Review: POP CD RELEASES: Houston, you have a problem
Whitney wants us to know shes OK. Its her album that needs help

Whitney Houston Just Whitney (Arista) 2/5
pounds 13.99

By Alexis Petridis


In the mid-1960s, artists realised that rock music could be a highly efficient reactive art form. If something happened that you disagreed with, you could write, record and release a protest song so speedily that it virtually commented upon events as they happened. Weeks after the 1967 Sunset Strip riots, Buffalo Springfield's troubled reaction, For What It's Worth, was in the US top 10. In 1970, former Buffalo Springfield guitarist Neil Young repeated the trick even more effectively. Ohio, his livid response to the National Guard killing four anti-war demonstrators, appeared so quickly that he was rebuked by vice-president Spiro Agnew.

Today rock and pop are still reactive, but the music has lowered its sights. Stars release records commenting not on world events, but on their own bad publicity. The reactive song has become the equivalent of inviting Hello! magazine into your Beautiful And Luxurious Home. It delivers a desperate message: ignore everything you have heard about me in the press. I am, in fact, a wonderful human being. Michael Jackson's Invincible came packed with songs that sought to underline the complete normality of his sexuality. One featured the frankly stomach-churning image of Jackson enjoying al fresco sex in a park. P Diddy, a man so egotistical he recently claimed to have invented the remix, insisted he was "still humble" on The Saga Continues. Last year Jennifer Lopez appeared in a post-September 11 charity video on condition that the organisers ensured her dressing room was painted white and contained white flowers, white drapes, white candles, a white table and a white couch. Her new single Jenny from the Block insists her behaviour is no more demanding than that of the girl next door. True, if you happen to live between Naomi Campbell and Maria Callas.

But few artists' careers have been so afflicted by adverse publicity as that of Whitney Houston. There is not enough space to list all the bizarre and disturbing stories that have circulated in recent years about the multimillion-selling singer. There have been intimations of spousal abuse, drug problems and mental illness. [Correction: There have been numerous false reports, but none about mental illness.] In 2000 she was dropped from the Oscar ceremony after she forgot lyrics, hummed distractedly and played an imaginary piano at rehearsals. [Correction: They're getting their tabloid and gossip stories confused.] The imaginary piano made another appearance during an interview with a US magazine, during which Houston also had trouble keeping her eyes open. [Correction: Whitney never interviewed with US magazine.] Last year, when she failed to appear at the second of Michael Jackson's 30th anniversary celebrations, her record company was forced to issue a formal statement denying that Houston was dead. [Correction: They had to issue a statement because the media ran a false Internet story that said Whitney died.]

Just Whitney is clearly intended as a response to the way her public image has spiralled out of control. The first single, Whatchulookinat, offers standard reactive song defence number one: the press are making everything up. To her credit, Houston puts in a bravura performance. "Whatchulookinat?" she demands, sounding feisty, but not feisty enough to deflect the obvious answer: they'relookinatchu, because you keep playing an imaginary piano in public.

Elsewhere, Tell Me No comes up with standard reactive song defence number two: shadowy forces are, for reasons unexplained, attempting to prevent Houston "reachin' for my dreams." My Love drags her husband into the studio to suggest that far from the drug-addled disaster area he is widely supposed to be, Bobby Brown is virtually the light of the world.

Houston hails from an era before Destiny's Child and Aaliyah turned R&B into pop's most sonically adventurous genre. Even by mid-1980s standards, however, her records were tame stuff. She dealt in big, unctuous ballads - I Will Always Love You and drunken mum's karaoke favourite Greatest Love of All. However, her last album, 1998's My Love Is Your Love, unexpectedly strove for urban contemporaneity. Guests Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott engineered a largely successful hip overhaul.

The spacey, downbeat Things You Say aside, Just Whitney takes a musical step backwards. Love That Man invokes the crossover pop-soul of I Wanna Dance with Somebody and Tell Me No ends with a widdly rock guitar solo. A particularly runny version of cabaret standard You Light Up My Life recalls the stadium balladry of yore. The album's solitary stab at a contemporary collaboration involves P Diddy, who once again favours the world with a guest rap. Suffice to say, it's up to his usual golden standard - ie, he sounds like Tony Slattery improvising a marching song on Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Like Jackson's Invincible, Just Whitney does everything in its power to suggest all is normal with the artist behind it. While the lyrics attempt to brazen it out, the music embarks on a damage limitation exercise of its own. It studiously invokes a past when Houston's name was associated with implausible sales figures rather than implausible behaviour. Desperate to sound normal, it winds up sounding deathly dull. It might cause people to stop looking at Whitney Houston, but for all the wrong reasons.