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Chances are your favorite singer’s favorite singer is Whitney Houston. For the most part, her voice is one of many that is undefeated. MADAMENOIRE, heard from a group of singers and songwriters who talk about their first time encountering Houston and how she’s impacted them as artists.
Kenny Lattimore saw Houston for the first time on The Tonight Show, singing “You Give Good Love.” He recalls instantly thinking of how polished she was—in her singing, appearance and performance. Lattimore says hearing Whitney’s voice, he knew “There was this young, new voice that was passionately singing R&B at the same level as some of the greats we knew at the time.”
He recognized that Whitney was such a great stylist that she took any song and turned it into a Whitney song.
Claude Kelly, who was a songwriter for Whitney, says he’s known her for her entire career. He grew up in the 1980s in New York, and for him, Whitney is a hometown hero. He was born just as her career was starting and for that reason, feels like he’s known her his whole life. Some of Whitney’s first albums made it clear that Whitney would be the “Black American Princess,” says Kelly.
Recording artist Candiace Dillard Basset recalls the first time she saw Whitney perform which was in the “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” music video.
“I honestly felt like I saw myself in her. She’s a brown girl. She had natural hair. She was feisty,” says Dillard Basset. She credits Whitney for being one of the artists who started her on her own journey of wanting to become an music artist.
Singer/songwriter Jade Novah praises “I Will Always Love You” as being one of the “most precise” songs ever written. She says it’s clean and simple:
“It was all about her performance and her vulnerability and…it worked.”
Novah says Whitney’s voice allowed for her to be vulnerable and tell stories that weren’t often told from a Black woman’s perspective. She says Whitney displays, “So much range and emotion and personality in one sentence.”
