Whitney Houston has been looking a little tired (to put it politely) for a few years now, and her career isn't sounding too healthy these days either. This summer's "Whatchulookinat" was DOA, and on the new "One of Those Days," pop's exquisite corpse bemoans her high-stress lifestyle and just wants to take a break. And while it's hard to begrudge anyone married to Bobby Brown a rest, if the upcoming Just Whitney (Dec. 10) is half as mind-numbingly lazy as this slow-groove filler of a single (too much Mary Jane, not enough Mary J.?), the only vacation she will have earned is a discounted trip to the has-been bin.

Too bad, too, because "One of Those Days" was the perfect opportunity for the Clive Davis-damaged diva to - as everyone else is doing - offer supposed insight into the woman behind the streamlined music. Back in 1998 writer Vince Aletti called My Love Is Your Love-era Houston a time bomb that finally started ticking after years of being bottled up and forced into "mechanical perfection and pull-out-the-stops showiness." The "inevitable explosion has been thus delayed," he wrote, "but its very imminence is exciting." She's since exploded off the record, which may be why the song seems so anticlimactic in comparison to the real-life pot bust, the accusations of addiction and marriage troubles, and her ghastly appearance on Michael Jackson's televised concert. Calling the album Just Whitney, however, hints that she may be ready to shed some light on her inner turmoil and set off a volcano-size eruption.