Whitney Houston's new album is a bona fide knockout! Superb! I can't stop playing it. The songs are well chosen, the production is stellar, and Whitney is front and center, where she belongs.
Can she still sing? ABSOLUTELY. Is her voice the same as it was when she was 25? No, but who's is?
Her voice today has more depth and character. There are no "Star Search" theatrics here, but something far more powerful... the richness of experience and the power of self knowledge. Whitney knows what she's singing about. She doesn't have to sell the song, she is the song.
On "I Didn't Know My Own Strength", she let's you have it, but not in a predictable way. Her deliberately restrained performance is what gives this profound song an even more powerful subtext. It says my strength comes from a quiet stillness that only time has revealed. This is not bubble gum pop, this is real soul food. The first time I heard the song, I had tears in my eyes after a minute and thirteen seconds. The same is true on "I Look To You". Her approach to the material is hauntingly personal, vulnerable, yet commanding and masterful. She has earned the right to sing these songs.
The upbeat tracks on the album had me hitting repeat so often that I've rarely made it to the end of the album. "For The Lovers", "Nothin' But Love" and "Salute" are completely irresistible and terribly infectious.
Surprisingly, just when I thought I couldn't possibly stomach another rendition of Leon Russell's classic "A Song For You", Whitney does a dance version of it that is pure genius and pure Whitney.
The word Diva has been mindlessly thrown around so freely in the past decade that it's become trite. On her new album, Whitney Houston reiterates the true meaning of the word Diva. Viva La Diva!
Posted by Ru
at Sunday, August 30, 2009 |Permalink
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
nippy's return
Posted by Ru
at Tuesday, August 25, 2009 |Permalink
Monday, August 24, 2009
Elizabeth Taylor RuPaul Obsession
“She Can’t Get Enough Of The Drag Queens”
Life is anything but a “drag” for screen legend Elizabeth Taylor. The classy dame has been passing her once restless days with the high-energy hijinks of over-the-top gender bender RuPaul. Elizabeth has fallen in love with Ru’s Logo reality show, RuPaul’s Drag Race, which the 77-year-old gleefully calls “the funniest show on TV.”
“RuPaul is her new obsession,” a Hollywood spy reveals in the Aug. 31 issue of The National Enquirer. “She can’t get enough of the drag queens! "Elizabeth loves the show so much that she recently mailed RuPaul a thank you letter and an autographed photo.
It was Liz’s hairdresser, celebrity mane man Jose Eber, who first introduced the Cleopatra star to the television drag competition, which sees contestants dressed as women competing in a series of challenges for the title of “America’s Next Drag Superstar.”
“Liz claps when the drag queens she’s picked win,” the spy claims.
Friends close to Elizabeth credit the show with helping the actress cope with a variety of emotional and health issues, including chronic pain, limited mobility, and grief over the recent death of her dear friend Michael Jackson.
“These days there’s not a whole lot that makes her happy, so to see her light up watching a bunch of guys dressed as women is a kick. Liz can be moaning in pain from her various aliments, but then she has a staffer a pop in one of the RuPaul shows and suddenly she starts to laugh.”