Houston, we've got a problem

Date: November 16, 1998
By George Kanzler, Staff

From The Newark Star-Ledger
Submitted by: Rachel D.


Whitney Houston has apparently been spending too much time making records, movies and TV shows, all of which are done in installments and can be repeated until perfected. At least that's one explanation for her utter inability to carry her live show at Trump Taj Mahal's Mark G. Etess Arena in Atlantic City Friday night, the first of her two shows there over the weekend.

The pop-soul diva from New Jersey was strictly underwhelming in her opening show, as if she were withholding a percentage of her performing self as great as the number of empty seats (close to half) in the featureless, cavernous barn of an arena. (Saturday night's show was reportedly sold out). A muddy, ill-balanced sound system and too-small TV screens flanking the stage further sabotaged any sense of warmth and intimacy the show might have generated.

By the time Houston was singing her encore, "I Will Always Love You" - an encore hardly warranted by the tepid applause preceding it - most of the crowd was heading for the exits. And not even bothering to stop and buy souvenir T-shirts and hats. It was a strange response to a singer who has become one of the premiere pop divas of the '90s. But Houston was largely complicit in the debacle, merely going through the motions and doing little to enliven the proceedings on stage.

Her first new studio album (non-soundtrack related) in eight years, "My Love is Your Love" (Arista), is hitting the stores tomorrow, but Houston didn't even tell the audience the album's title when singing the first of three songs from it. And although the song itself, "I Learned from the Best," is full of bitter recrimination toward a former lover ("When you broke my world in two/ Baby I learned the way to break a heart"), the singer bizarrely introduced it by talking about how much she loves her husband, Bobby Brown.

For that song, Houston perched on a high chair, profiling to the audience in high-fashion poses. During other songs ("Queen of the Night," "I Wanna Dance with Somebody Who Loves Me"), Houston made half-hearted attempts at dancing, as if someone had choreographed only enough steps for half a tune. Always rather awkward and clutzy when moving on stage, Houston at least used to attempt to move with enthusiasm. Friday night she would prance and hop for a few bars, then stop and, seemingly distracted, stand stock still, although the music continued playing.

Houston was also easily distracted by shouts and comments from the audience, breaking the show's flow by responding to them garrulously instead of ignoring them. As for bringing out her five-year-old daughter to share the stage, it was a sentimental ploy, and a cloying one at that.

Not helping at all in the first part of the show was Houston's costume, a garish, body-hugging pants suit in what looked like white lace covered with red sequins and redder fringes hanging from all surfaces like tassels. Much more appealing was the elegant velvet blue-gray sheath gown she changed into for the second half.

As for the music itself, it was often a case of overkill, drowning Houston's voice in layers of muddy keyboard-synth and guitar waves. The singer made little effort to overcome the too-loud backgrounds, even though she is known for her powerful, gospel-trained voice. In fact, on such familiar hits as "Saving All My Love For You" and "I Believe in You and Me," where she usually sustains shimmering high notes at climactic moments, Houston backed off, letting one of her backup singers carry the notes.

Of the new songs, the album's title track fared best. "My Love is Your Love," an extravagant love song with socially conscious historical references by Wyclef Jean and Jerry "Wonder" DuPlessis, is the kind of anthemic ballad on which Houston can lavish her strong voice. If the sound system had been better it might have been stunning, not simply good.

The other new song, "If I Told You That," was a bouncy groove tune, a dance confection that stayed mysteriously flat, refusing to rise. It was representative of the show itself, which needs not only a major overhaul but the commitment of its star to live performing, a commitment she obviously wasn't ready to make Friday night.