From the second you touched me, I was ready to die

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

16/12/90 : I'm Your Baby Tonight - Whitney Houston 

I'm sure this will feature some fine singing, but I'd have to say my expectations aren't massively high for it - I'm expecting a couple of decent singles and a lot of warbly filler.  As you might have guessed, this wasn't one we owned taking us to 2/3 for the year - but you certainly can't complain about the lack of women in the charts this year so far.  I do hope they're going to give the poor men a chance...

I did know the opening title track, but I'd forgotten how bang average it was - it's got a catchy enough chorus but that's it.  "All The Man The I Need" is classic Whitney but most of the rest of it is very meh - on quite a few of them you wouldn't even guess it was Whitney. "We Didn't Know" is OK, but somehow manages to disappoint because you feel that a Stevie Wonder/Whitney duet should be a lot more special than that.

We're at #8 in the charts this week on her sixth week of a 21 week run, with it peaking at #4 in her twelfth week - all a bit underwhelming really.  The top five were the same old mix of Madonna, Elton John, Phil Collins, The Three Tenors and Cliff Richard but we do at least have a new entry this week - Enigma are all the way down at #60 (and what an enigma they really were).

Wikipedia tells me the change of direction (to bang average) was as a result of black critics accusing her of "selling out" - there's no pleasing some people and interestingly it doesn't say if they were happy with the results.  The general mood from the critics was very average but the public still bought it, but not nearly as much as her previous albums.

"Customers also listened to" Deborah Cox (a Canadian singer I've never heard of), Toni Braxton (a big fave of Mrs Reed's back in the day) and Janet and Jermaine Jackson.  A top Whitney track is a thing of beauty indeed, but I'm afraid they're very rare, if non-existent on this album - I imagine there were quite a few disappointed listeners.

09/12/90 - Fine, but still disappointing
23/12/90 - Some bad hair

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