Today’s disc is another vinyl 12” single – the 1985 hit How Will I Know by Whitney Houston, a track from her debut album Whitney Houston. This may seem out of sync (considering yesterday’s disc was from 1986) but I’m mainly featuring records in the order I came to them, rather than by year of release. My peak Whitney fan period was in more like 1987/88 (second year at uni), no doubt due to the release of her second album, Whitney, in 1987 with its giant tracks So Emotional and I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me). I certainly had a cassette of that second album when it came out but I have kept very few cassettes and there was still no sign of CDs* in 1987, pop pickers (well, not in my collection anyway). I can’t remember the first CD I owned – can you?
I probably bought this 12” a lot later (in the 1990s for DJ purposes most likely, and maybe just for old time’s sake). As a fan, I’ve watched the various documentaries and biopics in recent years, remembering as I look at this cover, scenes in some of them where Whitney was talked into looks and outfits that she really didn’t want or feel comfortable with. Looking at this ensemble now there can be no question that the ‘fashions’ of the 1980s were a bad joke being played by someone. Whitney was stunning and yet even she can’t save the outfit on the cover of this single. What chance the rest of us?
Even though I’ve heard this song for years I didn’t know till this week that both it and I Wanna Dance with Somebody were written by Seattle’s George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam. They were a married couple (though divorced in 2000) but more importantly for our thinking about music purposes they were also the band Boy Meets Girl. Boy Meets Girl had a big hit in 1988 with Waiting for a Star to Fall (a song that comes up a lot in quizzes). Apparently it was offered to Whitney first but Arista Records CEO Clive Davis rejected it. A lot of this offering and passing went on, and still does, I imagine (How Will I Know was offered to Janet Jackson first but she passed).
The regular release of Whitney’s How Will I Know had her version of a 1970s song Saving All My Love for You on the b side but this is a remix with a different track (Someone for Me) on the b side. The remix of How Will I Know was by John “Jellybean” Benitez, who worked with Madonna on many of her early tracks, but the producer for the original version, and many of Whitney’s other big tunes of this era, was Narada Michael Walden (originally a jazz fusion drummer, mentored by Quincy Jones, see Day 7).
Back tomorrow with another diva (Diva A Day next year maybe? Too much?).
For the first intro post to this series go here.
*This article quotes another article: “CD sales overtook vinyl in 1988 and cassettes in 1991”.
Another more recent article says CDs are selling better again for first time in 20 years.
3 comments:
I'm making my way through these posts - was going to wait to comment when I was done, but I wanted to say that I'm pretty sure my first CD was Indigo Girls, which says all you need to know about how our musical tastes in the 1990s were probably different. Ha! Also, I was married when I got the CD. In fact, Mike & I got a five disc player & bought CDs together to play in it. It had a shuffle feature, but it wasn't "smart" so even though we had five totally different CDs in there we mostly heard "Pain from Pearls" (from the song Kid Fears on Indigo Girls 2nd album) over & over.
Aren't the Indigo Girls "hot right now" (because of Barbie)?
Yes! I feel very current all of a sudden.
Post a Comment