Houston recovers from slow start
Audience's wait rewarded with octave-hopping, gospel-tinged, super-mega-ego Whitney

Date: July 01, 1999
By Alan Niester, Special to The Globe and Mail

From The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Submitted by: Rachel D.


At the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto on Tuesday

Quite the trooper, that Whitney Houston.

Commenting on the unseasonably cool breezes from Lake Ontario that targeted her sculptured cheekbones, she told the crowd that "Whitney doesn't do cold." But, she gamely added, "the show must go on," so fortunately the audience got to see the second half of the show without the fear of Ms. Houston and her multihued Dolce & Gabbana outfits skittering out the side door.

Which was a good thing, because this was a performance that took its sweet time getting off the ground. She opened her two-hour performance with a trio of songs from her latest album, My Love Is Your Love.This 1998 release was her first full-blown (that is, non-soundtrack) album in eight years, and judging by the lukewarm response the crowd gave her when she questioned how many had actually purchased it, these first three songs must have been somewhat unfamiliar to the vast majority.

Appearing at the top of a chrome-and-black staircase that fronted what looked like three giant 1950s kitchen fans, the 35-year-old New Jersey-born diva opened with a hard-edged hip-hop/R&B opener called Get It Back.This was followed by a strident, overwrought ballad called Heartbreak Hotel, and finally a Chaka Khan-styled funk number If I Told You That.

Backed by a precise and professional six-piece backing band (and four singers, including her brother Gary) she then dredged up the past with numbers such as Saving All My Love and Exhale (Shoop-Shoop). But her attempts to get the audience to sing along on the shoop-shoop bits fell embarrassingly flat, and the retreat from the stage shortly thereafter to change outfits (thus leaving the stage to brother Gary, who showed why he was a backing singer by sucking out whatever life remained in Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground) was timely.

When she returned, however, the performance took off. I'm Every Woman and Dance With Somebody were both big-beat rave-ups that finally ignited both the stage and the crowd. From that point on, artist and audience were as one, and it finally became evident just why she is one of the best-selling recording artists ever (a hundred million and counting).

She took it home with some of her best-known numbers, including How Will I Know and I Will Always Love You, the latter tacked onto a medley of her soundtrack hits.

Because this was Whitney Houston up there, there were a few bizarre moments. At one point she chastised the working press in general for its unseemly interest in her personal life (her relationship with husband/soul-singer Bobby Brown has been tempestuous, to say the least). Then, in complete disregard for the nation's child-labour laws, she dragged her extremely uninterested five-year-old daughter Kristina on-stage to yelp a few bars of Your Love Is My Love. Yes, the kid was cute, but obviously not quite ready to follow Mom's footsteps.

Whitney Houston has always been a love-her-or-hate-her artist. What is seen as strident and overbearing to some is considered unique and amazing to others. Either way, it was the full octave-hopping, gospel-tinged, super-mega-ego Whitney on display Tuesday night, so the 7,500 who attended certainly got exactly what they bargained for.