Whitney is the second studio album by American singer Whitney Houston. It was released on June 1, 1987, by Arista Records. The follow-up to her debut album, production on the album aimed at reaching the same audience as her debut, which also mostly featured ballads and love songs while including several upbeat songs. Mostly produced by Narada Michael Walden and Michael Masser, with contributions from Kashif and John "Jellybean" Benitez, and featuring guest output from musicians such as Kenny G Roy Ayers and Premik Russell Tubbs, the album became an immediate hit upon its release.
In the United States, the album became the first by a female artist in Billboard 200 history to debut at number one on the chart and the fifth album to accomplish this. It spent eleven weeks atop the chart, marking the first time since Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life that an album lingered atop the chart after its debut. Along with her debut topping the charts for 14 weeks, Houston set a 1980s chart record for a woman by accumulating 25 weeks at number one on the Billboard 200. Internationally, the album topped the record charts in thirteen other countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Germany, and several countries throughout Europe, while also finding success in Asia, South America and Africa, becoming a global success. In addition, it was the first album by a solo black female artist to top the albums chart in the United Kingdom. It has sold an estimated 20 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time.
In the US, the album spawned five top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100, all of which became international hit singles. The album's first four singles—"I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", "Didn't We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go"—all peaked at number one on the chart, breaking a record Houston set with her previous album, making her the first female artist to score four number one singles off from one album. Along with three straight number one singles from Houston's debut, the latter four helped Houston to earn an all-time chart record of seven consecutive number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, a record the singer maintains. The album's fifth single, "Love Will Save the Day", reached the top ten on the same chart, while a sixth single, a cover of "I Know Him So Well", a duet sung with mother Cissy Houston, became a European market-only release in late 1988.
The album won Houston several industry awards including two NARM Awards, four American Music Awards, a Soul Train Music Award and four Grammy Award nominations including Album of the Year at the 30th Annual Grammy Awards while the album's hit single "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. In October 2020, Houston set another sales record when the album was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, for sales of over 10 million copies in the United States, making her the first black artist to score three diamond albums in the United States.
Background While she was a background vocalist for mother Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston was discovered by Arista Records CEO Clive Davis after viewing her performance of songs such as "Home", "Tomorrow" and "The Greatest Love of All" at a Manhattan jazz club. He then signed her to an exclusive contract with Arista and enlisted record producers such as Kashif, Jermaine Jackson, Michael Masser and Narada Michael Walden to produce her first album.
After over a year in recording sessions, Houston released her self-titled debut album on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1985 to critical and commercial success: it received five Grammy Award nominations at the 28th Annual Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year, for "Greatest Love of All", with Houston winning her first Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, for "Saving All My Love for You". The album topped the Billboard 200 for 14 weeks and was the best-selling album of 1986 in the United States, where it was certified 14 times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), with estimated global sales of 25 million copies. Four of its singles — "You Give Good Love", "Saving All My Love for You", "How Will I Know" and "Greatest Love of All" — all peaked inside the US top 5, with the latter three all going to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, the first female artist to reach that feat.
By the summer of 1986, Houston had become a global superstar, breaking racial barriers for black women in pop music. That July, she embarked on her first headlining global tour, The Greatest Love World Tour, where she performed in four continents, including the United States, Europe, Oceania (Australia) and Asia. Prior to the tour, Clive Davis was anxious to keep Houston's momentum going and began assembling songs for the artist's next album, which he had initially planned for a September 1986 release, but the continued success of Houston's debut forced Davis to change his plans.
As Houston performed before audiences on her tour, Davis sought to have Houston's image changed somewhat after the singer was gaining a reputation for singing love ballads that went well beyond her age range. The plan was for Houston to have more uptempo material, similar to contemporaries such as Madonna and Janet Jackson. Davis also sought to have fewer duets on the album as he felt this album had to be more of a solitary affair; as a result, when American singer Michael Jackson offered Davis a duet he was working on titled "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" with Houston on his then-upcoming Bad album, Davis turned him down, fearing the song "might detract from promotion of the sophomore album".
Davis, however, decided not to change much of the pattern with its song material and producers as previous collaborators such as Michael Masser and Kashif returned, as well as Narada Michael Walden, who would end up producing the bulk of the recordings on the sophomore album; Walden recalls that he was given most of the songs to produce due to how quick "How Will I Know" had been produced. The sole new collaborator on the album was dance producer John "Jellybean" Benitez, who produced a remix on Houston's previous hit, "How Will I Know", and had been known for producing some of Madonna's hits.
Recording
Houston began recording contents for the album in December 1986, starting with Narada Michael Walden at Walden's recently purchased Tarpan Studios in San Rafael, California. Walden had purchased the studio in 1985, shortly after the release of Houston's debut. One of the first songs recorded for the album was her rendition of The Isley Brothers' "For the Love of You". Walden stated that Houston looked tired and "weary" from continuous work following the end of her world tour and personally asked her what she wanted to record first, to which Houston brought up the Isley Brothers hit, originally released in 1975. Walden would later tell Entertainment Weekly in 2017, "she got to the studio and took one day to rest; once she got that, she was ready." The song was the first time that Houston multi-tracked her own vocals in harmony parts as well as additional ad-libs, which increased Houston's confidence. Said Walden, "Whitney was the kind of person who loved the sound of her voice — she'd get turned on by herself!"
Not too long after recording that song, Walden presented her a dance song that had been submitted to Arista months earlier, written by the writers of Houston's previous hit, "How Will I Know", titled "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)". Walden himself initially wasn't sure how to transform a song that, to him, sounded like a "country and western rodeo song" that Olivia Newton-John could've recorded, and turn it into a funkier sounding song for Houston. According to Walden, Houston got excited over recording the song that she added her own ad-libs and lyrics, especially on the ending vamp. During Houston's tour, the singer performed an early version of the song onstage to prepare fans for her second album.
With Walden, Houston then recorded "Just the Lonely Talking Again", a song originally recorded by the soul music group (and fellow Jersey act) The Manhattans on their album, Forever by Your Side (1983), in the same session. Later, Walden would produce "Love Is a Contact Sport", a catchy danceable pop-rock number written for Houston by frequent Walden collaborator Preston Glass influenced by the Motown sound of Martha and the Vandellas and featured a tenor saxophone solo from Premik Russell Tubbs; the Chess standard "I Know Him So Well", a duet with mother Cissy Houston; the dance-rock tune "So Emotional", written by the hit team of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly and the pop-soul love ballad, "Where Do Broken Hearts Go". Houston initially didn't wanna record "Where Do Broken Hearts Go", thinking the song "had no depth" but Davis convinced her to record it, telling her, "this is your number one song". Frank Wildhorn later claimed Houston and Davis asked for another bridge; Smokey Robinson offered to record it during this period but was rebuffed by Wildhorn. The song had been one of the first songs picked by Davis for the album. Label mate and American recording artist Kenny G, then riding high off the success of his album, Duotones (1986), was prominently featured in some of these recordings, as he provided saxophone in two of the tracks Houston worked on with Walden.
In between the Walden recordings, Houston recorded two ballads under the production of Michael Masser — the sentimental "Didn't We Almost Have It All", co-written by Masser and award-winning songwriter Will Jennings, who had recently won a Grammy Award for co-writing Steve Winwood's number one 1986 hit, "Higher Love" (a song Houston herself would record three years later), and "You're Still My Man", which ended up replacing another Walden production, a soft rock number called "Moment of Truth", which would end up as the b-side to "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" and later became the official title of Houston's second world tour. Like "I Wanna Dance with Somebody", Houston would perform "Didn't We Almost Have It All" throughout the tour. Kashif originally wanted to have Houston record a duet remake of Mother's Finest's 1978 hit "Love Changes" but Davis turned that song down, feeling it "wasn't good enough" for the album. The artist later recruited Meli'sa Morgan to record the duet. Instead, Kashif produced a solo ballad for Houston, co-written by LeMel Humes, one of R&B artist Miki Howard's frequent collaborators, titled "Where You Are". With Jellybean, Houston recorded the dance song, "Love Will Save the Day", which was notable for a vibraphone solo performed by acclaimed jazz-funk musician Roy Ayers. Houston would receive credit for vocal arrangement with all songs on the album.
Critical reception
Upon the album's debut, the critical reception of Whitney was mixed. Most critics admitted the commercial value of the album, but were critical because its standard pattern followed the predecessor's winning formula and the materials failed to reveal Houston's individuality.