All, a self empowerment ballad that would become one of Whitney's signatures.
- [06:54]
Emily Lordy
The Greatest Love of all oh it's easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself it is the greatest love of all.
- [07:18]
Podcast Host
This singles run established Whitney Houston as a blockbuster commercial force to be reckoned with. The New York times crowned her pop's new queen in 1986. It also helped propel her debut to one of the best selling albums of the 80s, spending 14 weeks at number one and earning a diamond certification. It also established Whitney as a global star with a total haul of 25 million copies sold around the world. The record garnered seven American Music Awards and a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance. Whitney Houston has had a long lasting effect and is often cited as one of the foundational texts of diva pop. It's part of the Rock and roll hall of Fame's definitive 200 list and has been named by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest albums of all Time. To Follow it up, Clive and Whitney doubled down on the something for everyone formula that had worked magic the first time around. The result was 1987's Whitney, a mix of uptempo numbers geared towards the MTV crowd and big broad show stopping ballads which could dominate radio. This time, Whitney notched four more number one hits. The bombastic power hymns Didn't We Almost have It all and Where Do Broken Hearts Go? And so Emotional, a funkier, edgier dance cut. Most indelible was the lead single, I Want to Dance With Somebody who Loves Me, a mega hit which essentially doused gasoline on the fire of Whitney's already red hot career. The ebullient banger topped the charts in 17 countries and was certified eight times platinum. It has endured not only as one of Whitney's most memorable hits, but as one of the biggest and best pop songs of all time. I Wanna Dance with Somebody has been named one of the 200 best songs of the 1980s by Pitchfork, one of the 500 greatest songs of all time by Rolling stone, and in 2023, Billboard ranked it as the best pop song of. Whitney was the first album in chart history by a woman to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. It stayed put at that perch for 11 consecutive weeks and earned diamond certification, eventually selling more than 20 million copies worldwide. It also extended Whitney's run of number ones to a whopping seven in a row, a record that holds to this very day. While Whitney's pop approach on her sophomore record was a smashing commercial success, by the late 80s there was a simmering backlash to her ubiquity, particularly amongst black listeners, some of whom felt Whitney was trying too hard to appeal to white America. This culminated at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards where Whitney was nominated for best R and B Urban Contemporary Single Female for Where Do Broken Hearts Go. When Whitney's name was read, the crowd began to boo and chant. Whitey Houston, Whitney initially decided, dismissed the criticisms, stating, quote, if you're gonna have a long career, there's a certain way to do it and I did it that way. I'm not ashamed of it. But many read Whitney's third album as a response to these criticisms. At that very same award ceremony, Whitney met breakout new Jack swing pioneer Bobby Brown, who'd himself just scored a slew of funky, edgy hip hop indebted hits from his debut album, 1989's Don't Be Cruel, and would rather infamously go on to become Whitney's husband for her third album, 1989's I'm youm Baby Tonight. Whitney turned to the producers from Brown' album Babyface and L A Reid and borrowed elements from his new Jack Swing sound. Also, for the first time, Whitney served as executive producer. I Am youm Baby Tonight missed the number one spot on the Billboard 200, but topped the R and B chart and was the best selling R b album of 1991, eventually moving 10 million copies and earning quadruple platinum certification. It produced two number one hits on the Hot 100, the power ballad all the man that I Need and the searing, rhythmically complex and and sexually charged title track produced by Babyface and Reid. If Whitney Houston had never made Another song after 1990, Whitney, we'd still remember this opening run as one of the biggest commercial blockbusters in pop history. But as it turns out, Whitney was just getting warmed up. Here with me to discuss Whitney Houston's rise to superstardom is Vanderbilt University professor and author of the forthcoming book holding the Life, Loves and Art of Whitney Houston. Emily Lordy. All right. I am here with writer, professor, critic, and author of the forthcoming book holding the Life, Loves and Art of Whitney Houston, due out in September. It's Emily. Lordy, Emily, welcome back to the show.
- [12:10]
Emily Lordy
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
- [12:11]
Podcast Host
I'm so thrilled to have you, and I am so beyond excited for this book. I cannot wait to read it. I can't think of a better person to be writing it than you. As I mentioned to you off mic, I'm so jealous that you're finished writing your book. But that's a story for another moment. I can't wait for this book to be out there and for everybody to get a chance to read it. I guess the first question I really want to ask you is, what made you want to write this book? Like, what drew you to wanting to tell this story? And does it have anything to do with sort of correcting broader narratives about Whitney Houston, one of the most famous and spoken about singers in modern history?
- [12:47]
Emily Lordy
Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess I'll start by saying that my training as a critic is really around black women singers and redefining their legacies and holding them up and showing that they have contributed so much more to American music history and the culture than one might give them credit for. And so it was sort of ironic that it didn't occur to me to apply that same analysis to Whitney Houston. You know, I was coming up, I was looking at figures from older generations, earlier generations, like Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday or Aretha Franklin. I think that Whitney, who is somebody who I grew up with, seems so familiar. And I'm saying this because I think for a lot of people in our generation, this is the case that she almost didn't seem worth thinking about, that we hadn't been accustomed to thinking about her, because we sort of took for granted. Well, yeah, she's the voice we sort of. Of thought we knew. Or I thought I knew. I'll speak for myself. The contours of her story, which had to do with this illustrious rise and tragic fall, premature death. So it really wasn't until somebody else kind of nudged me and said, there's a need for this, for a book. A Whitney book. Right. And would you be interested in writing such a book? You know, the first really comprehensive analysis of her that takes in all the other sources that we have and does try to do. A real thoroughgoing analysis of the music, the artistry, and a reevaluation of her meaning. And I realized, like, there's so much more to her than meets the eye, that she was such a visionary. She had ideas about what she wanted to do and for herself as well as for a broader group of black women artists across the entertainment industry, you know, in TV and film and fashion and so on. And so I guess I fell in love with the idea, you know, as one does, of really getting to know Whitney and showing people just the depth of her personality, the intensity of her faith and the immensity of her contribution
- [14:39]
Podcast Host
to the culture that's incred. And as you're speaking, you know, one thing that I was really refamiliarizing myself with as I was researching this. Cause I grew up with Whitney, but more like 90s, mid to late 90s Whitney. Like, you know, I was born in 87, so I wasn't really like, cognizant of real sort of like, mega peak era Whitney, you know, mid-80s through, you know, Bodyguard and all that kind of stuff. But I was passingly familiar. Like, the Whitney of my imagination is more idiosyncratic, a little bit out there, kind of erratic, more R and B centric. You know, I think about the Whitney of, you know, Heartbreak Hotel and My Love Is yous Love, who had, you know, fully leaned into and embraced her place within the black music pantheon more clearly. I obviously also think about the more troubling or, like, you know, the more sort of chastised parts of her public Persona. Her relationship with Bobby, her relationship with drugs, her Oprah interview, you know, all of the kind of things that, like, made her sort of like A larger than life, but almost kind of like laughingstock at certain moments in her later period of her life. That was more my Whitney. And so what I was really interested in familiarizing myself with as. Or re. Familiarizing myself with, I should say, as we went through the research process for these episodes, is like the narratives that circled around Whitney prior to those becoming the narratives, I. E. This idea of her as this sort of figure burdened by this colossal talent, but somebody that remained sort of like a puppet and sort of someone that was unknowable through her work and was sort of pandering away from black audiences. And I'm curious, I guess, in that, like, do you remember having those perceptions of her? And did this book process sort of serve as an unlearning of those ideas for you too? Or did you enter them already feeling like you were bracing against those particular narratives as well?
- [16:30]
Emily Lordy
I would say that the interesting, eccentric, erratic Whitney is the one that I came to later.
- [16:38]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [16:38]
Emily Lordy
That the Whitney that I grew up on, born in 1979, was the Whitney of her debut album in the 1987 Whitney I'm youm Baby Tonight.
- [16:47]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [16:48]
Emily Lordy
And this kind of more polished pop princess image of Whitney, as Richard Corliss of Time magazine famously called her, she was like a black Barbie doll.
- [16:57]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [16:58]
Emily Lordy
This was in an article that he wrote that was called the Prom Queen of Soul, which was sort of like a backhanded compliment, you know, like Aretha was the queen of soul, and Whitney, her inheritor of those soul legacies in a post civil rights moment, is the Prom Queen of Soul. So that was kind of the image that I had of her. And I also do remember a moment of being like, this is too much Whitney, actually, and being sort of turned off. Although I her as a kid growing up, there was a moment when I remember hearing I Will always love you, the acapella intro to that song come on the radio. And I was like, I can't. I just can't hear this song again. It was so ubiquitous that, yeah, it was a over saturation point that I. That I reached and sort of turned away from Whitney also toward Mariah and other 90s icons that were coming out at the time and just seemed cooler and perhaps more like relatable to me. So it was just really through the process of now revisiting her that I am able to see just how stranger she felt, free to be in public through the 90s, how much blacker the image becomes. And you know, it works like Waiting to Exhale and Preacher's Wife and others that we won't be touching on today, but just that there is such a range to her Persona and her versatility as an artist and just the quirkiness of her personality, that, again, wasn't immediately apparent to me, but it is very clearly there.
- [18:18]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean, I'm really excited to track these early years with you. And also, I think within the context of what we're talking about today, to a very important inflection point, obviously, which is the Sultran Awards moment, and sort of how that sort of reoriented her around her work, around her approach to her work, around her role in her work, around her role as a pop cultural figure along racial. I mean, that is just, like, I think, perhaps the most pivotal moment in her entire career in some ways. And so I think it's really interesting that we're gonna get to kind of, like, work on both sides of that line. And I'm gonna be so interested to hear about your perceptions of how. How she conceives of herself and thinks of herself, like, as refracted through fame and the pressures that sort of land on her shoulders as the voice, as the most successful black woman in music history to that point. And the other part of it that I was so interested in as you were speaking just now is, you know, you. Or maybe some elements of the public feeling sick of Whitney's ubiquity, and me wondering, like, is there moments where Whitney was sick of her own ubiquity or where Whitney's ubiquity was also her own sort of burden that she had to bear as an artist, as a person, as somebody that, like, you know, definitely, as her career advanced, felt deeply, like, misunderstood, it seems like, to me, by the general public and by all of the narratives and pressures that she faced. And then obviously all of the struggles that ensued, at least partially from, like, the pressures of who she was and what she had achieved and, like, had she lived in a different environment or a different ecosystem that, like, didn't work her in the way that she was worked or that she didn't feel compelled to work in the way that she worked. Like, could she have been a happier person? Could she have lived longer? Could she have. You know, that's one thing that's been, like, deeply on my mind is like, the price that Whitney paid for who she was as a person and this sort of music industry that she represented. Like, she is the peak era of the peak era music business, Right? Like, she is the biggest selling of the biggest selling in the biggest era of like, Chinese chart position, record breaking, you know, her partner in crime, Clive Davis, is the most obsessed with that of any record executive ever and is the most Machiavellian at that. So in some ways, she's at the center of this perfect storm where, like, I don't know, I don't wanna use the word exploited because, like, that takes away some of her agency. And I know that, like, those are some of the narratives that I don't wanna necessarily feed into, but I did have this overarching feeling of, like, did the circumstances of her life and career also ultimately become partially her undoing in this sort of tr. Is that accurate to you?
- [20:53]
Emily Lordy
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think you put it very well. I think the work of being Whitney Houston and of being that anointed voice and that representative of black possibility was immense and at a certain point, I think, insufferable, certainly, I think without the escape of drug use, it was insufferable. It was insufferable to be that famous as a black queer woman at that time. And I think I. At first, I think she was thrilled. I think it was very thrilling. I mean, she was young, she had wanted this. We'll talk about this, I'm sure. But she had worked and trained and labored and strategized about this career for years before she finally signed to Arista with Clive Davis and was, you know, became this massive recording star and toured the world. And. And I think she. She really did love it enough for the cost to be worth it for a while. But, yeah, I think the combination of, you know, I talked to her producer narrator, Michael Walden, about this and he says, you know, she did she this moment where people like her, Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, these massive stars, and the music industry is just discovering for the first time how much money can be made from their labor, right? It's like, oh, so. And all of a sudden people can just be everywhere all the time, right? Or you can do this, you can do that, you can do that, make this video, make this record, do another one, go on tour, right? Circle the globe again and again. They could do it. But, I mean, Madonna, of those artists is the only one who's still with us. And that is not a coincidence. It's not incidental. So the way that they were worked, when the tabloid industry that was feeding off of whatever personal life they might have had left, and that was. That was new too. You know, people would want to have Whitney in for an interview. She didn't really have the time or the interest in doing and talk to her not about the work that she was doing to be Whitney Houston and the concerts that she was giving. The most rigorous, incredible vocal performances, I would say, of any pop artist maybe ever. But they wanted to know, like, are you. How are you doing with Bobby? You know, like, talk to us about your marriage. Talk to us about that engagement that you missed, right? The show that you didn't show up for. You know, she says in a profile in the 90s to Danielle Smith, like, I just really get tired of hearing my name. So I think, yeah, she was sick of hearing about Whitney. Reading about Whitney, seeing her face on these tabloids, and just having to be everywhere all the time and all things to all people. And I think she handled it with an extraordinary degree of grace.
- [23:12]
Podcast Host
Actually, almost too much grace. I mean, I think the grace, maybe too much grace, that's one thing that this era, as I prepared for our talk today, just felt suffocating. Like, the idea of the pressure she was under as a black woman with this level of success and quote, unquote, crossover, big air, quote, success there that we will obviously be talking about today. Like, the pressure on her to be this elegant paragon, you know, this sort of, like, to hold up this very particular veneer of respectability, you know, it just feels suffocating, you know, in retrospect, looking back on it, you can feel how suffocating that must have been. And not only that, but over the course of the period that we're even talking about today. But then beyond that, you can just see in those interviews how she changes, you know, how she eventually goes, you know, from being the pageant queen, the perfect emblem of everything that she's expected to be as she is in these early interviews when she first gets on these talk shows. And, you know, she is just perfect with a smile on her face and every answer is just perfectly rendered. And she's got it all at end. The. And then, you know, by the late 80s and into the early 90s, she's starting to be a little bit more like, well, I don't really want to fucking be here. And like, she's given attitude and she's, you know, and obviously that's only going to extend, but, yeah, just the sheer weight, you know. The last thing I just want to say before we get into it is sometimes with these big stars, you almost feel like, here's the person and then here's Whitney. It's like, here's Whitney and here's Whitney. And like, the pressure of those two things, like coexisting together this idea of, like, who you are as a person, and then this entity that is just this humongous, monolithic figure that, like, walks alongside you that you invented but is now beyond your grasp and isn't even really you. And, like, I don't think most humans really can understand, like, what that must feel like. Like, what does that feel like to have these two you's or something like that. Like, one of which is the human that walks around in your body and your mind all day. And then the other, this thing that you bore, that is this thing that is completely, like, moved beyond your grasp, but is the way that most people in the world think and interact with you. I just think that is just like, such a crazy dissonance to think about with stars of this stature. It's just like. And I think that is what undoes a lot of them. Like, that dissonance, the pressure that that creates, I think, is why in many ways, we don't have Michael, we don't have Prince, we don't have, you know, name them all, all these big stars that have left us too soon. Like, I think that that dissonance and that pressure and all of that stuff between the famous you and the real you and all that stuff can really, really, like, mess with your mind, Especially with, as you were talking about, when you're also dealing potentially with identity issues where you don't really know who the real you is or who the real you is, creates an immense amount of conflict within your family, within your being. I mean, that's the underlying. The undergirding tension of Whitney's career. And in some ways also, when I was going back through some of these songs and this is like my own curse as a queer person. And, you know, maybe you have your own version of this where it's like, I see everything she says and does through the lens of queerness sometimes. And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I didn't realize that was what's saving all my love for you as a man. Even though it wasn't obviously. You know what I mean?
- [26:21]
Emily Lordy
I do, I do. Yeah.
- [26:22]
Podcast Host
Okay, so let's go back in time to the beginning of this story. And actually what I would like to hear about a little bit, because it is so deeply imperative to the Whitney Houston story is, like, who are Whitney Houston's parents? Like, what is Whitney Houston's lineage about? And particularly her mother, Sissy Houston, who is, in and of her own, a very successful figure in the music industry. And, like, you know, obviously we can't tell the story of Whitney without talking about Sissy. So, like, what do we understand about Whitney's family before even Whitney comes along? And, like, what are the things that are important about understanding in that milieu?
- [26:53]
Emily Lordy
Sure, yeah. So it begins, in some ways, our story can begin with Cissy Houston, who is born in 1933 in Newark. And she is the eighth child born to her parents who were from Georgia and migrated up to the north and south, search of better opportunities. But poor, like, really had very, very little. Lived in a tenement building in Newark, which was still a rather segregated city at that time, although a black city and a hub of a lot of black culture. And exciting jazz artists would come through. And so they were sort of aware of that, although not involved in that. Sissy's family, because they were very deeply religious, so there were prohibitions against secular music in the home. Although, again, she and her sisters found ways to, like, listen to Billie Holiday or Dinah Washington record, Since My man and I Ain't together. When her parents were away, when her father went out on Saturdays, they loved all sorts of music. And so that's a really important part of Cissy's identity, musical identity, this roving musical imagination. Even though her training was in the church, her mother died when she was very young. And her father coped with that loss in part by pouring his energies into his children, who he realized, once realized they could sing. That was, as Sissy puts it, like the end of our carefree childhood. And we became a family. We talked about this with the Jackson 5, right? This history of the family band. And so they became. I mean, they weren't drilled as rigorously as Michael and his siblings, but. But Sissy and her siblings were a gospel group that their father trained.
- [28:30]
Podcast Host
Just lift him up.
- [28:32]
Emily Lordy
Just lift. Go. They went around in local churches, you know, they would sing. And so that was really the definitive experience of her childhood. She and her siblings became quite popular, had a very good run in the gospel industry at the time. This was known as the golden age of gospel. And they performed at Newport alongside Mahalia Jackson with these, like, really important gospel figures. Sissy later, as so many of our great gospel artists do, like Sam Cooke, turned to the secular musical realm and she had her greatest success there. She was a solo artist for a while, but before that. And you know, what really defined her career in pop music was that she was the architect of a acting group called the Sweet Inspirations. And this is four part harmony that she sort of arranges and that she goes on to produce you know, with this singing group and they back up artists like Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley. And they're on Brown Eyed Girl.
- [29:38]
Podcast Host
Just like that.
- [29:39]
Emily Lordy
You know, they have all these incredible pop hits. And Sissy realizes that, I mean, she really elevates the backing group to the level of an art form. The backing track, right. She realizes this is the hook. These are the hooks that people are going to sing along to are created by the background singers. And she's very inventive. She'll like, play with songs and think of different things to do. And that, I think, too, is important for Whitney. You know, she's coming up just what she learns how to do. The way that she learns that a pop song is malleable and is subject to sort of deconstruction and reconstruction depending on the meaning that you hear in it and that you want to imbue into it. So that's Sissy Houston. Cissy, during the course of her gospel career, meets an older, very debonair gentleman named John Huston. More kind of middle class sophisticate. He describes himself as a gospel groupie. Immediate liking to Sissy. John has a child from a previous marriage as Siss, and they have then two children together, Michael and then Whitney, of course, born in 1963.
- [30:39]
Podcast Host
What is Sissy's sort of like by the time Whitney comes along, like, relationship to her own career singing? Like, does she feel that she has unfulfilled dreams from having sort of been this background player? Is she fully celebratory of this idea of herself as a supporting sort of player in this way? I mean, obviously she's achieved all these things. She's a member of the first gospel group ever signed to a major label. She establishes this huge network in association to the point where, you know, Aretha Franklin is a friend of hers. I mean, she's obviously, you know, had a ton of success, but she's never really broken out. I just think it's really interesting thinking about, you know, Whitney Houston being the most successful solo act of all time in some ways, or one of the most successful solo acts in all time, and her mother having sort of pursued but not fully lived that out. Is that a thing for Sissy as far as, you know, like, are her unfulfilled dreams instilled into Whitney? I guess is what I'm trying to get into. Into this.
- [31:35]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, of course, I understand question, and I've wondered that myself, but I don't really think that Sissy had it in her. I don't think that was like a secret desire of hers to become this great star, I think, frankly, and this might sound sort of like sexist, but I really think that. And Dionne Warwick says this. Dionne who I should also say was a cousin to Whitney, although she was 20 years older than Whitney. But when she. Dion writes an introduction to one of Sissy's memoirs, and she says that once Sissy had children, she became very mother oriented. And I honestly think that what she wanted to do was, yes, to have a fulfilling career in music. Not only as a backing singer in the various studios in New York at the time, but also as a club singer where she sang her own versions of pop and R and B hits, and perhaps most importantly, as a music minister at her church, the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark. I think that she did want to do all those things, and I think she also wanted to be with her kids. And so there's a story that she tells about setting out on the road with the Sweet Inspirations, who, again, were torn with people like Elvis and had, you know, very active career throughout the 60s especially. And she kind of packs her bags and she gets ready to set out again. And her kids, Gary, Michael and Whitney come out and just, like, sit down on the curb and start weeping because Mom's leaving again.
- [32:52]
Podcast Host
Oh, my God.
- [32:53]
Emily Lordy
And she says she just, like, takes the bags out of the trunk of the car and like, walks in and puts them back down and. And that's how she quits the group, is how she tells the story. That's how she decides to stop singing with the Sweet Inspirations and. And instead, you know, does sign another label and releases some solo records that don't do as well. But I don't think that she regrets that choice. I think that she's delighted that Whitney announces her own ambition, as Whitney does when she's maybe 8 or 9 years old, to have a singing career. And I think she relishes the opportunity to make that happen for Whitney, not because it didn't happen for her, but because this is Whitney's dream.
- [33:28]
Podcast Host
That's so interesting, and it's also somewhat chilling foreshadowing to Whitney's own relationship with her own daughter, in a way, because it's like almost like an inverse. That lineage is chilling, in a sense. And like, again, gets back to, like, what does it mean when you really have a success? Because in some ways, again, Sissy, very successful, but not in the same way, not with the same pressures as what it meant to be Whitney Houston, you know, and, like, how does that warp how these relationships and with inter familially play out, et cetera. It's interesting to think that Sissy had an off ramp. You know, she could have an off ramp and choose to be a mother. Can Whitney Houston actually have that same off ramp when it comes to her own children? Like, that's more questionable given her level of success and fame. I find that really interesting. Okay, so Whitney is born. I didn't realize that Whitney literally witnessed the Newark race riots when she was a young kid, which is so interesting. Like, what is Whitney's childhood like? Obviously it's atypical because she grows up with a successful parent, you know, in the music industry. Like, what is Whitney's childhood like?
- [34:26]
Emily Lordy
So she's born in Newark. She witnesses the race riots when she's very young and has memories, vivid memories of them. And in part because of that, the Houston's move from Newark to a suburb nearby called East Orange. When Whitney's still a kid and that's where she grows up, they have a home that becomes like a neighborhood hub where all the kids come, they have a pool, you know, two parent, household, like, kind of solid sense of unity. And that is great in a way, I think that Whitney is, in a sense, a homebody. She's a kid who likes being home. She has a really good time goofing off with her older brothers who are sort of her protectors and also people who are getting her into trouble that she loves, loves, because, you know, she's apparently just like a fearless kid who just wants to try things, wants to, like, go, like, drive her dad's car when she is, like 12 years old, because she sees her older brother Michael, who's two years older than her, doing it, and she's like, oh, I saw you doing it, so I'm gonna do it too. You have to let me or else I'm gonna tell. Like, just kind of mischievous, you know, like. Like a mischievous kid. The only girl. So, like, beloved and getting away with things, you know, this kind of like angelic kid who could, I think. I mean, not that sissy would let her get away with things, but certainly, certainly I think she knew how far to push it, right in terms of her rebellious streak as a kid, but, you know, beloved by her family, liked being at home. You know, the neighborhood kids came around. She was also a target of a great deal of jealousy precisely because of these advantages and because of what she describes as having, like, relatively light skin and long hair. Her mom would dress her in, like, these pram little Outfits and do her hair in braids. And she talks about the girls at school, when she's quite young, bullying her and, like, chasing her home and threatening to beat her up and. Yeah, yeah. And so that, I think, is just a very formative, as it is for any kids who are bullied at school, like, a formative experience, having to try to rethink your position vis a vis your peers. And for somebody like Whitney, who was such a standout, I mean, who was so beautiful and so talented and such a vibrant spirit, I've wondered a lot about, like, how she found a place. I guess maybe one thing that I think about this is that the stage was a safe space. Space for her. Church was a safe space for her to be as fabulous as she was. Right. Because at school and some of these other places, like, it's not really safe, that it's going to get you in as much trouble as it might earn you praise from certain people. So you kind of learn where it's safe to be fully yourself and again, as just extraordinary of a person as you really are. The other thing that I'll say about the bullying is that that is foundational to the story that all the Houstons tell about why Whitney takes such refuge in church. And Whitney herself says that her mom understood that the place to bring a girl who needed a friend was to church. And so Whitney starts going to church even more than she was before, because now she becomes part of the choir. And her mom, who, again, is the music minister at the church, has her in all these different choirs. And so she's there, like, five days a week. Like, it's a huge part of her life to be singing and, you know, praising God on a regular basis and finding her place, finding her people and, as she puts it, you know, a place where she didn't have to pretend to be anything that she wasn't. Like, people kind of accepted her for who she was.
- [37:39]
Podcast Host
Wow. So are we meant to understand Whitney's, like, churchly upbringing as self sort of generative? Like, is that something that she really, like, gravitated towards naturally, as opposed to, like. I mean, most kids you hear about being in church and your assumption is their parents threw them in church? I mean, when you hear about kids going to church a lot, it's usually not something that, like, they're necessarily gravitating towards. But is it fair to say, like, Whitney kind of, like, gravitated in a very, like, organic way towards being in church that way?
- [38:07]
Emily Lordy
I think in a way she did. I think it was complicated as it is for kids. You know, there's a part of her, I'm sure, that hated it and that didn't want to get up and be in the 8am Sunday morning choir that wanted to go out and party on Saturday and didn't want to have to do that, of course. And also her mother, you know, once Whitney expressed her desire to become a singer, her mother trained her in a way that could be shaming. Like, it was so intense that, you know, she would just call her out in public, you know, in the public forum of the choir and just berate her for not being perfect and not caring as much or trying as hard as she thought that she should. So it was a complicated space for her and one that she didn't always enjoy. But I think that when she got up there, like on a Sunday morning and was free to sing in the way that she wanted to sing or had been. Had learned to sing, but there was something so authentic, I guess, about her connection to spirit that I do think it was. It was like a full body release for her that she loved and cherished. I wanted to become a singer when I was about 13. You know, that's when I realized that I wanted to be a professional singer. But, you know, prior to that, I just sang. You know, I just sang in church and I loved to do it. So, yeah, I started in church. You remember the first song you ever sang in church? Yes, I remember the first song I sang in church was a song called Guide Me. Great. Feed me till I want no more.
- [39:44]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So how does the singing become apparent? I mean, obviously.
- [39:49]
Emily Lordy
Wait minute.
- [39:50]
Podcast Host
A Whitney Houston greatest singer of all time? I mean, is she just opening her mouth at age 5 and she just is singing Whitney Houston? Like, how does the voice come into focus for her, for the family? I mean, you said that at age 9, she announced that this is her ambition. But, like, how does that happen? Like, how do you. How does. As someone who can't sing at all, how does that happen? Like, do you just start singing? Is that like, what happens here?
- [40:12]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, I think she kind of started singing. I think she enjoyed playing around, singing. She would sing Sonny and Cher songs with her brother Michael down in the basement. I got you, baby I got you, baby. She would make him be Sonny and she would sing a share of horror. And I mean, she had incredible pipes, I think, even at a very young age. And her dad, John Houston, would be like, oh, like, stop that racket. And Cissy would be like, she's training, She's Practicing, it's okay.
- [40:40]
Podcast Host
Right, Right.
- [40:41]
Emily Lordy
Singer, a kid who liked to sing, who had real potential. And once Whitney told her mother this is what she wanted to do with her. Her life, her mother started training her in the choir. She would, you know, even at home, they would go through scales together. They would talk about breath control. They would talk about. I mean, some of the other tenants of Whitney's training by her mother were. Cissy would say, people write what they write for a reason. And so you really have to be faithful to the message of the song. You can't just get up there and, you know, sing it because you want to sound good or show off. Like, you need to be very faithful to the melody and the message and the lyric, at least the first time that you sing it through. And this is important because we're going to see this in her approach to pop songs for the rest of her career.
- [41:23]
Podcast Host
Right. And something that she got criticized for a lot was sort of like the perfectionism, the idea of sort of like everything being exactly in its right place. And that somehow got criticized as lacking soul. I mean, there was some combination of that that feels like it actually was both her strength. What made her such an incredible vessel as a pop megastar, but also was a point of contention for a lot of her critics at a certain point was her lack of improvisational quality in her recordings in particular.
- [41:50]
Emily Lordy
That's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a little more nuance, at least as I hear it. I think that she does usually sing the first verse kind of straight, without embellishment, and then she goes on to elaborate increasingly, you know, in other iterations of the verse.
- [42:01]
Podcast Host
I'm not even propagating those rumors myself. I'm just saying that seemed to be a narrative that got calcified about her.
- [42:07]
Emily Lordy
It's true. And it's true that. I mean, some producers have talked to me as. And described it as a more kind of white style to sing it just that faithfully, even from the beginning, to sing a song that faithfully down to the letter. And so I can see how it get coded in racial terms. But, yes, that was part of the training that Sissy really instilled in her is if you're going to sing something, you have to be faithful to the way that it is written, and then you can mess with it, but you have to show that you know how it's supposed to go, and you can't just be getting up there, you know, Sissy Houston's daughter and just like, singing the song you know, like, you're going to do this, right? And it was very important to her, and it became very important to Whitney, so to attribute her success to that foundational education, you know, from her mother. But I think, you know, eventually she learns enough, or Sissy has enough faith in her to let her start singing solos in church. And that becomes, like, a big watershed moment for her, you know, around age 12 or so. And she sees how people respond to what she's putting out there as a soloist with the choir, you know, this young kid with extraordinary pipes. And so that's just affirming. And then Sissy sees how people respond, and her father sees, and everybody's like, oh, okay, this is really a thing. And there are a number of origin stories that she will narrate. Another is when she performs, like, more pop concert with Sissy. Sissy is the main act, but Whitney would sing background for her mother or come on as a featured artist in certain moments. And so one of the songs that Sissy would do, speaking of just the roving quality of her musical interests, was the song Tomorrow from Annie. Sissy is singing the song, and Whitney comes on for a verse at Town hall in New York. And the way that Whitney recounts the story to Oprah and others later on is that the audience surges toward the stage when Whitney starts to sing. And her mother's like, this is prophecy. I was 13. My mom had put a show together which included my brother and myself in her act, and we sang background for her, and my mother had recorded the version to Annie, the Broadway show Tomorrow. So tomorrow. And I had the spotlight rug come
- [44:15]
Podcast Host
out when I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely.
- [44:18]
Emily Lordy
And my mother was performing here at Town hall, and I will never forget. I was to this side of the stage. I walked up to the front, and I began to sing, and the whole
- [44:28]
Podcast Host
audience rushed to the stage.
- [44:29]
Emily Lordy
It was that moment that my mother said, God has smiled on you, and this is what you're supposed to do. So it's another. Another moment of, like, reconfirmation that this girl, this young woman, is going to be massive and that she's anointed.
- [44:42]
Podcast Host
She's anointed.
- [44:43]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. It's a God given. It's God's plan for her life.
- [44:46]
Podcast Host
I cannot help but feel like there's such a beauty to this. And then there's also just this, like, inherent pressure that exists in this girl's life based on two things you just said. One, the idea that she's anointed from God, with this voice, which, like, is obviously, you know, could be anyone's dream. I mean, I. I wish there is Emily. If there's one superpower I could have, it would be to sing. I wish. Like, I look at Whitney Houston or Mariah or Adele, and I'm like, how good must that feel to be able to, like, excise your spirit and emotion that way? Like, I will never know what that feels like. I mean, I can try, but I don't sound like that. I'm sure it doesn't feel like what it feels like to sing as Whitney Houston. I mean, almost nobody will ever know what that feels like, right? But that's a burden that gets hoisted upon her. Like, she almost is, like, the steward of a thing that isn't even hers. Somehow. The narrative sometimes feels like, to me, even though of course it is hers, but it's like there's this feeling of, like, oh, you're the voice. It's this thing that you have to, like, hold and protect. It's like you're like Lord of the Rings or something like that. Like, she's holding the ring. You know what I mean? She's got the ring.
- [45:51]
Emily Lordy
Absolutely.
- [45:51]
Podcast Host
And then the idea of, like, being Sissy Houston's daughter, right? Like, before she's Whitney Houston, she's part of this dynasty, this gospel pop dynasty. And it seems like, from what I'm gleaning from what you're saying, like, Sissy doesn't shy away from, like, placing that pressure on her. It seems like she sort of is going, you are Cissy Houston's daughter, and that means something. And you are upholding my name as well here. Is that true?
- [46:17]
Emily Lordy
Yes, it is. And that what Sissy learned when Sissy was singing gospel as a child is that the purpose of singing is to strengthen your own faith. Every time you sing a gospel song, you're strengthening your own belief, and you are convincing others of the reality of God. And that's something that she impresses upon Whitney, too. I think whatever Whitney is singing, what Whitney is doing in the world is, in some ways, missionary work, is that she's strengthening her own faith in the God that has given her this talent, and she's distributing it to others. I mean, in a way, saying, like, this is what it's possible for a person to do, right?
- [46:48]
Podcast Host
And what's interesting, though, and this is what I want to kind of ask you is, like, what is the alchemy of gospel and pop within young Whitney Houston as it will then sort of generate through her music? Because Whitney also exists in a lineage where those two things are deeply intertwined. Like, if Whitney is, you know, Aretha Franklin's goddaughter or whatever is. I don't know what the exact title that Aretha character is that right? Was she goddaughter?
- [47:09]
Emily Lordy
I think Whitney sort of, yeah. Appointed herself, perhaps?
- [47:11]
Podcast Host
Yes. Appointed herself.
- [47:12]
Emily Lordy
God, daughter.
- [47:12]
Podcast Host
Okay, fine.
- [47:13]
Emily Lordy
Whether or not Aretha decided that, but yes.
- [47:14]
Podcast Host
Yeah. But is there a more emblematic figure in pop history of somebody that is, like, right on the line between. Between, like, synthesizing, you know, spirituality, Christian music and pop music than Aretha Franklin? I mean, she is the embodiment of those two things coming together, you know, Like, Aretha is both queen of the pop charts, you know, a pop artist and also, like, always inherently seen as somebody that is using their music for spiritual purposes or is alchemizing the spirit of the church onto the pop charts, whatever the hell that is. She's the number one, right? Not the hell. I shouldn't have said that. Whatever. Whatever that is. Yeah. So, like, in young Whitney Houston's life, like, I understand her relationship to church. What is her relationship to pop? Like, is that something that is equally part of the sort of altar that she's worshiping at as she comes into herself as an artist? Like, are those two things interplaying in this moment, or is it really mostly kind of a church and gospel thing for her as she comes up as a teen?
- [48:10]
Emily Lordy
This year's girls trip to Telluride was the best. We one upped ourselves with my Sapphire Preferred card. And with 5 times points on Chase Travel, plus 3 times points on vacation homes with top brands, we got this incredible cabin. It was a mansion, and with three times the points on dining, we ordered a wagyu steak dinner, and that pistachio gelato was too good. So where should we go next year? I've got ideas. Chase Sapphire preferred the card that's preferred for a reason. Cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval terms apply. Carter's has your family covered for every summer. First first steps, first swim lesson, or first sleepover. Our clothes help kids and parents shine, thanks to comfy design and easy dressing details. Visit Carters.com to shop the latest styles or find a Carter store near you.
- [48:57]
Podcast Host
Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on carved carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast.
- [49:20]
Emily Lordy
An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. Well, I think that the leading lights of Whitney Houston's musical life growing up are her mother, Cissy Houston, and Cissy's pop career, as well as her gospel. Aretha Franklin is a huge idol of hers. Chaka Khan is perhaps her most favorite artist. And you know, Robyn talks about Whitney listening to Chaka and being like, Shaka's so underrated. Like, she's such an incredible vocalist. And she has an incredible precision of timing that Whitney would also have. The annunciatory precision as well with the lyrics. You know, Dionne Warwick is another important figure. Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson in the Jackson
- [50:18]
Podcast Host
5, Karen Carpenter, I was reading.
- [50:20]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, yeah, Barbra Streisand.
- [50:21]
Podcast Host
I mean, Barbra Streisand was coming up big for me in this prep. Know,
- [50:34]
Emily Lordy
I was always certain love would grow. Absolutely. I mean, Whitney enters a New Jersey, like a local New Jersey competition as a teenager, and she sings a Barbra Streisand ballad, evergreen, and she comes in second. It's incredible because she takes too much time. I guess she exceeds like the time limit that you have. And so she loses the trophy or whatever because of that. But just to say, like, Barbra Streisand, I think is in the incredibly important figure here. And so, you know, pop is important to Whitney, as is the foundational congregational worship of, you know, the gospel tradition. The fact that gospel is fundamentally improvisational, congregational, community form. Right. That it doesn't exist for records, I guess that's one thing to say. So Whitney Houston comes out at a moment where the pop record, as we were saying, is paramount. People are figuring out how to. To make incredible pop records and how to distribute them and make more money than ever on them. And I think she's interested in that. I mean, I think she. She likes pop music. Like she and Clive Davis actually have a lot of the same taste.
- [51:41]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [51:42]
Emily Lordy
I mean, Clive, who also signs Dion and also signs eventually Aretha Franklin, I know who he kind of blurs away from. I think she's at Atlantic at the time. But I think Whitney loves a good pop song and she is steeped in the gospel fire, the Baptist tradition that it's to. Going. Going to make her own thing of that pop music. And she loves the, you know, the grand dame chanteuse of Barbra streisandolina Horne, the elegance of that. In other words, there are so many different influences that are. That are coming into play. And I think Pop becomes the most compelling vehicle for her. But she's doing so much more than creating pop records, right?
- [52:19]
Podcast Host
Absolutely. I mean, I see her in that tradition. And I'm always just interested in, like, you know, it's just funny to me, but. Because the person that Whitney is often uttered in the same breath as, just in retrospect, is Mariah. And I find their two coming ups very interesting. Cause Mariah Carey comes from pure pop background. Like, Mariah Carey did not grow up in the church. She grew up at the church of the radio, of pop radio. And, like, that is such a fundamental aspect of how I think about Mariah Carey. Even though, like, there are so many ways in which their music intersects. Whitney ultimately is, you know, alchemized through the church. Pop is part of her career. So I'm just always interested in the way those two things play out, particularly when it comes to black musical figures like this, you know, where, like, the church is so foundational to the culture that a lot of them are arising from. You know, most of the time, that is the story, you know, and it's the story for so many of our biggest, you know, black pop figures. Mariah's actually, like, a strange exception to the rule in that way. So I'm just always interested in that interplay. Because I think Whitney's career bears out that interplay. And in some ways, like, her career represents her kind of, like, marching back towards her gospel roots, somewhat, like, through her discography. Like, whether you're thinking about, like, the Preacher's Wife or the way her music sort of starts to, like, interact more directly with black musical forms that are, you know, find their own roots in the church, et cetera. But it's obviously always part of it. And obviously it's just the spirit behind what she's doing. That's the thing that I love about what you just said. Like, no matter what she's doing, like, her mission is driven by this, like, love of God and that she's here to serve that broader purpose. You know, I do think the more I study this stuff, I think the biggest, most successful stars of music, most of them are really, really religious. Like, it's a huge thing. Like, Beyonce wins an award, and no matter how many times she wins an award, the first thing she's thanking is God. I mean, every single time. And it's such a common thread. It's one of the most common threads I notice. And I just wonder if, like, is that how people make sense of their gifts and fame? Like, you're handed this Thing that makes you so extraordinary. And of course, some of it comes from your upbringing, et cetera. But, like, I wonder if, like, it's very, very difficult to, like, make sense of why you're in this position when you become that successful. And in some ways, the only way to answer that question for yourself and with, even before fame, just what it means to have this talent. And the only way to sort of answer that question for yourself is God. It strengthens your belief in that you are servicing a larger plan. Because otherwise, why are you here? What. How have you been given this thing that separates you from most people or has given you so much? I don't know.
- [54:44]
Emily Lordy
I love that. And I think, yes, I think it becomes a powerful explanatory tool for people as to, I, me, why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why do I have this degree of success? Why are people looking to me like I am something so much larger than myself? It is exactly because God is working through me. I think people really believe that. And I think it's not just, how did I get here and what am I doing here, but how am I going to survive this? And I think the only way people account for their ability to survive that degree of pressure and labor and anxiety is by saying, God is seeing me through and, like, really believing that. So Whitney herself would say, told an interview, I think in the 80s, that every time she came off stage after a concert, she would thank God for allowing her to endure, which she had just been through. Thank you for letting me do this and letting me endure this. I mean, it's. It's a lot. Even for somebody who is fearless, who believes in herself, who believes God is on her side and that her gift is an anointed one. It's just a lot. It's just. I mean, it's unfathomable to me. Like you were saying about, like, not being able to sing. Like, I can't sing. And I also don't know what it's like to get up on stage night after night in front of thousands of. Of people and just do that. And I think the only way you do it or understand yourself to be able to do it is to say, like, there's a power far larger than myself that is continuing to carry me through this.
- [55:59]
Podcast Host
Absolutely. Absolutely. It seems to be the only way that many people can process this. I just find that to be a really interesting thread through a lot of these superstars. Okay, last question I want to ask you before we leave these early years is you mentioned Robin, I'M going to lay out that I'm confused about how to talk about this because I don't want to. You know, Whitney didn't necessarily share that much of this side of her through her own words. We know Robyn has spoken about it in her book. You know, it's a widely rumored thing. Whitney's queerness is widely rumored, widely, you know, discussed, but not from Whitney herself. How should we understand that part of her? I mean, Robyn comes into her life very early. This is many people view as probably one of the loves of her life, a very important figure. Like, how should we talk about that, do you think?
- [56:41]
Emily Lordy
I think that her relationship with Robyn was, as you said, one of the most important relationships of her life. It was one of the great loves of Whitney's life. They meet each other in 1980 at a community center, I think, in East Orange, where they're both working as camp counselors for the summer. Whitney, I should say, too, I didn't mention, in addition to her life in the church and the black Newark roots, she attends a predominantly white Catholic school for most of her schooling. The Houstons want her to be in a space where she's presumably not going to be bullied, they think, and, you know, where she's going to get a truly el. You know, girls education. So they spent a lot of money sending her to this very white school where, you know, she sort of does it, but she's not particularly invested in it. I mean, part of what she's doing throughout her childhood is professionalizing. So I think she is well liked, but she doesn't have the kind of like, so the time to invest socially in becoming popular, because a lot of the time she is at church or she's accompanying Sissy on her club dates or in studio sessions where she's singing backup and she's just, you know, she's modeling also, I should say, Right. Eventually landing on the COVID of Seventeen magazine. And she's sort of known. I talked to one of her childhood friends who says that the hype at school about Whitney was not even her voice, but the fact that she was in magazines, that she was a model.
- [57:53]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [57:53]
Emily Lordy
And that she kind of downplayed all of it, again, perhaps because of her early experiences being bullied, but she was, like, low key. So she meets Robyn, and I think Robin is the person that she can be herself with. You know, she can be fully herself. She can be an aspiring, ambitious, professional, you know, somebody who is so taken with the idea of living out this dream. Robyn will sit with her, you know, in the living room at home and listen to her. Whitney plays her Sissy's records and explains what is so great about everything that Sissy does or Shaka's records, and she's, like, breaking it down. So it's like a musical education that Whitney has gotten. And I think her relationship with Robyn, who takes her so seriously as a person, you know, and as an aspiring artist, is so important because it allows Whitney to occupy that seat of authority and to be the one who's teaching and schooling Robin on, you know, the nuances of the finer points of Chaka Khan's incredibleness. And so. So she listens to her, and she continues to do that. I mean, they are lovers, and they have a very intense and important sexual dimension to their relationship. You know, in Whitney's late teens and really through to maybe 83, when she signs with Arista Records. And at that point, as Elyse, Robyn attests, she gives her a Bible. Whitney presents her the Bible and says, we can't. We need to end this aspect of our relationship. Like, I want you in my life forever. I love you unconditionally, but we cannot keep this doing this right? We just can't get something together because people are gonna ask. They're already asking questions.
- [59:16]
Podcast Host
You said, she gave you a Bible
- [59:18]
Emily Lordy
and said, hey, we can't.
- [59:19]
Podcast Host
You know, we can't. This is early in her career, before the first album. It was early in our friendship when she said that she did not feel we should be physical any longer because it would only make our path more difficult, that if folks found out about it, that they would use it again. She told me, she asked me to love her. If you love me, love me unconditionally. And she was worth it. So I strived for that.
- [59:48]
Emily Lordy
And so I think, in a way, it's an act of resistance even for Whitney, to keep Robyn around for the next 20 years. Right. Despite all the rumors. But she needs Robin. Robyn loves her. Robin protects her. Robin listens to her, and Robin is the person who has her back. I think with all the other stuff going on and all the money that's to be made off of Whitney Houston, all the pressures and demands, I think, you know, Robyn tries to let Whitney be who she is. And when she needs a break, Robyn encourages her to take a break. And when she needs, like, to wear something better for a video, like, Robyn sees to it. I mean, there's. Robyn is so instrumental to so many parts of Whitney's creative, professional, personal, spiritual life that her importance to Whitney's story cannot be overstated, even as I appreciate the delicacy with which you're approaching the sexual dimension of their relationship.
- [60:31]
Podcast Host
Yeah, it just as sort of like a foundation. Foundation myth. It's so tragic, you know, I can't view it as anything other than that. And again, I'm not putting any labels on Whitney. I don't know what, you know, she never shared her Alphabet with me, so I don't really know what it is. But it's like, you know, talking about the sacrifices of what it means to be Whitney Houston, to carry this talent in some ways, the idea that, like, letting go of this love right as the career is about to begin, there's just something really hunting. Especially when you think about Whitney and the sort of struggles of her life and the pain of her existence and the pain of, like, what it meant to be her and, like, her having to grapple with that. I just find that to be a really, like, moving and sort of tragic inception myth in some ways about, like, what Whitney had to sacrifice or give up to be Whitney. What Whitney person had to sacrifice to be Whitney Houston. The person, the celebrity, the monolith.
- [61:25]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. No, I mean, I agree with you. I think there is a loss there. And I would say, though, that it's a testament to the agility maybe, of those women's. Their relationship that they were able to sustain each other's lives for so long.
- [61:39]
Podcast Host
Regardless, they found a way to stay together. That's a nicer way to think about it, I think. And also, you know, there's the glory of the church, you know, puddings Ramond or whatever. But there's also the nefariousness of Christianity and the role that it plays in Whitney's life. And I think this is the moment where we really see that. I mean, you know, it was not acceptable under her God, I guess, you know, is what I assume about the queerness element of Whitney's life. I imagine that that was part of the grist in that part of her being, I would think.
- [62:10]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I can really only look to Robyn's book and what Robyn says. I mean, Robyn has this beautiful moment that she narrates the first night that they sleep together. Apparently, like, they're staying at, like, Whitney's cousin's apartment somewhere in Newark or New York, whatever. And it's this beautiful moment of integration of, like, the spiritual and the romantic and the sexual and just platonic, I guess. But she's reading, like, Whitney is there in the apartment, like, reading the Bible, smoking weed, talking about how cool Jesus is, and then she and Robin sleep together. And that's also great. And it's like, oh, like these are the spaces. I think about it in relation to, like, Baldwin's metaphor of the room in Giovanni's room, right? Like, there are these certain spaces where you can be everything that you feel you need to be, but you can't bring that out. You can't be out. Right.
- [62:52]
Podcast Host
The world, people can't.
- [62:53]
Emily Lordy
People can't understand.
- [62:54]
Podcast Host
She could handle it inside of herself, but others, she could handle it.
- [62:57]
Emily Lordy
She and Robin, I think, believed that God was on their side, right? That. That a love this strong and powerful and sustaining was divine. I think they believe, at least according to Robin, they did believe that. Were other people ready to believe? Was Cissy Houston ready to believe?
- [63:11]
Podcast Host
No, no. And also, like, was Clive Davis, right? And also it's like 1983. It's like peak of the AIDS crisis. I mean, it's a dark time for queerness at that moment as well. It's just a very fascinating element of the story. And I just wanted to make sure that we didn't, like, pass it over because it just feels. Feels so foundational in so many ways. Okay, back to Whitney Houston's career. So how does Whitney Houston become Whitney Houston? Like, what's the journey from Orange to, you know, Arista. Let's put it that way.
- [63:38]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, yeah, sure. So she graduates somehow from her private girls school despite, again, like, not like sort of phoning it in on most levels. I mean, she was very. She's very smart. She could get away with doing minimal amount of work, but, you know, she graduates and at that point, the Houstons sign her to a talent agency and they start having these showcases for her so that people can come see her and label executives like Clive Davis are at these shows and eventually start competing to sign her. I think finally, the two major players in this are Arista, headed by Clive Davis, and Elektra Records. And she ends up signing with Arista despite having less creative freedom there. Because Clive Davis is known as the hitmaker, the man with the golden ears, right? And that he will tell her which songs really have potential and which don't, and she trusts him. And I think this is an important aspect of that story. Story, because as much as Clive has been figured as this Bengali figure who's calling all the shots and getting all the repertoire together and, you know, just putting massive amounts of capital behind making Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston, she decides to sign with him. Like, she chooses him as Much as he chooses her. And she and Robin know who Clive is. They're again, they're studious, they're. They're listening to the records and they're reading the liner notes and they're seeing who are the major players and what is Clive producing. And they're seeing that he's involved in people like Janice Joplin and Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin and Santana.
- [64:57]
Podcast Host
Barry Manilow.
- [64:58]
Emily Lordy
Barry Manilow. And just like all these big players. And again, for a girl who wants hits, who wants to become a star and who knows that she has the capacity to do so, it makes a lot of sense for Whitney to sign with Clyde. And so she does that in 1983. She appears on Merv Griffin shortly thereafter. And that's like her national television
- [65:19]
Podcast Host
spine tingling.
- [65:26]
Emily Lordy
So I know that it's real. It's real. It's a real,
- [65:33]
Podcast Host
to me, truly incredible. I watched that the other day for the first time and I was like, holy shit. Because you know what it is, it has this element that runs through some of Whitney's music. I think sometimes for better or worse, in this earlier period where you're like, how old is this girl? Cause like, sometimes she's presenting herself as like, you know, some of the songs. And we'll get to the second that clip, five picks for her. I'm like, why is this 20 year old girl singing these middle aged ballads going on, right? But then there's these other moments like when she sings home, where it's like the beautiful intersection of where is this young, skinny little girl mustering this authority from this true authority? And I think you've done such a great job of laying out that a lot of that comes through her confidence, just comes through the mission that she's on. And you can really see that. I mean, it is just like she steps on stage and I know we use this term a lot, but it's like she was born to stand at that microphone and sing that song. And she fucking knows it. And it is just like you're watching God. It does feel like you're watching God. When you see that happen. It's incredible. It's incredible.
- [66:36]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, one of my favorite moments in that particular performance is where she sings the line, I know where I'm going. And she kind of changes it a little. She's like, I know, I know where I'm going. She. She gets this little look, but I know, I know where I'm going. And I can't help but see that as like, a meta commentary on her career. Like, this is a girl who knows where she is going and it's going to be far from home in a way, but it's exactly where she needs to be.
- [67:01]
Podcast Host
It's so interesting, too. Like, I don't think I fully realized, like, so Whitney, as you're characterizing it, like, really sees the full potential that she has on deck. So that's why she sees the. Clive sees in her the culmination of all of his work to this point. Is that a fair characterization? Like, he's gonna basically take everything he has learned in the music industry and he has stumbled upon the absolute perfect vessel for what he does. Well, is that a fair characterization?
- [67:28]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. I think that. I mean, Clive is older, so, you know, his tastes are slightly more.
- [67:34]
Podcast Host
Also gay.
- [67:36]
Emily Lordy
Also gay. Although he doesn't admit as much until. Until What? He's like 80 years old or something? It is very interesting. So he loves the women singers. I mean, he loves Dion and he loves Selena Horne, and those are the two women that he compares Whitney to when he introduces her on the Merv Griffin Show. So he begins almost like, I mean, the interview. It's so funny because we would never see an interview like this now with the label head rather than the artists themselves. But Merv is talking to Clive right in the beginning of that segment, and he's like the man with the golden ears, you know, he's like, really big up in Clive. And Clive says, you know, as he's introducing his new quote, unquote discovery, that she is in the line of people like Lena Horne and Dionne Warwick, and we could imagine them as like passing the torch to her.
- [68:18]
Podcast Host
It might be a cliche, but you feel that tingle down your spine and you just know that you're in the presence of somebody special. But if the mantle will ever pass, even though Lena's as great as ever and Dion is as great as ever, but if the mantle is to pass to somebody who 19, who's elegant, who's sensuous, who's innocent, who's got an incredible range of talent, but guts and soul at the same time, it will be Whitney Houston, in my opinion.
- [68:44]
Emily Lordy
So I say that to say that that, I think is kind of how Clive sees Whitney as the person who is in that mold, but in the moment of Michael Jackson and Prince and these other artists, has the possibility to become the biggest black woman in the world.
- [68:58]
Podcast Host
Right. And that's what I want to ask you next Is what is the world of being a black female pop star in the middle mid-80s? Like, I mean, it's a really interesting moment. And as we mentioned earlier, like, Whitney is seen as breaking a lot of ceilings when it comes to quote unquote, crossing over, which is a big term at this time. You know, I think that's something that, like, we still use that term, but I don't think we use it in quite the same way. I think in this era, in many ways it's a racialized term. Right? Like, the idea of crossing over is like, can a black singer get out of just performing for black audiences? Right. Is that kind of like a characterization of how they might be thinking about crossing over? And like, what does it look like? Like, what kind of marketplace is Whitney entering as a black female singer in this moment? And how white Clive might be looking to rewrite that through Whitney's success, Right.
- [69:44]
Emily Lordy
Well, I think that her first album and the material that is assembled for that first album is a good indication of this because it is such an admixture of like Quiet Storm on the one hand, kind of adult contemporary, R and B on the other than a very poppy song like, how Will I Know? And so it's sort of trying to play to all these different demographics and kind of see like what's going to work. I mean, it's not unusual for first artist album. Is it a whole just amalgamation of different things and it's kind of like a market testing opportunity to see what people like. Right. What people want more of and what takes off. But the other thing is that black artists have to be broken on, quote, unquote, broken on black radio before they have any possibility of crossing over. So that's why the lead single is you Give Good Love, which is very much tailored to black radio. And she has massive success there. I mean, it's slow building, but. But that's really the first fan base or first this is among black listeners.
- [70:30]
Podcast Host
Before Crossing over is the feeling from Clive that, like, because this is what I was sort of understanding about how he's sort of trying to conceptualize breaking Whitney is that, like, there's a chance that if they play it too far towards black audiences, that she will never get above a certain ceiling. Like, from what I was reading about how they were thinking about this, there was a feeling in that time period that, like, as a black female singer, if they posited her as too much of a sort of soul R and B singer, that at a certain point people wouldn't be able to think of her outside of that. Is that like a fair characterization of how the early 80s might have been sort of quote unquote, ghettoizing black female singers?
- [71:08]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, I think that that is fair that you start with a certain amount of. A certain degree of a black fan base. And Janet Jackson is somebody else who is worth thinking about in this regard. You know, has a black base in part because of her affiliation with the Jacksons. Her debut album is 1982. And Janet is somebody who is sort of crossing over around the same time. Although the button isn't pushed on Janet in quite the same way to the same extent that it is on Whitney. Very different artists, too. I just mentioned them because they are contemporaries and they're looking to each other and they're often pitted against each other. Right.
- [71:38]
Podcast Host
And they're kind of yin and yangs in a lot of ways in terms of, like, what their talent sets are too. So that's really interesting as well.
- [71:44]
Emily Lordy
Totally. Yeah.
- [71:45]
Podcast Host
All right. So the first album gets put together over a series of years. Her first appearance is on this Teddy Pendergrass song, Hold Me. That's kind of like her first big breakthrough, Hold Me, you hold me strong. And as you mentioned, Clive and Whitney put together this album as like a kind of giant market testing experience. Or maybe another way to put it is like it is Machiavellianly plotted out exactly like Clive, from what I was reading into it. Like, Clive sees exactly how to play this. Or Clive and Whitney together. I mean, maybe you can help me understand how that worked, how they worked together on this. But it seems like they essentially, like, plot this step by step. And I'm talking about black audiences, big radio audiences, burgeoning MTV audiences. Like, there is one single building upon the next to max maximize commercial viability. You mentioned the first single is you Give Good Love. This is kind of her, like, Quiet storm R and B moment.
- [72:46]
Emily Lordy
You give good love to me, baby, so good.
- [72:53]
Podcast Host
If this is like the first moment that many people are meeting Whitney, like, who is the character that is presented on this song? Like, who is Whitney Houston as we meet her in this debut single?
- [73:03]
Emily Lordy
Well, I think she's kind of like what you are describing as perhaps a little older than her, years beyond her years. You know, this is the Whitney who's been groomed more in the tradition of a Dionne Warwick or a Lena Horn or even a Diana Ross, Barbara, you know, who were chanteuses of an earlier era. But there's also a real, like, eroticism to that.
- [73:23]
Podcast Host
What is giving good luck.
- [73:26]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's also a little line in there. Never too much I think of as an allusion to Luther Vandross's hit from 1881. So there's definitely like a sense of like a new quiet storm black musical aesthetic emerging there that she is inhabiting and I think putting over very convincingly. It's not my favorite Whitney Houston song, but I understand what it was meant to do and the kind of image that it was meant to present of a very alluring, very talented, elegant black woman artist who is going to appeal in that case, I think to a slightly older audience. But as you said, there are other tracks on the album, like Someone for Me, where she literally describes herself as
- [74:13]
Podcast Host
a 17 year old, right.
- [74:18]
Emily Lordy
Which is maybe three years younger than what she actually was. So. So there's also like the young kind of like disco cuts that are geared toward more fun, dance oriented place.
- [74:27]
Podcast Host
Yeah, there's a whiplash on this record to me in that regard. Like there's a feeling of like. Okay, let me just say it this way. There's so many great songs on this album to me. Like How Will I Know, which is, I believe the third single is like one of the greatest pop songs of all time.
- [74:45]
Emily Lordy
How will I know if he really loves me? I say I'm falling. Know about these things.
- [75:01]
Podcast Host
You know, on this song you have Whitney Houston really kind of like conversing with young MTV sounds. It's like kind of almost like a post disco kind of synth pop song. To me, this is the song that encapsulates Whitney the best on this record. Because her joyousness in this performance is just incandescent. Like, it's a song about puppy love, right? About like not understanding your feelings. And she is so happy about not understanding her feelings. And she conveys so much joy in that experience that it's transcendent. Like, it's truly. Even though this song is so simple and it's about such like a basic young topic, I think this song illustrates to me Whitney Houston the most clearly of any of the songs on this debut album. Because the way she sells the joy at this feeling, at a feeling that isn't necessarily that joyful, like confusion. Not exactly like a feeling that I always associate with joy. But Whitney somehow elevates it into like a spiritual place on this song. So, yeah, so like you get that kind of like youth energy there. And then you have like these ballads, these like Big Broadway, almost like, I think Greatest Love of All in some ways, like, is the clearest representation of Whitney's burden in some ways because it's a song about sort of like loving yourself, right? It's a song about like, you know, the Greatest Love of All is actually not about. It's not a love song. It's. It's not a romantic song.
- [76:25]
Emily Lordy
Learning to love yourself. It is the greatest love of all.
- [76:35]
Podcast Host
The Greatest love of all is a song about finding love for yourself, which in and of itself takes on a bit of a tragic bent when you think about like Whitney's broader trajectory. But it also is kind of like a song that I think conveys the burden of being Whitney. Like this idea of her as a prophet teaching your children. Well, she's sort of extolling from virtues on people.
- [77:10]
Emily Lordy
Lead you to a lone lady.
- [77:19]
Podcast Host
This idea of just her as like superhuman, I guess, comes across on this song. She's supposed to rise above it all and be bigger than life in this way, honestly.
- [77:27]
Emily Lordy
Totally.
- [77:27]
Podcast Host
And I love the Greatest Love of All. So just in those three songs alone, you get kind of like just such a broad array of Persona in a way that it can be hard to locate. Like who is the person at the core of this stuff?
- [77:40]
Emily Lordy
You know what I mean? I do, I do. And I think part of who she is is a consummate actress who has learned again from her mother to put the meaning over. Whatever you're singing, listen to the word, enunciate them perfectly and mean it. Find a way to sing it like you mean it. Like you are that 17 year old girl sitting home alone and someone for me. Or like you really are that confused girl and how will I know? Or like you really are old enough to like believe the children are our future. Even though you're kind of a kid yourself.
- [78:06]
Podcast Host
I was going to say you believe children are our future. What do you mean? You were literally a child.
- [78:10]
Emily Lordy
You know, as you're talking, I'm realizing for the first time that there is an interesting consonants between her performance of How Will I Know and Greatest Love of All. Because think about what you were saying about how well I know, like the joy and the buoyancy in that song from the very beginning. Like the opening, there's a boy who sings that high. Like it's so insane blowing the roof off from the very beginning and then just showing us from there just how high you can actually go and how far it's possible, right, to ascend. But the joy has nothing to do with the boy. In fact, it's the joy of her own capability. Right? It's the joy of being able to sing like that. And so that's why it sounds so happy, even though she's narrating an experience of confusion. And so maybe I'm sort of contradicting myself because that's a song where maybe you don't completely believe the lyric. But I think what she's showing is precisely that, like, there's something so fun about being young and confused, you know, and, like, not knowing and how will I know? And you have all these, like, old school phones in the video and, you know, just, like, asking your friends. And so I think that there's, like, this sense that even just being in this place, being yourself in this place of confusion, is, in a way, an extraordinary experience. And when you transpose that idea into greatest love of all, where it really is about, like, what's inside of me, I guess, you know, that the greatest love is inside of me. It's not like with whatever boy or whatever girl or whatever person, whatever audience. Like, it is about this thing that I am finding continually needing to find again and again within myself. And not for Whitney. I think it's best embodied in and manifested through what she's able to do with her voice. Right.
- [79:42]
Podcast Host
Well, that's the thing that's so interesting. And, you know, so much of the criticism that gets lobbed at Whitney through this era is that her songs exist as sort of like a little Olympian fields for her to display her talent. Like, it's not about anything other than, like, here is a structure into which you can sing. And it is interesting because I think it's. I don't think that's fair necessarily, but I do understand, listening to those songs, that criticism, I don't know that it's a problem. That's the thing that I think that you're sort of illuminating for me. It's like she just needs vessels to express her joy of singing. And, like, that's really, in some ways, the fundamental purpose of these songs. And, man, do you feel that in these songs. I mean, it's crazy. Like, I, for instance. Okay, like, I agree with you. I don't think you Give Good Love is like, the greatest Whitney song. You know, I do. Like Saving All My love for your, which is the other big number one hit from this song that we haven't talked about yet.
- [80:43]
Emily Lordy
Yes, I'm saving all my love yes, I'm saving all my love for you
- [80:51]
Podcast Host
which, again, like, wildly different vibe than some of these others. I mean, in this song, she is like the woman who a married man is cheating with. And there's Something really tragic about this song actually to me, like when I think about it and it's so weird. I've heard this song a zillion times, but I've never really thought about it that much. And I think that has to do with what we're talking about, which is that like, I mostly look, listen to the song to like hear Whitney's joy of singing. I don't know if I listened to the song necessarily to get the narrative, but the narrative is really sad. And then when you sort of couple, I was thinking this time the narrative with the joy with which she's singing, there's something even sadder about the song because this woman, this character as portrayed by Whitney's performance is so utterly convinced that she is going to win out in the end, and yet I don't feel that she is going to. That it actually makes it like a very sad. I don't know if that's how the song is really written, like how the character of the song is written, but it's how Whitney performs it. Like when she says, like, you know, no other woman is gonna love you more. Like, she sings it in this way where she's like, I'm about to win. I'm coming out on top in this. And I'm like, I don't know if that's what's really happening on this song. And so there is like a bit of this dissonance that happens there that is, I think, a function of what you're talking about in the sense that like the joy of singing is what the emotion that Whitney is riding through these songs, not necessarily the story, story of the song lyrics itself being paramount. And I think that's sort of told in the way that like, I don't know if I've ever processed the true story of saving all my love for you until I was really thinking about it for this episode. And I guess the other point I was gonna put out about that is like, here you have. That is a middle aged ass song. That song is miles away from how will I know? To me, like, that is a Barbra Streisand ass song right there. You know what I mean? So you come through all of these singles and it's like, it's this. This really weird experience I find where I'm like, I love this girl. I'm so in awe of her talent. I mean, it is just boundless and captivating and she can take even songs on this album that I don't even like. And she elevates them with her sheer joy and talent like that is star quality. Right. Like, there are songs on this album that I'm like, I don't even like this song. But, like, I love listening to her sing this song because it's fucking wit. You said she can take anything and make it great, but it's just kind of like, I found it a weird feeling walking out of listening to this as a whole album being just like, kind of like what just happened. Like, who is this at the center of this? I do understand where some of that criticism comes from. Related to, like, Whitney being unknowable through some of this early music because of how just kind of market tested it is and all over the place. It feels in that way like the central organizing character doesn't feel clear. When you listen to Control by Janet Jackson, you were bringing her up earlier, Vicky. Very clear who that character is. Narrative story, every lyric tailored to tell this very particular story. You know, the performance is consistent. This record feels kind of the opposite
- [83:33]
Emily Lordy
of that to me in some ways. Absolutely.
- [83:35]
Podcast Host
Does that feel fair?
- [83:36]
Emily Lordy
It does, it does. And I mean, it's an interesting counterpoint because Janet, Control is so much about her control. I mean, she can't say enough in the introductory spoken part of that album that, like, this is about me. This is my control. I'm taking control. This is really mine. So I think that the control that Whitney is exercising there is in part just singing the shit out of every song she is given.
- [83:56]
Podcast Host
Totally.
- [83:57]
Emily Lordy
And I think that on a meta level, it is. I mean, I want to see it as part of a message about representational politics and the possibilities for black women artists who had been really cordoned off into these very separate, segregated sectors. You can sing blues, jazz, R and B. Right. These are the things that one can do. And Cissy says this, you know, she says the triumph of Whitney Houston is precisely that she can sing whatever she wants and she can sing it gloriously. She doesn't have to be beholden to these narrow categories. And so you can see Whitney as moving in the tradition and are did the same thing, and Dion did the same thing, and, you know, her mother did the same thing of really laying claim to a world of musical inheritance. Right. All the different. The spectrum of different things that one can do. And in that way, it feels like a powerful, almost like statement of race pride, you know, to say, this is all that a black woman pop star can do and be in this moment. I agree that there's not a cohesive sort of character there, but I like the idea that there's a cohesive mission
- [84:50]
Podcast Host
statement, for sure, that feels powerful to me. And it actually invokes not to bring up his name. Unfortunately, he is kind of anathema at this point. But it does remind me of the way that Kanye west used to talk about, like, not wanting to be boxed in as an artist. Like, even in terms of just like, I'm a rapper, I'm a singer, I can't do fashion, I can't do. He would talk a lot about how especially black figures in pop culture, people want to sort of put them in one place and sort of say, this is what you are. So I do think in that way, it is an act of resilience and power for her to come in and sort of, like, say, no, I'm not going to necessarily, necessarily be, like, just one idea or one concept to you. I think that's really amazing. And also, I think there's something powerful about saying, like, this is a commercial endeavor, and I'm going to be the most successful black woman the music industry has ever seen. And this is how you do it. Because the truth of the matter is that this is how you do it. I mean, in terms of mid-1980s pop, like, the strategy of this is truly gobsmacking. You know, I think a parallel for today that people could maybe conjure is, like, the way that people think about Taylor Swift and how sort of, like, plotting she is in this way. I think this album operates in those terms that, like, in that same way where it's, like, it's meticulously constructed for mass commercial success, and it is executed in that way flawlessly. Right. I mean, she sort of softens up her base. You know, you were saying these kind of, like, older black audiences with the first single. And that will come back in some ways to kind of bite her in the ass later, because at some point they feel like they sort of lose her. That's an important narrative that comes through. And then she sort of, like, comes in with, you know, saving all my love for you, and she's sort of beginning to create, you know, ballads that are more geared towards, like, AC crossover radio. And then How Will I Know gets her in with the MTV kids, and then Greatest Love of All kind of becomes her, like, statement ballad. I mean, for a long time. This is kind of the Whitney Houston ballad, A statement of purpose. The song that draws all of it together and says, like, you know, this is the song that encapsulates my entire sort of, like, purpose on the charts, on the radio, is like, It's a declaration of her spirit, spirituality. It's. It's got it all in the mix, right? It's like the biggest, broadest, schmaltziest pop ballad that you could ever come up with. And I mean that as a parenthetical complimentary. I love the Greatest Love of All, but it is, you know, the proudest level of schmaltz. And I think something you could say about schmaltz, I think about this with Michael, too. It's like, you know, anybody else who sang man in the Mirror that would be like the cheesiest ass fucking song of all time. But, like, Michael, like, makes it so amazing. I think that's true of Whitney over and over again in this era, too. Like, greatest of all, you know, who can say the lyrics. I believe that children are the future. And like, you're kind of like, yeah, I agree with you. Like, it works. It's only Whitney. It's just like, so. It's fantastic. So, okay. This album achieves everything that it sets out to achieve and more. It is one of the most successful albums of the 1980s. She has three number one singles, Saving All My Love for your. How Will I Know? Greatest Love of All. It is the first album by a solo female artist to produce three number one singles in the United States, which is incredible. It goes on to be certified diamond by selling 10 million units or more, and then eventually goes 14 times platinum. I mean, it's crazy. It's one of the best selling albums of all time. 25 million copies worldwide. You know, she's nominated for Grammys, including album of the year. I mean, it just. You just don't get a bigger debut album than this. So who is Whitney Houston after this record comes out? Like, for people that didn't live through it, like, what did it feel like to consume Whitney Houston at this moment? I mean, you were talking a little bit about what was like when her ubiquity down the road. But, like, after this debut album, is she the most famous female singer of the moment? Like, where does she fit into the broader pop landscape in the wake of the success of this thing?
- [88:22]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. So as you said, this is a huge moment for her. It is huge. I mean, just thinking about the Greatest Love of All and that as an anthem, it's often seen as an anthem of Black Pride. And we think about her bringing that song to MTV and the way that that video so beautifully narrates or represents this intergenerational legacy. Sissy is in the video and she plays like a Stage mother. It's amazing. It's acting. The Apollo Theater, which is already such a rich site of black musical history. So she's really clearly positioning herself in that space, you know, the historical musical space of that building, even that theater. And Sissy plays like the mother who's helping a young girl toward a talent show that is set there. So there's like, a girl who's younger than Whitney, who's supposedly, like, Whitney's progenitor almost, that she's walking towards when she herself is performing. And I'm just saying that it's clearly like this intergenerational, very, like, black matrilineage that she is revealing in that video. And I mentioned that. To say that that's an interesting thing to do with a video. First of all, like, as Whitney Houston in 1986, it's an important use of MTV's platform, which, as we know, has historically been very resistant to showing black artists.
- [89:29]
Podcast Host
And this album is fundamental on getting black artists on mtv. I mean, these singles are like some of the first black female videos. They're really putting in heavy. Yeah.
- [89:37]
Emily Lordy
And then I would also just say that Whitney's big win with this debut album and all the strategy that goes into it and thinking about her in relation to, like, later Taylor Swift, I think it's in part justified through the idea that this is a win for black people. This is a win for black girls. This is a win for, you know, people that you're not seeing on mtv, you're not seeing at the Grammys, you're not seeing in these. In these spaces, in this way. And I think that there is. I mean, I think it's worth being sort of skeptical or a little bit critical of that, you know, the extent to which black women, and women more generally success in the industry needs to be justified by virtue of this narrative about how it's a win for all of us. Right. Does Kanye west have to say, I mean, maybe at first, like, this is also, like, a very hip hop trope, right? Like, a win for me is a win for the people, a win for everybody back home. But I just think that women are expected more, especially black women, especially in the 80s, to say, this is not just about me, it's about what I'm doing. And Whitney believe that. It's not that it's not true. It's just that that's some of the work that Whitney and her success is doing in this moment. And she's very, I think, canny about making her wins, wins for the broader public. And people are seeing it that way and they're embracing her. She goes on her first world tour in 86, right. And so she becomes more of a global phenomenon. And I think she's still enjoying herself. This is still like the first Rush, the first blush of the stardom that she's worked so hard for. So just on a personal level, I think she's having fun on the road. You know, she's having this other kind of musical education. She's finally free from Clive, in a way, who was there, like, monitoring her early shows and being like, oh, like, literally sending her letters, being like, here are the things that you can do better. Like, here are some notes for next time. Like, don't just riff endlessly at the end of a song. You have to build it to a definitive climax and then end it, or else people are gonna think you don't know how to end a song. Right. Like, he has notes, which is great.
- [91:22]
Podcast Host
Well, that's a note she takes. I mean, building to a definitive climax is kind of like the Whitney Houston trope of her songs. Like, you literally find yourself on some of these ballads. Like, just like, you almost know exactly. Like, she takes you on the journey and you're so excited to go on it, but you know where you're going, right? You're going to that moment. You're going to that money.
- [91:41]
Emily Lordy
Totally.
- [91:42]
Podcast Host
Like, I feel like that is, like, built into the DNA of these things. Like, she's good. If that's the note Clive's giving her, she's really good at incorporating it because it becomes such a signature. It feels like.
- [91:51]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, yeah. And I think, too, one thing to say about the difference between what she's doing on record and what she's doing live is, yes, she has way more freedom to, like, stretch out live. Especially she's touring the world and she needs to learn how to end a song live because a lot of her songs end in fade outs. Like, the studio is a place where you don't have to know how to end the song because it just fades out. Right? Yeah. So I. On stage, there's a different skill set that she is learning, and I think she's enjoying relishing the opportunity to learn that and kind of figure some things out for herself. And she does become, I think, in this time period, 86, 87, 88, one of the greatest vocal, certainly the greatest vocal performer up to that time in pop. This year's girls trip to Telluride was the best. We one upped ourselves with my Sapphire Preferred card and was 5 times 4 points on Chase Travel, plus 3 times points on vacation homes with top brands.
- [92:39]
Podcast Host
We got this incredible cabin.
- [92:40]
Emily Lordy
It was a mansion. And with three times the points on dining. We ordered a wagyu steak dinner. And that pistachio gelato was too good. So where should we go next year? I've got ideas. Chase Sapphire preferred, the card that's preferred for a reason. Cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank, and a member FDIC subject to credit approval terms apply. Hey there, it's J. Lo, and I'm officially back in my. My rom com era and honestly feels like home.
- [93:04]
Podcast Host
And this is Brett Goldstein. Our new movie, Office Romance, is now streaming only on Netflix.
- [93:09]
Emily Lordy
We cannot wait for you to see it.
- [93:11]
Podcast Host
Sign up now to watch.
- [93:14]
Emily Lordy
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- [93:48]
Podcast Host
Okay, so then I have two questions for you, and I'll start with where you just left me. What is it about Whitney's voice that makes her that, like, what are the things? What is the alchemy of things? I mean, I took some notes. Maybe you can tell me, like, if you feel like I'm on the money or not about it. The things that I wrote down were. So she's technically a lyric soprano. You know, technical flawlessness was one thing that I wrote down. Like, we were talking about this with Sissy. She studied. She's learned, like, the breath control. There's just, like, nothing. Every element of every phrasing, every way that register that she hits at every moment, like, it's all technically perfect. This is not. I'm no musicologist, so I know that that might be not the perfect way of saying it. The other things, clarity and purity of tone, like her universal uniform across her different registers. Feels like a very important part of that to me. There's no obvious kind of gear changes that happen between her chest voice or her head voice or the mix. It all feels very fluid tonally to me. Uniform and fluid.
- [94:48]
Emily Lordy
Yes. I'm saving all my love for you.
- [94:55]
Podcast Host
She's not particularly Raspy, gritty. But she's able to convey immense power without that, which is, I think, something that really makes her unique somehow in the lineage of soul singers.
- [95:08]
Emily Lordy
Now you'll never love that way again. Then we almost have it all.
- [95:21]
Podcast Host
Like, she is so much vocal power, but without the kind of grittiness thing that we usually associate with, like, some of the other singers in her lineage. Super clarity at a high volume feels like a big Whitney trope to me. Like, a really unique Whitney trope. I mentioned the breath control, like, long, arching phrases that are held with, like, a steady airflow. Like, that feels like a really unique Whitney thing. Really clean attacks and releases. Super precise dynamic control, especially, like, during her crescendo, as I wrote down. And, like, a very naturally and kind of perfectly timed, even vibrato. Not a crutchy vibrato, but like, a very, like, naturally employed vibrato. Like everything else she did, it's, like, always just perfectly timed. And I would say she's emotionally evocative through directness rather than confession. Like, she's kind of able to convey a story arc over a song's length. She hits her notes at dead center. I wrote cleanly and rhythmically executed melisma.
- [97:22]
Emily Lordy
I will lose love you okay, so
- [97:32]
Podcast Host
is that, like, a good, overarching study of Whitney's voice? I really worked hard on that.
- [97:36]
Emily Lordy
I think it's amazing. I think it's amazing. I have very little to add to that. I mean, you nailed so many of the key aspects that I would come up with. You know, the clarity of tone, the agility, the ability to move between different registers so effectively and so fluidly. The range, the dynamics, the precision, the timing. Incredible timing. This is something that her percussionist, Bashiri Johnson, talked to me about. How she would stand, speaking of live performances, right between the percussionist on the one hand, the drummer on the other, and really, like, feel that center of gravity in that rhythm. She was just so good. And she doesn't usually get credit for this because the voice itself, right. The sound of that instrument, as you're saying, is so distractingly amazing. But precision and the time and you. You mean you hear it? Like, I want to feel the heat. The way that she'll, like, like, snap that T on the end of that word. Like, that's just something that she thought of doing. You know, she does that. She does something else. And I'm your baby tonight. Like, where she, like, adds a little T as a tag at the end. And. And that's just, like, one moment that's audible to me, you know, that I can tell the precision of the tim Extraordinary, the ability to hold those notes. That's where I get. Actually the title of my book, Holding Lightning is Nard talks about her just holding those money notes just with such power that you felt like you were holding lightning in your hand, holding lightning in your throat. And so that sense of being possessed by and in possession of a sound that is just that, that powerful, that loud. I mean, she just sang so precisely with such range and so loudly. Such a good storyteller, as you're saying. Her ability to build the narrative of a song slowly, you know, kind of unfur it in time and also build the dynamics and the elaborations and improvisations on the structure of the song. That's a very gospel, very churchy technique, being able to do that and put it over in that way. And the last thing that I would just add to what you've already said has to do with that last part, the improvisational art that Whitney Houston had an extraordinary, an extraordinarily nimble and rangy imagination for what could be done in the moment, the riffs and the runs and the melismas that could be played on a song. And we see that in live performance, especially as she gains in power and confidence and just the amount of things at her disposal. I mean, she's like sort of. It was almost like has a phonographic memory, like not like a photographic, but like her memory for sounds and her ability to integrate them only grows and grows, I think, over time as her power is building across from the 80s into the 90s. And so you just see her by the time she gets to like the American Music Awards Porgy medley, the famous. Right, like three part song medley. And you, you're gonna love me. The riffs and the runs that she's able to execute faster than the speed of thought are so incredible that I think that is just a really big part of what makes her the greatest vocalist of the 20th century, in my estimation. Nobody else can do that.
- [100:29]
Podcast Host
Yes. And I think beyond the technical things that we're laying out here, it goes back to we were talking earlier, which is the collision of the secular and pop. Like, there's this feeling within her voice of like spiritual and secular music colliding in this very particular way. Like, it's both so clearly inspired by gospel and her roots and like the spirit that is driving her, but it's so cleanly pop at the same time. You know, it's that clear tone. There's Something just pristinely radio friendly about what she's doing at the same time as it's like, so deeply spiritual, which is like, not a common way to sort of combine things. Because sometimes the spiritual aspect of singing can be something that can be like anathema to pop music or too complex for pop music. You know, she has a really interesting ability to like, synthesize those two things within her vocal talent.
- [101:16]
Emily Lordy
I think the only thing that I will say that you're making me think of that's so important is I think this is one reason why we love Whitney Houston is because she brings that sacred operatic treatment to songs about everyday life. And she's sort of telling the story of a song like that with such a care and such sacred power that it makes our little life, I would argue, anyway, seem like, oh, it's actually worthy of that kind of masterful artistic vocal treatment, you know?
- [101:40]
Podcast Host
Totally, totally. I mean, like, treating the idea of being like the other woman with like a spiritual power is just like what makes that song so interesting and unique to me. And her performance really more than anything, like, so interesting. Okay, let's talk about album two. Album two is called Whitney. She likes titling albums after her name, it seems, in this early part period. Or she and Clive do that. And to me, you know, this is Machiavellian album number two. Like, this is an album that is so clearly put on the bones of the previous thing. They took everything they learned and they just did that more like, they just kind of like, this is more Whitney Houston, the album. Right? Like, first single, some of you may know and love it. It's called I Want to Dance With Somebody. Parenthetical. Who loves me
- [102:26]
Emily Lordy
oh, I wanna dance with somebody I wanna feel the heat with somebody Dance with somebody with somebody
- [102:40]
Podcast Host
who loves me let's start on this one. This clearly is building on How Will I Know. It's very obviously the. The child of How Will I Know. This song is once again, as you were mentioning, produced by. You were talking about here. You interviewed him, Narada Michael Walden, who becomes like a very prolific collaborator of Whitney's. Just side note, my preferred collaborator to Michael Massar, who is kind of doing her, like, cheesier chintzier stuff. Like, Narada Michael Walden is like a really good example of like a down the middle pop producer who can, like, add swag to like really central pop music. And I think this song is really one of those songs that like, represents that really well. It was originally a country song that was written with Olivia Newton John in mind. And Narada Michael Walden was tasked with essentially, like, funkifying it for Whitney. And he really does that. Like, when I read that, I was like, he really does that. Like, this song is very clearly down the middle pop, but it has, like some legitimately funky things going on. Randy Jackson is playing bass on it. There's so much, like, ear candy, the clicking and the clacking and the blaring synths and some little cowbell shit happening in the corner. And like literally the most synthetic horns you've ever heard in your entire life. Like, just like when I hear those, I'm like, that is the 1980s, like, in a horn sound. But again, what you really have here is like the sheer joy bomb. I mean, Whitney took these dance songs and she brings a level of joy in performance to them that I truly think is like, somewhat unmatched in musical history. I mean, this song is. We need a new word for ebullience. Like, I don't even know, like, what to say. It's almost like a of bunch Boolean overload. It's transcendently effervescent. I don't even know. I'm struggling to find words like, I don't know. Give me your thoughts on this. Maybe I'll. I'll shut the fuck up for now. You can tell me what you think about this song.
- [104:22]
Emily Lordy
My thoughts on I Want to Dance with Somebody. I mean, I think that this is Whitney again sort of coming into her power. It's another collab with Narda Michael Walden, who she's worked with on How Will I Know? And you know, some people, some of, like the raucous critics at the time snarkily called it How Will I Know Too? Because it was so similar. Just like clearly following that template. What I think about that sad song and this album as a whole is that there's something so wonderfully freeing about her being able to follow that template. Like, she knows what she's doing. She's cruising at top speed down these well established lanes. She's working with NARA again, She's working with Michael Massar again because she comes back, has produced some of the other R and B oriented songs in the first album. Like, she knows her people, she knows her strong suits, she's in it. And this is the only time that she's going to be able to, or that she will have the opportunity to so consistently kind of repeat her strengths, you know, in this almost companion piece to an album that has preceded it. After this, she's going to do I'm a Baby Tonight with Ellie Reid and Babyface. Very different project. Right. Bodyguard. All kinds of different stuff going on there. I think that the opportunity for her to do 1985 Whitney Houston and 1987, Whitney is really one that is strengthening her sense of what she loves to do, what she does well. And her producers are learning that, too, and they're figuring out, I mean, as much as she. I think there's an inclination to talk about her as the person who can just do anything. So you just give her a song and she sings it. Right. Whether you're Clive Davis or whether songwriter, whatever. The people who get a chance to work with Whitney are stretching themselves, you know, and they're like, oh. So, I mean, Ellie Reid talks about this. She was such a good singer that he says, Babyface and I had to, like, figure out. We had the opportunity to figure out different kinds of songs to write for her. We could have just repeated our new Jack swing formula, but we wrote a shuffle like I'm your baby tonight because we were working with Whitney Houston. Like, why not? So I'm just saying that the producers are feeling freer to do things because they realize, like, what a talent they have. She's more free to do her. And I think that one way to sum all this up is to talk about the. The key changes that we see in a number of these songs.
- [106:19]
Podcast Host
Right. Including this one. Yeah.
- [106:21]
Emily Lordy
I want to dance with somebody. You know, you're definitely going to get that key change. And that's just a moment of Whitney showing you, again, like, just how high she could go, how far it's possible to reach, And also that she doesn't really care if you want to dance with her or not, because she's just so enjoying the opportunity of talking about wanting to dance, singing about wanting to dance. Right, right.
- [106:44]
Podcast Host
And also, it's a song that's not even really. Again, like, how. I know it's kind of a sad song. It's about yearning and wanting. My friend Tom Bryan said it's a sad song that sounds happy. Like it is that. I mean, it's like she's searching for something. She's yearning for something, but she's not actually getting it. I mean, this is like. This is Dancing on my own 1.0 in that sense. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. But she sings it with sheer abandon at the same time.
- [107:07]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. And I think that part of what she's doing and the way that I hear it is she's. She's singing that to us. She's not singing like, don't you other person in the club want to dance with me? Because I want to dance with you. It's like, I mean, by the time she gets to her own vocal interpolation, that is her invention, where she starts saying, don't you want to dance? Say you want to dance. Don't you want to dance? And she gets vocal arranger credit for coming up with that. Like, it is more of a closed circuit. I want to say. Or in other words, don't you want to dance? Say you want to dance is to us, That's a call to the listener. Right. And that's what's getting everybody out on the dance floor. You, as a dj, I'm sure, know, right? This is something that gets people out there because it's like, don't you all want to dance? It's not like, hey, dude, like, would you like to dance with me? Because, like, I'm here and I'm lonely, And, like, my lonely heart calls. Like, at first, yeah. But, like, the way that that story builds and changes over time, ultimately, it's a call to us to enjoy ourselves in that longing along with her as much as she's enjoying herself.
- [107:59]
Podcast Host
And it fits into that broader lineage of, like, Whitney's role in the community. I mean, she is there as a conduit to our joy, as a conduit to our sadness, to our heartbreak. She's sort of there to convey and funnel our experiences and emotions to us. Like, again, the burden or mantle of that is a really interesting part of. Of Whitney's story and here not always a burden. The privilege she has, in some ways, to be that conduit for people, and the burden that she has to be that conduit to people, whether it's an invitation to the dance floor or to spiritual enlightenment or to heartbreak or to whatever she's doing. Like, I love that interpretation of don't you want to dance? Because it's her speaking directly to her audience, which is what she's here to do in a way, or what she sees her mission as. In a way. Yeah. Okay. This song is incredible. I don't think I need to say anything else about it. It's a number one hit. Okay, so let's talk about the rest of the songs on this record. I want to talk about some of the ballads here. Like, didn't we almost have it all.
- [108:50]
Emily Lordy
Didn't we almost had it all? The night we had until the morning.
- [109:03]
Podcast Host
Tell me your. Your read on that kind of stuff, because I sort of of struggle sometimes with these ballads. I think that they're. This is where the live performance, recorded. Performance dichotomy is really interesting to me. There's a performance that Whitney gives of this song. I can't remember where exactly it was. It was on some sort of award show and it is just incredible. Like, they cut to her, she's performing at night somewhere. I don't know if you remember this performance. And she interprets the song in this incredible way where she's adding all of these different riffs and. And you really feel the power of it.
- [109:34]
Emily Lordy
Almost had it all.
- [109:39]
Podcast Host
But on record I just find some of these ballads, like I'm like, why are they saddling Whitney with these middle aged ass ballads? Like these gloopy schmaltzy ballads. Like, she fucking sells it. Her performance is amazing. She never doesn't get it over the line. Like, I'm never unhappy listening to it, but when I think about it, I'm just like, there's a part of me that can't go there with these bows and I can't explain exactly why. It's the dissonance of like, it feels like she's being saddled with something that. There's like a dissonance to me somehow.
- [110:09]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to just put on. Didn't we almost have it all and just listen to it for like this pleasure of hearing her sing that song. So, yeah. I will say though, there are certain moments where I guess it's just basically what we've been saying is that the way that she's able to execute and imbue life and literally breath into these songs that are rather lifeless, treacly, saccharine, like Ice Castles, you know.
- [110:34]
Podcast Host
Yes, exactly.
- [110:37]
Emily Lordy
Even the intro of these songs and you hear little synthesizer, you know, or you're Still My man is a great example of that too.
- [110:43]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [110:43]
Emily Lordy
But like hearing it's. I mean, it's kind of like what she does in the home performance where she starts out on the Merv Griffin show and she's like a little bit nervous, a little bit tentative. Right. And as she goes, you see her come into her own and the fullness of her power and ability. And I hear that process. I mean, of course it's manufactured in the studio and it's not like actually happening in real time in the way that it sounds. But nonetheless, I love the experience of hearing what sounds like a person coming into their own and figuring out how to imbue life and breath and this real convincing feeling of emotional investment in these songs that just shouldn't work, right? You know, like, they just shouldn't be that good.
- [111:18]
Podcast Host
Yeah, No, I agree with you. And, like, it's just funny because when you get to the middle period of Whitney's career, like, the ballads and she connect, like, all of a sudden, like, when I hear I have Nothing, I'm like, okay, like, here is a song I A bow that is worthy.
- [111:31]
Emily Lordy
I have nothing, nothing, nothing if I don't.
- [111:39]
Podcast Host
It's like Whitney's breathing life into it, and it's breathing life into her. Like, this is just everything to me. And I will always love you also feels that way to me. And I just like these chintzy Michael Massar productions. And, like, I just feel like there's this part of me that gets frustrated during some of these ballads where I'm just like, I want more for our girl. I can't even explain it. And it's funny because they're such classics, like, I get it, and I get that we love them. It's hard for me to imagine a world where they don't exist. You know what I mean? Because they're just like. They're such classic. They're pop classics in a way. But, like, that was my feeling. Going through it this time is like, she's having to work so hard to give these songs the life that they need because there's something sort of ice castle lifeless about them, as you said.
- [112:18]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. You know what I think it is? What I think is the difference between some of these songs and I have Nothing is that I think I have Nothing is legitimately hard song to sing. And I think it gives her a run for her money. It gives her a challenge. It gives her something to really sink her teeth into where she can rise to the occasion of the song. And I think that you hear that, as opposed to what we're hearing on these other Trick Lee Michael Masser ballads, which is her having to find a way to make it interesting because it does just come a little too easily to her.
- [112:42]
Podcast Host
Right. And then it becomes a little bit like, that's where the criticisms of her just kind of like, doing vocal exercises comes from. I think that's how she ends up with that unfairly kind of pegged on her in the spirit, and I feel even. Even more so about that, about where do broken hearts Go? Which she also didn't like. The whole narrative of that song is that she told Clive Davis this song, like, has nothing going on. Like, that's what she said to him about it. And he was like, this is your Single, you know, and he's right. Clearly he's a genius. This all worked really, really well. But even Whitney Houston is feeling how I'm feeling about some of these songs. I find that kind of interesting. And again, she fucking sings the shit out of that song. She does it. She gives it everything that she has, and so it gets over the line. And it is its own version of classic to me in my head. But I don't love these ballads on this album in particular, I just wanted to articulate that. And. And it's just interesting to me that Clive Davis is so effective at knowing what people want, and he's clearly, like, onto something. He gets something that I don't get, I guess, which is like, people in 1987 love this kind of song. Or this is the right kind of vessel for Whitney, commercially speaking, at this moment, even if she herself doesn't even like this song. So I find that really interesting. The song that I do just love from this album is so emotional.
- [114:10]
Emily Lordy
Baby every time I think of you I get so emotional Baby,
- [114:22]
Podcast Host
I think so Emotional is one of Whitney's greatest songs, one of her most underrated songs. Her coolest song to this moment, without question. This is, like, her song that I think, like, puts her in conversation with some of, like, the more edgy pop stars of this moment, whether that be Prince, whether that be Janet Jackson. There's, like, edge to this song. She's so whole horny in this song. And this is the song also where I'm getting queer vibes. The thesis of the song is essentially like, you know, I wish I wasn't this fucking horny for you. I mean, literally, she says, you know, I remember the way that we touched. I wish I didn't like it so much. I mean, that is queer to me. This song just bangs. I just love. To me, this is the hardest, edgiest song that she puts out on these first two albums. And it's just like, even, like, the prefab electric guitar song, like, the whole whole thing works for me. I just love this song.
- [115:12]
Emily Lordy
It's amazing. And also, the video is like, they're really pushing, like, rock Whitney for this one moment, you know, it has, like, every rock trope you can possibly imagine. In the video, she's, like, sidling up to the guitarist. You've got this, you know, I think Nardo himself is, like, pummeling the drums, and it's just like, wow. Like, Whitney is rock all of a sudden. She got her jacket. She's, like, dancing on stage. It is. It's very cool. It's very queer, I guess. I mean, the way that you're reading those lyrics, I had never thought about that erotic charge.
- [115:37]
Podcast Host
She's living in a world of fantasies.
- [115:39]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, that's true. I mean, I like. I like that song. I like more the. The way that that song, I think, represents more of an erotic Whitney on this album. I think she's bolder, she's flirtier, she's definitely hornier. And you hear that on so Emotional, and you hear that on Love as a Contact Sport as well, which is like my favorite of the horny Whitney songs. No, she's the aggressor there. She's like, let's go. Like, if you wanna. I forget what exactly the lyric is, but it's basically, if you want me, like, you have to let me know. Like, come out of your cave. Right. Like, love is a context for, like, let's do this.
- [116:22]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [116:22]
Emily Lordy
And we're not hearing that Whitney actually on the first album. So as much as the second album is a consistent follow up to and playing on the strengths of the first album, there is some newness there. And what's opening up is Whitney the sexual agent.
- [116:34]
Podcast Host
Right. Which is interesting because I think that we're hearing that more in, like, I mean, so Emotional is a big number one hit, but it's not the most remembered song from this record. Like, the big hits that we remember are those two big kind of gloopier ballads. And then obviously, I Want to Dance With Somebody, where she is essentially portraying similar versions of herself that we've heard on previous records. But then I guess in little pockets, you start to see these other parts of her pop out. And I love eccentric Whitney, like, that you brought up earlier. Like, Whitney is an incredibly fun character. I mean, when Whitney's, like, let out of her cage, like, she is so funny. She's got jokes, she's got attitude. You know, I love when that Whitney starts to come out a little bit. And so there is also that dissonance again of, like, she's able to perform and be all of these things that Clive Davis, you know, is putting forth for her and that she's even putting forth for herself through her own ambitions. Right. Like, she knows what she has to be. And that's actually what I want to ask you is, like, who is Whitney Houston? Like, what is her public Persona in this era? What is the man that she has to uphold as Whitney Houston in this moment? Because I see her as, like, she's carrying quite a lot of burden about Being a perfect person, being the perfect celebrity in this moment, is that a fair characterization? And that's also something that she sort of has to sort of then break free from as she moves forward in her career.
- [117:46]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, I think that she is feeling the pressure of perfection, and she's feeling it from all the different people at the label and, you know, including Clive, who, as we talked about, was like, your performance was great, but it wasn't perfect in every way, and here's some things you could do to improve upon it. And she's feeling that, as we talked about, too, as a representative of the black community, the possibilities of black women's mobility within the industry. She's hypervisible. I mean, Whitney Houston is everywhere. Before long, especially when she gets on MTV and then she becomes a kind of very telegenic personality. You know, she's in the magazines, she's being interviewed by all these people. And I think she's. Yeah, she's sort of, like, trying to do her best. Why do you love singing so much? What kind of a feeling does it give you? I love it so much because it's a part of me. Kind of like runs in my blood, you know? You know what I mean? It makes me feel. And the thing that's most important, it makes other people feel. If I can just say one word and somebody will say, oh, my God, you really touched me. I mean, what you said here, what you said there, it really just floored me. I mean, that's worth it all. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thanks. I mean, because I know that there's a weird, funky, quirky, erratic Whitney in there. I think I want to see that. Places where it might not actually be perceptible, but. But, yes, I think that on the whole, she's trying to. You know, she's in the gowns and the dresses. And also, I mean, another thing to say is, like, in terms of trying to bend to public opinion, she starts integrating dancers into her live shows after that second album, or around as she's touring the second album. Right. Because she's gotten criticism for being too stiff on stage. So, again, like, just needing to be all things to all people. It's like, you are the greatest singer ever, but, like, you're just standing there. Madonna's dancing, Janet's dancing. Like, can they sing like you are they mobile powerhouses like you are? No, but, like, they are putting on a good show, and we'd like to see you do that. And so she does integr dancers, and then she Herself starts to dance a little bit more and learn the choreography, you know, a few years down the road. But that's just an example of how, you know, Whitney is attentive to the criticism, and she is available to and willing to do as much as she can to just, you know, build on her success and really give people what they want.
- [119:45]
Podcast Host
Totally, 100%. But, you know, it's some of that stuff that starts to generate. I mean, isn't a nickname for her at this time Whitey Houston? I mean, isn't that, like, a big thing that people sort of start lobbing at her is this idea. Idea that, like, essentially, like, she has two left feet, she can't dance, she's like, not one of us. Right. I mean, that is the narrative that starts to calcify in the wake of this album, which I should say is so monumentally successful. You know, another diamond record, 20 million worldwide. You know, she becomes the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. That's crazy to me. And that's something we take for granted today. Like, they all do that, but, like, this is the first time that ever happened. That is so crazy. For Hot 100, number one. Her first seven singles go to number one. I mean, that is just so crazy. I mean, she has a seven streak run of number one singles. You just don't get bigger than her. And yet, as will be sort of emblemized in this moment at the 1989 Soul Train Awards, where she goes and she wins an award, right? For where do broken Hearts Go? And that's when the booing happens.
- [120:43]
Emily Lordy
She is nominated, but I don't think she wins. I think Anita Baker wins.
- [120:46]
Podcast Host
Yeah, right. She's nominated for an award, and she gets booed by the audience. The nominees for best R and B
- [120:52]
Emily Lordy
urban contemporary single by a female are. Where do broken Hearts Go? Whitney Houston.
- [121:05]
Podcast Host
What do you make of that moment? Like, what is sort of baked into that moment, culturally speaking, around Whitney Houston?
- [121:10]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, the Soul Trade Awards themselves are an interesting institution. They were fairly new at that point, and they were like black music's answer to the Grammys, which, like MTV and all these other outlets of the music industry had historically excluded black people. So sort of like a Black pride moment anyway, for it to even be a thing. Soul Train Awards, you know, growing out of Soul Train show, famously hosted by Don Cornelius, again, to showcase black talent and really celebrate black artistry. So it's only, like, three years old in 1989. Whitney has been to every Soul Train Awards. She's performed with Andros. Like, she's, like, played a role. And. And I say that only to say that she's not an alien figure in this landscape. I mean, Dionne Warwick is hosting the show, I think, that year. Right.
- [121:53]
Podcast Host
Her mother, Sissy Houston, she's black royalty. That's what's so crazy about it.
- [121:57]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I think it must have been that much more jarring precisely for that reason, to hear her song announced and played and then to hear these boos that filter through the crowd. It's not the first time it had happened. It's something similar had happened, although much less audible the year before, I believe. And she was aware of the criticism. I think it was Al Sharpton who began the whitey campaign. And, you know, really?
- [122:21]
Podcast Host
Al Sharpton did that?
- [122:23]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, that's my.
- [122:24]
Podcast Host
Oh, my God. That's so fucked up.
- [122:26]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, yeah. And she was aware. And Robyn recounts in her book that Whitney's response was, why is this my problem? Like, you think that I'm, you know, not black enough. Like, why do I have to become the figurehead for your issues with racial anxiety? Which I will say I think are fundamentally patriarchal, too. I do not think that Prince, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, these black men who are crossing over to the same extent as Whitney are getting policed and criticized and condemned in the same way. I think it's something about black women's promiscuity, quote, unquote, creative, you know, crossing of these lines, like, whose are you really and where do you belong? Similar to the anxieties about Whitney's queerness. Right. Or her sexual orientation, like, whose are you? Like, who do you want and who do you, quote, unquote, belong to? Like, I just think that we can't talk about the issues around Whitney's race without also thinking about gender and sexual politics, because I think it's all wrapped up in that. So at the Soul Train Awards, I think that's part of what's happening. And, you know, her analysis and that of others in the industry is that black audiences see what is happening. They understand that she's been marketed to a black fan base, black radio, and so on through these early R and B singles. And then she's been crossed over, and they kind of feel like all the support that we gave you that enabled you to get crossed over in the first place has now been forgotten and left behind. And that was how Whitney was herself. Literally describe what she understood to be the problem when she Just talked about it to, I think, EBONY magazine a couple years later, because she's also going to be asked about this incident. As traumatizing as it is in the moment, she's going to have to talk about it again and again. And she does that, I think, with varying degrees of grace and exhaustion as time goes on.
- [123:53]
Podcast Host
What is the deal in the past when you've had the friction at the Soul Train Awards, where does that come from?
- [124:00]
Emily Lordy
I don't really know what it's about, but I think that I've got. Got a lot of flack, you know, about. I sing too white, or I sing, you know, I sing white or something like that, you know. So I think that maybe that's where it comes from. I don't know. You sing the way God planned for you to sing.
- [124:15]
Podcast Host
That's number one. Okay.
- [124:16]
Emily Lordy
That's number one.
- [124:17]
Podcast Host
And I'm not exactly sure what singing white is, but I don't think there is more soul to be offered than what you give.
- [124:26]
Emily Lordy
He really loved me.
- [124:27]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [124:28]
Emily Lordy
I don't know.
- [124:30]
Podcast Host
I don't get it.
- [124:31]
Emily Lordy
I don't either.
- [124:32]
Podcast Host
I don't either.
- [124:32]
Emily Lordy
But I do sing the way God intended for me to sing. And I'm using what he gave me, and I'm using it to the best of my.
- [124:38]
Podcast Host
And honestly, I think finds a little bit of her voice through having to respond to this, because some of that sassy fuck you attitude starts to come out as she responds to these questions about this. Like, I was just reading some of her answers, and, you know, she's just basically like, you know, that's not my problem. You know, she really has, like, a little bit of that. You see that twinkle in her eye where she sort of lets go a little bit of that sort of prom queen Persona that you brought up earlier in the conversation. And she just lets herself be real and, like, be like, you know, she talks about how it hurt her feelings. She talks about how, you know, there's something that breaks through through this moment. I see it as just really important. Like, it's a turning point in her career. It's a turning point in her music. Of course, it's no coincidence. This is the same night she meets Bobby Brown. Like one of the most fateful kind of interactions of her entire life happens also the same night. I mean, this night is a huge moment for her in so many ways. But, you know, I think it's just really interesting because the pressure that is on her shoulders for all of her success, she's in this position of sort of like, she can't win. It feels like in some ways, even though she's won so heavily, but it feels like she's playing so many bases. She's being so many things to all people, as these records can sometimes represent, like, all the different things she's trying to hit. And I think at some point, this represents, like, a tipping point moment for her in that way where she's like, I can't be everything to everybody. And I think in some ways, I'm youm baby tonight represents her embrace of that in some ways where she's like, actually, I'm just gonna make an album that seems to me more like, okay, like, there's some idiosyncrasy here. Where it's like, this is what I just want to do. Like, I might forsake some of the four quadrant approach of those first two albums in order to make an album that feels more gritty and authentic to some element of me. Because when I listen to I am youm Baby Tonight, which is the record she puts out in 1990, I did definitely hear a new level of, like, Whitney person on this record. I hear it clearly on that first single, I'm your Baby Tonight, which, like, is kind of searing and hot and sort of, you know, has that sexual charge to it. The singing is also a whole new way of presenting. It's not about building towards this money note. It's not about, like, how can we just showcase this person in the range of their talents. It's like, in service of something rhythmic and propulsive and dangerous, even a little bit in a way that's extremely fun. So I really think that the music that emanates in some part a responsive to this, because obviously she's making music at this point that feels more in conversation with black musical trends. I mean, I'm your baby tonight instantaneously is funkier than anything she's ever made before. You know, new deck, swing. In and of itself, Babyface, this is music that is alchemizing R and B and hip hop and pop into one thing. You know, they've become famous for working with her then boyfriend, Bobby Brown, who is literally like the poster child for this new version of black crossover music, which is coming the opposite direction. So, like, okay, this is what was interesting to me is, like, if Whitney Houston represents an age in pop music where maybe a black person has to make music that's more to classical white people's taste. Like, if we're thinking about the Barbra Streisand ballad, right, as like, sort of like a way that Whitney Houston might be trying to commune with crossover audiences. I think there's this really interesting turning point force in music in the 90s where like black artists don't need to compromise in that way because black music starts to become the most popular music in the world. This is like hip hop is starting to take center stage. And new Jack swing is kind of the nexus point where like artists like Bobby Brown are making like hard edged hip hop conversant music that is huge, hugely successful. Bobby Brown is not having to make, you know, whatever the male equivalent of a Barbra Streisand ballad is, not that having to make takes away her agency, but isn't doing that strategy. And it's just interesting to hear Whitney kind of like gain power ownership through this moment where music and her career hit this nexus point together where like she can lean into maybe what she kind of wants to do a little bit more clearly in other parts of her talent. And then the music industry that she exists within creates the circumstances for her to be able to do that and maintain her success at the top level at the same time.
- [128:43]
Emily Lordy
Yeah. And I think that convergence is really well crystallized in the fact that I'm youm Baby Tonight becomes Ellie Reid and babyface's first number one pop hit. So they've had many, many, almost 20 R&B number ones by the time they team up with Whitney. So they're doing amazingly well. Right. But that convergence of then what Whitney sort of can do for their career and what they can do for hers. Right. And how they're putting each other on these different maps in this new way. So powerful. But I love your reading of the Soul Train booze. Like that is actually such a counter reading to how most people would see it. They would say maybe you're already aware of this, but just like underscore how inventive and refreshing this is. Because it's more like what I would say, but I think most people say, oh, she gets booed at the Soul Trade Awards and then she goes on this years long campaign to prove that she's actually black. Truly faithfully to black audiences and that fan base. And that's why she records I'm your Baby Tonight. And that's why she gets with Bobby like to prove this kind of street cred or whatever. And what you're saying, I think, and I don't think that's right. I think what you're saying is the opposite of that. You're like at Soul Train, she realizes that like I cannot Possibly appease everybody. I'm going to stop trying. I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want. And that happens to be like, make this black album and date this bad boy. But it's not an appeal. It's not an attempt to ingratiate herself professionally with any particular fan base.
- [129:56]
Podcast Host
And doing that, I don't think so. I think it's in some ways, like, kind of a bold, brave, like, explosion of some of the expectations around her. Like, that's how I view it. Because, I mean, listen, I'm your Baby Tonight is not nearly as successful as those first two albums are. I mean, it is a huge album with two number one singles. It sells millions. On anybody else's terms, it's a smashing success. But on the terms of Whitney's first two albums, you know, it's a clear pivot, right? And, like, you could frame that strategically. I've heard Clive Davis talk about it in retrospect, strategically, in his book, but that would be very Clive Davis to do that, to sort of, like, retrofit a shot strategy onto that when, like, I have a sense that, like, if Clive Davis was really in control of Whitney's career and was left to his own devices, they would have made Whitney Houston the third. I mean, I think he easily would have just remade that third album again, right? Like, she, I think, felt some power in, like. I think Dating Bobby was a big thing. I mean, that was a. That was a move. I mean, that is a move that is very counter to the image of Whitney Houston to that point. Pristine prom queen, like, heavy, head held high, very upstanding person, dating, like, a pretty edgy bad boy who ultimately ended up kind of being a pretty bad influence on her in certain ways. But, like, she was daring in that moment. That's how I see it anyway. And I think I'm youm Baby Tonight is a pretty daring song in the context of Whitney's music to that point. Like, it is a different kind of song. This is a different character than the person that we have met on the previous two records. And I love this song. I love I'm your Ribey Tonight. Like, it is. It is on some days my favorite Whitney Houston song. I think it's just so good. I just think that part of the image, she's like. It's like one of my favorite moments of her career.
- [131:48]
Emily Lordy
I love it, too. I love it. And I mean, one thing that I love about it is also, like, the lyrical change. I think that it really represents this shift that we're describing or Shift of, like, understanding Whitney. So on the one hand, it's. You gotta. You gotta wave that. You're making me feel. I can feel I can do any. Do anything for you, baby. I think, right? So it's like, I can do anything for you. Like, I'm catering to any fantasy you want. Like, I'm your baby tonight. Like, whatever you want from me. I'm giving you everything, right? Whatever audience, like, whatever desire you might have. You want me to dance, you want to look like this, you want me to say that, you know, whatever. But it's also like, ultimately the way that she renders that line is like, you got a way of making me feel I can do anything.
- [132:23]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [132:24]
Emily Lordy
And just anything not for you. Like, not in service of your fantasy, but, like, I can do whatever the fuck I want. And you see that in the video, too, where she's like blue jean Whitney, like, ripped jeans Whitney with the bomber jacket, right? Which is a new Whitney in and of itself. But then also she's embodying all these different characters, right? It's this very chameleonic visual representation. She has, like, the Marlena Dietrich, like, white tails and top hats. And she has the more like 60s Audrey Hepburn, like, catsuit and little bangs. And she has a moment where she's embodying the Supremes. And it's just to say that the spectrum of things that Whitney can do, I think not for you, but because she wants to, is really on show, very clearly on display in that visual representation.
- [133:09]
Podcast Host
Right? And I think in speaking to what we've been sort of circling around here, I think this is the first time Whitney Houston sounds cool. Like, this is the first cool Whitney Houston song. Like, I would say that, like, Whitney to this point has been many things, you know, a virtuosic talent, a vessel for incredible dance pop songs, you know, obviously someone who can elevate even the schlockiest ballad to a spiritual play and everything that we've talked about a blockbuster success. But this is the first time that I'm like, oh, like, there's something cool here. Like, Whitney's got something funky and she's getting top notch edgy as far as edgy commercial radio production goes. Like, Baby is the perfect collaborator for her here because he's definitely radio minded. He's classically minded in a lot of ways that, like, I'm sure Clive Davis was happy to have him around. But he's also, like, he's one of the coolest producers, like, working at this particular time. So he's giving Whitney, a record that I think plausibly can sound cool, which I really do think is a novel moment for her at this time and like, an important corrective.
- [134:04]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it's just cool in Whitney's way. Like, she's not cool like Janet in Rhythm Nation, which has just come out. She's not cool like Madonna in Vogue, which is like, you know, kind of like in that, like, she's definitely not cool in those ways. But I like that it's classic Whitney. It's like classic cool. You know, that's why she's embodying all these, like, archetypes of women from an earlier era of entertainment, is that there is that sense of Whitney is she is still tradition minded.
- [134:28]
Podcast Host
Absolutely right.
- [134:29]
Emily Lordy
She's still Sissy's daughter and, you know, like, part of this, like, long lineage, as you said, this musical dynasty. And that's very important to her. And she can be that. And she can be collabing with Babyface and Ellie Reid and be doing New Jack Swing and be like, dancing a little bit like Michael Jackson in the video, you know, with a little like.
- [134:44]
Podcast Host
Yes, totally. We'll be. There's a lot of Michael on this song. A lot of Michael on something.
- [134:48]
Emily Lordy
I think so, too.
- [134:48]
Podcast Host
There's some, like, kicking.
- [134:50]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, exactly. It starts out with the very mind
- [134:52]
Podcast Host
and the shuffle beat just immediately brings the way you make me feel instantaneously to me when I hear it. So, yeah, there's definitely, like, I can hear her and I can imagine any pop star during this time period is like, wanting to interact with what the Jacksons are doing because they are making incredibly cool music at this moment. I mean, talk about, like, pop music that's edgy and is incorporating all. You know, this is like the Jacksons, Terry, Jimmy, you know, Quincy Jones at this time. Like, they're taking pop to the absolute hilt at this moment. So I can imagine she wants to bite off her own little, like, Whitney piece of that. That's a good place for her to look for something, I think. But I agree, doesn't lose herself. It doesn't sound like a desperate thing. It just. It feels authentic. And I love the sexual frenzy of it, which I think she touches a little bit and so emotional. That's the closest she gets up to this point. But there's this feeling of sexual frenzy and awakening that the voice is put into in the employment of here that, like, I love because it's a new way to use the voice that isn't just about hitting A money note, and I really do appreciate that part of it. The other song I love on this record is my name is not Susan, which is like another kind of, like, attitude song.
- [135:54]
Emily Lordy
My name is not Susan. So watch what you say and if you still need her then be on your way Don't.
- [136:05]
Podcast Host
Another kind of, like, new jack swing, like a lover, like, says somebody else's name to her, and she's like, you know, she's wounded. She's biting back. I definitely also get Jacksonian energy through this song.
- [136:16]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, this is a fun song for Whitney. I don't really like it, but I do see her having fun with it, especially when she performs it live. And, I mean, it's so funny. Also, like, that her name is not Su. Like, Susan feels like such a corny name. Like, of all the names, like, I get that it sort of works, I guess, in a musical setting. But there is an interview where somebody's like, oh, did that ever happened to you? And she's like, no. She's like, usually people say, oh, Whitney. Like, they're not talking about Susan.
- [136:39]
Podcast Host
Yeah, right. Like, no one forgets.
- [136:40]
Emily Lordy
Nobody forgets. Yeah, exactly. Everybody forgets who I am. Nobody forgets, like, the good love that I'm giving. Like, it's clearly Whitney. And so I mentioned that just to say that she is, I think, able to be free or even in her public presentation outside of the music, in what she's allowing herself to see and the kind of image that she's allowing herself to present.
- [136:56]
Podcast Host
There's just, like, a little nasty tude on this. I appreciate the nasty tude because I think that is very Whitney. Like, she's got. Got an attitude in a fun way. Like, she knows who she is. She knows she's a va diva. You know what I mean? And, like, I like to see her living that out a little bit on record. That's just, like, fun to me.
- [137:13]
Emily Lordy
This is the era also of. I'm sure you've seen the video backstage footage that Robin takes while they're on the I'm your baby tonight tour, where she's coming off stage and she's pissed about something. Don't really know what, but she's, like, lounging on a couch after the show, and she has her robe on, and she's like, I'm pissed. And she's like, people think it's so easy, and it's not. And she goes into this whole thing, and Sissy has something to say about Janet, and. And she doesn't want to go there and talk bad about Janet, but then she does talk about Paula Abdul and she's like, paula Abdul ain't shit. And she's like, yeah. He's like, whitney. And she goes, mommy, that girl is singing off key on the record.
- [137:47]
Podcast Host
And she's not wrong.
- [137:48]
Emily Lordy
She's not wrong. Mommy, that girl is singing off key on the. Cause she got an image that we
- [137:59]
Podcast Host
all know ain't really true.
- [138:01]
Emily Lordy
She just, like, lets it fly. And I think that that is so. I mean, it is backstage, of course, and she's not saying that in a public interview setting, but I think it is consistent with the weird ass Whitney who is gonna let her freak flap fly a little bit more in public as well.
- [138:14]
Podcast Host
Absolutely. I mean, you're just reminding me of my absolute favorite Whitney.
- [138:19]
Emily Lordy
Shh.
- [138:20]
Podcast Host
Because this is 1990, this is the year comes out. And like, obviously that's a diva battle royale for the centuries, of course, but I think this is more like a couple years later. But she's on like some German talk show or something like that. And the interviewer is like, you know, Mariah Carey was here, you know, And Whitney goes, really? How's she doing? We had Mariah Carey here in the studio.
- [138:39]
Emily Lordy
You did? How is she doing? Well, she was doing great. Oh, great.
- [138:43]
Podcast Host
Yes, it's great.
- [138:44]
Emily Lordy
What I'm curious about, what do you think of her? What do I think? Do you think of her? Yes. I don't think of her.
- [138:50]
Podcast Host
It's the shadiest, funniest, best, like, diva shade. Like, when you go to the compilations of diva shade, like, there's some great Whitney moments in all of those, and a lot of them are directed at Mariah, which is hilarious. Okay, let's just wrap up our convo on I'm your baby tonight, the album. Any other things you want to say about this? I mean, there's a couple. She does make her concessions to gloopy ballad dumb in this album. But the other big song is all the men that I need, which I feel like is her kind of like, concession song to old Whitney vibes. Like where they were like, we gotta have one of these here. I do prefer Walden's production to Masters always, and I think he gives her a little bit more of a sturdy, like, less tricky, chintzy kind of ballad production here. Kenny G is here. Any cool points she had scored are instantaneously zapped away by the presence of this Kenny G sax solo. But, yeah, anything else that seems worth pointing out about this record that we haven't said already?
- [139:53]
Emily Lordy
Yeah, I would love to just add the way that she's not only collaborating with Babyface and L A Reid on these songs, but this is like a family affair in a number of ways, because she's also teaming up with Stevie Wonder, lifelong dream of hers, to do this song with Stevie. I think he writes as well as produces the duet. We Didn't. No. Which is just a joy to hear. She also is teaming up with Luther Vandross, who produces another one of those songs and sings backup on it. And she talks about what a joy it was to be in the studio with him and how they both were such perfectionists in terms of even, like, mic technique and all the things that they had learned coming up. And I think Bebe Winans, a friend of hers going way back, you know, her love of the Winans family, CeCe and others, he plays a role, does one of the songs, and she produces. I think it's the song that Vivi writes, I'm Knocking, and it's her first real go at trying to produce a song. I think Ricky Miner, her musical director, helped her with that. Well, if it's true, I'm knocking Come open up the door My heart's been right but this is just a moment of really, Whitney taking more control over the creative process. And she talks about how hard it was to, you know, how much you have to be aware of and how much she had to learn in order to produce that track. But that track, I think, is great. And I just love that she. I mean, she was so interested. That's the thing we haven't necessarily touched on. She was so interested in the whole process of music making that she wasn't just, like, really good at singing, but she was really interested in what. I mean, this is why she was a great live performer, because she was so attentive to what all the other musicians on stage were doing. And I think that she's really getting into the studio side of things, at least in her production, on that one last track.
- [141:37]
Podcast Host
Absolutely. That was cool to see that. Because obviously, Whitney is not somebody that does a lot of writing of her own material, which is, again, another interesting contrast with Mariah, and I think is, like, again, lends itself to some of the criticisms that get lobbed at her about, like, if people have felt disconnects between the material and her voice and her whatever, like, that's a. An interesting element of the whole thing. The other things I wanted to point out were the song Miracle, which does become a top 10 hit, Is at one point thought to have been about abortion, but then Whitney quickly dismisses that. She says, you know, that's not what it's about. But there's a lyric on there that says, how could I throw away a miracle? How could I face another day? It's all my doing I made a choice and today I pay My heart is full of pain. And apparently there was like rumors going around that it was an abortion song which she dismissed. So I just thought that was an interesting thing. I just feel like Whitney waiting into abortion seems beyond her pay grade at this point. And then the other song that I really liked is the song I Belong to you, which is a top 10 R&B song. That like has a little bit of like a loose hip hop drum programming thing going on here that I thought was like kind of of experimental in the context of Whitney songs. Like it feels like it's acknowledging, I mean the new Jack Swing songs obviously are acknowledging hip hop on some level, but there's something kind of like loose 90s hip hop about this song that I like. It has a nice vibe. It's kind of sultry, smooth, mid tempo kind of song that I just enjoyed a lot. So, okay, this album is successful, as we mentioned. It's not nearly as huge as the other two. It sells about 4 million copies in the US, 10 million worldwide. It goes to number three on the Billboard 200. Nothing to sell slouch at, but is not quite the massive success of her previous records. So as we sort of end our discussion today, as we come out of this discussion, where do we leave Whitney in 1990, 1991, like what has she achieved and what does she still need to prove or what would she still want to show the world, do you think? At this point?
- [143:40]
Emily Lordy
I think that Whitney has presented an incredibly robust body of work, very versatile, diverse body of work that shows, as we were talking about before, just what all a black woman artist can do and be. And I think that, you know, if she had never done anything else like that would be a massive contribution to the culture. I mean, I do think that Whitney was, you know, ever achieving and interested in how high really she could ascend the ranks of the again, not just for herself, but like with this God given gift to the entertainment industry and how broadly she could represent for other black girls and women and you know, black people across the industry. So she has yet to break into film basically. Like that's a thing that she's going to want to do and you know, of course she's going to do so with the Bodyguard, which, which I'm sure you'll talk about next time. And that means so much. I mean, that is the turning point, I would say, in Whitney's career and the sustainability of the career that she has built. And so I think that from this point on, I mean, she has established herself, as I said, as an incredible live performer whose first three albums, while significant, are also pretexts to what she's going to do with this material once she gets on stage and how she's going to minister to the people and feel that spirit move through her and all the incredible interpolation she's going to do know ever singing a song the same way twice. And that is its own contribution. I think that she will be, when it comes to the bodyguard and touring, that album worked so hard that she will lose a lot of the joy that she had. And indeed, you know, the voice will suffer also. Not only is it an emotional fatigue and a spiritual fatigue, but just the instrument is not going to be what it was come mid-90s. But what she's doing here is really setting herself up for that, Right? And so this is kind of like this beautiful moment of promise and possibility where, again, she can do anything, and she's showing that capability in the vocal instrument and in the range of songs that she's performing and delivering to the American public in the world.
- [145:31]
Podcast Host
It's kind of astonishing that, like, there's still higher heights to come. You know, it's like, so many artists would just dream of. This run that she had right here is, like, in and of itself, as you said. Like, if she'd ever did anything else, it would have been a monumental achievement in and of itself. And yet, as you said, it's just a prelude to, like, like, really the true peak of her commercial success, which is astonishing to think about. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you. I love talking to you. This was so, so much fun. Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, your energy, your insights. Everybody go pre order Emily's book holding the Life, loves and art of Whitney Houston. Emily, thank you so much for being here.
- [146:09]
Emily Lordy
Thank you so much for having me.
- [146:14]
Podcast Host
All right, so there you go. Have it. Whitney Houston, part one. I want to say thank you so much to the fabulous Emily Lordy for being such an amazing guest. To Russ Martin for everything he does to make the show happen every week. To Laura Taylor for her help editing this episode, and Alex Lobo for her help with the artwork. If you're an editor, get at us@potpantheonpodgmail.com Main Pop Girls is on Friday, February 27th. Grab your tickets at poppantpod.com Rate, Review and subscribe. Follow us on social media at Pop Pantheon Pop Pod merch at potpantheonpod.com patreon@patreon.com Poppantheon we'll see you next week for Whitney Houston Part 2. Have a wonderful Life. Bye Bye.
- [146:59]
Emily Lordy
This year's Girls trip to Telluride was the best. We one upped ourselves with my Sapphire Preferred card. And with 5 times points on Chase Travel plus 3 times points on vacation homes with top brands, we got this incredible cabin. It was a mansion. And with three times the points on dining, we ordered a wagyu steak dinner and that pistachio gelato was too good. So where should we go next year? I've got ideas. Chase Sapphire preferred the card that's preferred for a reason. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval terms apply. Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing your main managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with stamps.com print postage on demand 247 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust stamps.com go to stamps.com and use code podcast to try stamps.com risk free for 60 days. From Geico Subconscious News, I'm Tammy. Racing thoughts broadcasting from your brain. You think you live in a pretty safe place, but you just heard about a break in four miles away, which isn't close, but it isn't far either. You know Art Palpitations is on the scene.
- [148:10]
Podcast Host
I sure am, Tammy. And I don't even know why I drove out here because as you know, you got customized renters insurance through Geico, so your stuff is covered.
- [148:18]
Emily Lordy
Oh, well, that's great. Any sign of crime there, Art?
- [148:21]
Podcast Host
Just some light littering, Tammy. But like they say, a little litter can lead to a lot.
- [148:25]
Emily Lordy
Wise words. It feels good to worry less. It feels good to Geico.