Yeah. You're going to see this across the board. Itunes for the greatest hits album bumped up to $17.00 for a digital album.
went to a very respected LA area vinyl shop yesterday, owner told me he had 10 sealed Whitney LP's that he threw on Ebay for a BIN of $30.00 right after the news came out. Can't blame the guy, people are buying them.
She and Davis failed to embrace the skreets clubs IMO.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
ost said:
batmon said:
She and Davis failed to embrace the skreets clubs IMO.
Depending on what your definition of "the clubs" is, I'd say that's debatable. She had joints for the house heads. Love Will Save The Day was a classic house jam, and the Yvonne Turner mix of I'm Your Baby Tonight used to get spins at the Hacienda. If, by clubs, you mean Tunnel-type spots, then batmon kind of covered that earlier - if her shit wasn't happening in the streets like that, I can't imagine you'd be hearing it at places like The Tunnel.
She and Davis failed to embrace the skreets clubs successfully IMO.
Depending on what your definition of "the clubs" is, I'd say that's debatable. She had joints for the house heads. Love Will Save The Day was a classic house jam, and the Yvonne Turner mix of I'm Your Baby Tonight used to get spins at the Hacienda. If, by clubs, you mean Tunnel-type spots, then batmon kind of covered that earlier - if her shit wasn't happening in the streets like that, I can't imagine you'd be hearing it at places like The Tunnel.
Honestly, I'm a little mystified by the idea that her career would have more longevity if she had been more street or club oriented.
Assuming that she hadn't trainwrecked - can you picture a fifty-something megamillionaire diva having any street cred?
Being a big fixture in the clubs?
Seems to me the middle-of-the-road path could have lasted a lifetime like it has for Streisand, Celine Dion etc. If she hadn't become so different from her public persona and let her voice go to hell, she would be doing the Vegas/Foxwoods scene til the end and making way more money in the process.
There are way too many examples for how you can appeal to a new generation.
I'm not sure that "having one fluke pop hit because you lined up with the zeitgeist for a minute (a New York minute, even)" equals "appeal[ing] to a new generation." What did Chaka do after "Feel For You"? What did Aretha do after "Rose"?
The idea that Whitney was being held back by her choice in production strikes me as specious. She was 1) old, 2) rich, and 3) public as fuck. Lots of people who got the late-stage r&b bail-out had one or even two of those things, but the trifecta is hard to bounce back from. And not only bouncing back but subsequently sustaining something? That's some Maltese sasquatch shit.
I get what you're saying (and I am, in all seriousness, loving you and the diggy-diggy-Doc in this thread), but I don't see it. I'm with Horseleech: Vegas/Foxwoods 'til infinity.
Dudes, look at most of the major singers & divas & how their career was reinvigorated by House producers & dj's for instance. Look at how Stephanie Mills, Patti Labelle, Evelyn King, Jody Watley, Jocelyn Brown, etc...., all have several House tracks that were made years after their fading from the spotlight, & look at how that has renewed interest in them. Almost all the artists Batmon mentioned in his analysis as a contrast with Whitney have several good songs that stand the test of time & are very club/dancefloor friendly. I feel Whitney doesn't have that. She has ballads which are certainly not for the club/dancefloor.
The game moved past her. She and Davis failed to embrace the skreets IMO.
I don't think Luther Vandross ever tried to be Down With Tha Streets either, and his popularity lasted until he passed away.
Why do you think it worked for Luther but not Whitney? Because Luther had more focus? While Whitney was being photographed for the tabloids, Luther was hard at work in the studio creating records that didn't lean on trends to survive? Just my guess.
It's a totally hypothetical conversation to have. But without Bobby and the drugs in her life, I would have been willing to bet her output would have been much different for the last 15 years...
I'm not sure I understand the re-invent point. Wasn't that what My Love Is Your Love was kinda about? Much of the production was by Rodney Jerkins, Babyface, Wyclef Jean, etc? With tracks feat. Faith and Missy Elliott. Tryin' to do a much more "urban" thing no?
I just don't think Whitney is that type of singer. One of the all time great voices. Just not the type of singer...
Dudes, look at most of the major singers & divas & how their career was reinvigorated by House producers & dj's for instance. Look at how Stephanie Mills, Patti Labelle, Evelyn King, Jody Watley, Jocelyn Brown, etc...., all have several House tracks that were made years after their fading from the spotlight, & look at how that has renewed interest in them. Almost all the artists Batmon mentioned in his analysis as a contrast with Whitney have several good songs that stand the test of time & are very club/dancefloor friendly. I feel Whitney doesn't have that. She has ballads which are certainly not for the club/dancefloor.
And yet Whitney was bigger than all of them put together.
The idea That Whitney was bigger than so and so, is a myth.
She made a gang of money in her first ten years, but by the late 90s. She was a wrap.
No of yall were coppin ger records and none of your moms were either.
Who was coppin Whitney records in 2000?
Mary, Erykah,Alica, Beyonce, Janet, Tamia, Amel, Faith fans?
The Black Barbara Streisand formula didnt work by then.
Luther I wont factor into this convo because male R&B dudes have a different set of rules.
Club and House bangers dont count to me either.....imo.
Im not saying Whitney should have went "Street" for the rest of her career. Just cap off her game like Chaka did.
ONE song while your still relevant couldnt have hurt...imo.
Its not about re-invention.
Mariah still stuck with her ballads and butterflies and still let Shaniqua know that she can smoke a joint with them.
Whitney made a gang of money in her first ten years, but by the late 90s. She was a wrap.
No of yall were coppin ger records and none of your moms were either.
Who was coppin Whitney records in 2000?
That's some cold shit, but I'm seriously lovin' this discussion. Batmon breaking it down...
Whitney made a gang of money in her first ten years, but by the late 90s. She was a wrap.
No of yall were coppin ger records and none of your moms were either.
Who was coppin Whitney records in 2000?
That's some cold shit, but I'm seriously lovin' this discussion. Batmon breaking it down...
I don't think Luther Vandross ever tried to be Down With Tha Streets either, and his popularity lasted until he passed away.
Why do you think it worked for Luther but not Whitney? Because Luther had more focus? While Whitney was being photographed for the tabloids, Luther was hard at work in the studio creating records that didn't lean on trends to survive? Just my guess.
Luther gets women feeling grown and sexy. He had, and still has, an army of soft-touch women riding for him. My wife will ride for anything Luther did, even the frankly gash remixes. Men could deal with Luther because there was a chance of a lay. It was the stuff of baby-making. And Michael Jordan rode hard for Luther, so it was OK.
Women would ride for Whitney because they could relate, until she got in with BB, then she was "Playing herself". Men?
Err... it takes a certain demographic of man to be riding hard for Whitney (other than wanting to bang her like a big bass drum when she was foine).
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Lots of interesting points raised here.
I just can't buy the argument that Whitney floundered in her later years because of a failure to connect with the urban yute. It's a plausible one, but she was simply way beyond the point where she needed to do that, at least in commercial terms. Chaka and Aretha may have been held in higher regard critically, but they never enjoyed the immense popularity Whitney did, so they were always looking for a way to get themselves back in front of a mainstream audience. Conversely, they'd always have had one eye on how their hardcore fans would react to anything that seemed too brazenly commercial.
Despite what I wrote earlier, Whitney never really needed to do out and out house joints either. As Million Dollar Bill suggested, she'd have been a great fit for that sound, especially in the mid-90s, but that was when she was at her commercial zenith, so why'd she need to take a huge step down to compete with the Barbara Tuckers or Carol Sylvans or Joi Cardwells? Moreover, would she really have wanted to look as though she was biting Mariah, with all her David Morales remixes? Nah, what Whitney has are songs that will be played and sung for another couple of generations in the kind of places where a mid-level club banger will have as much value as a wooden nickel.
As for the Luther comparison, it's a fascinating one. Luther always had solid r&b roots, as well as a good deal more musical credibility than most of his peers (imo). When he took a more pop direction, he did it with significant success and without ever really abandoning that r&b base. He concentrated on finding a comfortable middle-ground between His Thing and whatever the contemporaneous club/pop styles were. Because he never had the kind of immense commercial success that generates interest in a star's personal life, the rumours and speculation about his sexuality didn't define him - not too many gender-specific Luther songs either, so there weren't too many opportunities for anyone to say, "well, he's singing about a girl, but we know different, don't we, kids?".
It was very different for Whitney. She was (perceived as) pop out of the gate and never fully embraced r&b like that, so she never had that home to go back to. Whitney actually didn't make many records during the 90s - soundtrack joints, for the most part - but the ones she did make were as big or bigger than her 80s hits. I can believe that she'd grown tired of being told she wasn't black enough, though, and if someone's in your ear telling you that you need to stay relevant, then what better way of doing that than asserting your pre-eminence over the succession of young pretenders who've emerged while you've been off making movies (and getting high with hubby) by beating them on their own turf? I just don't think she ever needed to do it artistically, and it might even have been a mistake to try.
That said, there are rumours that part of the reason she fell off the wagon, if indeed she ever really got on it, was that she no longer believed her audience would be interested in her once they'd realised she couldn't sing the big hits the way she used to, so maybe she felt she did need to. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that if she'd come back out with some vintage Whitney at the turn of the decade, instead of that Just Whitney brick, she'd have cleaned up - the question was more whether or not she still could. There are still plenty of new young singers out there happily reworking the schtick that made her famous, from J-Hud to Leona Lewis, and there'll always be an audience for someone who does that shit well. They'll never, ever be as big as Whitney was, though. There'll be a lot of singers walking in that particular shadow for a long, long time.
Big_Stacks"I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
Hey,
I don't see the issue with Whitney's loss of popularity as a particularly 'deep' matter. She traveled the course that most pop singers traveled; she made big dough when her 'thing' was in, and did not when it played out. The fact that she was directed toward the 'pop path' was always my issue, because I felt her talent far transcended such a limited musical vision. With her talent, she could have been marketed toward a more mature sound that would've, in my humble opinion, better withstood the test of time. Instead, she was steered toward making syrupy ballads and popular dance tunes, a 'shtick' that was doomed to fail as pop and R&B music became more edgy in the 90s. Plus, she couldn't dance well, and dancing was part and parcel of using music videos as a marketing tactic during that time (e.g, Janet Jackson, Jody Watley, etc.).
Based on my reasoning above, I thought she could've played in more of the Anita Baker and Sade 'lane', appealing to the 'grown & sexy' crowd and kept getting paid, though with a smaller, yet core audience. I think Clive Davis developed her in a way designed to get all the marbles, but which also meant a shorter shelf life career-wise. I don't think the path her career took is any different than others who were marketed in such a fashion. The only difference is that I felt, given her talent, such a marketing strategy wasn't necessary simply because anyone could appreciate her musical gifts. It's sad that the 'Arista Machine' didn't fully utilize her immense talent. and instead, chose to pigeonhole her as merely a 'pop singer'. She could've been so much more than that.
Comments
:lol:
went to a very respected LA area vinyl shop yesterday, owner told me he had 10 sealed Whitney LP's that he threw on Ebay for a BIN of $30.00 right after the news came out. Can't blame the guy, people are buying them.
Depending on what your definition of "the clubs" is, I'd say that's debatable. She had joints for the house heads. Love Will Save The Day was a classic house jam, and the Yvonne Turner mix of I'm Your Baby Tonight used to get spins at the Hacienda. If, by clubs, you mean Tunnel-type spots, then batmon kind of covered that earlier - if her shit wasn't happening in the streets like that, I can't imagine you'd be hearing it at places like The Tunnel.
Too soon?
No, I understood that. I just noticed it on itunes.
More info here.
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/13/10394035-sony-hikes-whitney-houston-album-prices-online
I LOLed. Well played.
Assuming that she hadn't trainwrecked - can you picture a fifty-something megamillionaire diva having any street cred?
Being a big fixture in the clubs?
Seems to me the middle-of-the-road path could have lasted a lifetime like it has for Streisand, Celine Dion etc. If she hadn't become so different from her public persona and let her voice go to hell, she would be doing the Vegas/Foxwoods scene til the end and making way more money in the process.
Shit even Madonna got with some loops on Justify My Love.
Aretha did a Rose is Still a Rose, and she was in her 60s.
Chaka Khan jumped in early.
There are way too many examples for how you can appeal to a new generation.
It not rocket science.
I'm not sure that "having one fluke pop hit because you lined up with the zeitgeist for a minute (a New York minute, even)" equals "appeal[ing] to a new generation." What did Chaka do after "Feel For You"? What did Aretha do after "Rose"?
The idea that Whitney was being held back by her choice in production strikes me as specious. She was 1) old, 2) rich, and 3) public as fuck. Lots of people who got the late-stage r&b bail-out had one or even two of those things, but the trifecta is hard to bounce back from. And not only bouncing back but subsequently sustaining something? That's some Maltese sasquatch shit.
I get what you're saying (and I am, in all seriousness, loving you and the diggy-diggy-Doc in this thread), but I don't see it. I'm with Horseleech: Vegas/Foxwoods 'til infinity.
about something you said:
I don't think Luther Vandross ever tried to be Down With Tha Streets either, and his popularity lasted until he passed away.
Why do you think it worked for Luther but not Whitney? Because Luther had more focus? While Whitney was being photographed for the tabloids, Luther was hard at work in the studio creating records that didn't lean on trends to survive? Just my guess.
I laughed, too. That's what everybody's saying, anyway.
damn
I'm not sure I understand the re-invent point. Wasn't that what My Love Is Your Love was kinda about? Much of the production was by Rodney Jerkins, Babyface, Wyclef Jean, etc? With tracks feat. Faith and Missy Elliott. Tryin' to do a much more "urban" thing no?
I just don't think Whitney is that type of singer. One of the all time great voices. Just not the type of singer...
And yet Whitney was bigger than all of them put together.
She made a gang of money in her first ten years, but by the late 90s. She was a wrap.
No of yall were coppin ger records and none of your moms were either.
Who was coppin Whitney records in 2000?
Mary, Erykah,Alica, Beyonce, Janet, Tamia, Amel, Faith fans?
The Black Barbara Streisand formula didnt work by then.
Luther I wont factor into this convo because male R&B dudes have a different set of rules.
Club and House bangers dont count to me either.....imo.
Im not saying Whitney should have went "Street" for the rest of her career. Just cap off her game like Chaka did.
ONE song while your still relevant couldnt have hurt...imo.
Its not about re-invention.
Mariah still stuck with her ballads and butterflies and still let Shaniqua know that she can smoke a joint with them.
That's some cold shit, but I'm seriously lovin' this discussion. Batmon breaking it down...
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
http://jojoflores.com/archives/1366
Luther gets women feeling grown and sexy. He had, and still has, an army of soft-touch women riding for him. My wife will ride for anything Luther did, even the frankly gash remixes. Men could deal with Luther because there was a chance of a lay. It was the stuff of baby-making. And Michael Jordan rode hard for Luther, so it was OK.
Women would ride for Whitney because they could relate, until she got in with BB, then she was "Playing herself". Men?
Err... it takes a certain demographic of man to be riding hard for Whitney (other than wanting to bang her like a big bass drum when she was foine).
I just can't buy the argument that Whitney floundered in her later years because of a failure to connect with the urban yute. It's a plausible one, but she was simply way beyond the point where she needed to do that, at least in commercial terms. Chaka and Aretha may have been held in higher regard critically, but they never enjoyed the immense popularity Whitney did, so they were always looking for a way to get themselves back in front of a mainstream audience. Conversely, they'd always have had one eye on how their hardcore fans would react to anything that seemed too brazenly commercial.
Despite what I wrote earlier, Whitney never really needed to do out and out house joints either. As Million Dollar Bill suggested, she'd have been a great fit for that sound, especially in the mid-90s, but that was when she was at her commercial zenith, so why'd she need to take a huge step down to compete with the Barbara Tuckers or Carol Sylvans or Joi Cardwells? Moreover, would she really have wanted to look as though she was biting Mariah, with all her David Morales remixes? Nah, what Whitney has are songs that will be played and sung for another couple of generations in the kind of places where a mid-level club banger will have as much value as a wooden nickel.
As for the Luther comparison, it's a fascinating one. Luther always had solid r&b roots, as well as a good deal more musical credibility than most of his peers (imo). When he took a more pop direction, he did it with significant success and without ever really abandoning that r&b base. He concentrated on finding a comfortable middle-ground between His Thing and whatever the contemporaneous club/pop styles were. Because he never had the kind of immense commercial success that generates interest in a star's personal life, the rumours and speculation about his sexuality didn't define him - not too many gender-specific Luther songs either, so there weren't too many opportunities for anyone to say, "well, he's singing about a girl, but we know different, don't we, kids?".
It was very different for Whitney. She was (perceived as) pop out of the gate and never fully embraced r&b like that, so she never had that home to go back to. Whitney actually didn't make many records during the 90s - soundtrack joints, for the most part - but the ones she did make were as big or bigger than her 80s hits. I can believe that she'd grown tired of being told she wasn't black enough, though, and if someone's in your ear telling you that you need to stay relevant, then what better way of doing that than asserting your pre-eminence over the succession of young pretenders who've emerged while you've been off making movies (and getting high with hubby) by beating them on their own turf? I just don't think she ever needed to do it artistically, and it might even have been a mistake to try.
That said, there are rumours that part of the reason she fell off the wagon, if indeed she ever really got on it, was that she no longer believed her audience would be interested in her once they'd realised she couldn't sing the big hits the way she used to, so maybe she felt she did need to. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that if she'd come back out with some vintage Whitney at the turn of the decade, instead of that Just Whitney brick, she'd have cleaned up - the question was more whether or not she still could. There are still plenty of new young singers out there happily reworking the schtick that made her famous, from J-Hud to Leona Lewis, and there'll always be an audience for someone who does that shit well. They'll never, ever be as big as Whitney was, though. There'll be a lot of singers walking in that particular shadow for a long, long time.
I don't see the issue with Whitney's loss of popularity as a particularly 'deep' matter. She traveled the course that most pop singers traveled; she made big dough when her 'thing' was in, and did not when it played out. The fact that she was directed toward the 'pop path' was always my issue, because I felt her talent far transcended such a limited musical vision. With her talent, she could have been marketed toward a more mature sound that would've, in my humble opinion, better withstood the test of time. Instead, she was steered toward making syrupy ballads and popular dance tunes, a 'shtick' that was doomed to fail as pop and R&B music became more edgy in the 90s. Plus, she couldn't dance well, and dancing was part and parcel of using music videos as a marketing tactic during that time (e.g, Janet Jackson, Jody Watley, etc.).
Based on my reasoning above, I thought she could've played in more of the Anita Baker and Sade 'lane', appealing to the 'grown & sexy' crowd and kept getting paid, though with a smaller, yet core audience. I think Clive Davis developed her in a way designed to get all the marbles, but which also meant a shorter shelf life career-wise. I don't think the path her career took is any different than others who were marketed in such a fashion. The only difference is that I felt, given her talent, such a marketing strategy wasn't necessary simply because anyone could appreciate her musical gifts. It's sad that the 'Arista Machine' didn't fully utilize her immense talent. and instead, chose to pigeonhole her as merely a 'pop singer'. She could've been so much more than that.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak