Whitney Houston
Just Whitney
(Arista)

Whitney is happy. It's in the intermittent cackles of laughter and beaming smiles on the artwork. After a few years of romantic and narcotic speculation by the press, she's using this album, her first for four years, to get her own back. Current single Whatchulookinat confronts her detractors directly.

Despite its tokenistic blips and compulsory P Diddy remix, this is classic R&B, which means it's outdated. It's heavy on the backing vocals, lazy in rhythm, and has a sheen of romantic wellbeing, when modern R&B is all about tales of love gone wrong. The years show particularly in the power chorus of Tell Me No, which even has a soft rock guitar solo. Husband-wife collaborations are rarely a good idea, and the gospel-tinged My Love more than explains why. Whitney may derive a sense of satisfaction from answering her critics head on, but the sweetest revenge would have been making a fresh-sounding album that has something to say.

-Beth Pearson