Anyhow, I don’t have much to add to what Marcello already said regarding Goffin except that the extreme self-denial of “Take Good Care Of My Baby” is as relevant as the uncertainty of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” (but “Take Good Care Of My Baby” tastes like a day old lollipop in comparison to both “Saving” and “Tomorrow” and is plenty disturbing for that very reason, the combination of self-abnegation and icky sweetness). Recently read Ken Emerson’s Always Magic In The Air about Brill Building pop and got all excited discovering that Gerry Goffin had co-written this - which means I totally forgot that not only had Marcello given the same information on this thread, but that I’d commented on it. There were a good few years when she was the anti-Madonna, and for some reason, she was respected all the more for it. But at this point in her career, she was an attractive young woman with a great voice singing soul-pop at a time when so much of it seemed inauthentic, and that justifiably made her a star. Her later histrionics are also burned into my brain. The fact that Whitney would go on to inspire Mariah, and a million teenage “Look at me listen to me I have such BIG emotions” girls, taints her for me. The fact that Madonna never succumbed to the temptations of fame that could derail or submarine her career, while Whitney became a drugs-vacuum, is richly ironic in the light of those earlier comments. I can still recall her trashing Madonna for her slutty image back in the day, and yet to me Madonna’s “Live to Tell”, while being only as sincere as pop stars can be, seems infinitely more believable the Whitney’s bellow on “Didn’t We Almost Have it All”. “Subtlety” is something Whitney would later lack, and – in my opinion – she always lacked honesty. It’s a good song, and partly because Whitney doesn’t do her famous over-the-top vocals on it, I find myself still enjoying it all these years later. I don’t really know why this is being considered as “pop”? Is it because of the 80’s sheen, or because it hit # 1? In the 70’s this would be “soul”, and in the 90’s and beyond it would be something akin to “R & B”. « WHAM! – “I’m Your Man” SHAKIN’ STEVENS – “Merry Christmas Everyone” » Comments « 1 2 3 4 All The schlocky arrangement of “Saving” hides a fine, moving song, and the scale of Whitney Houston’s performance shouldn’t obscure how much conflict and nuance she puts into it. So it’s good that we’re meeting the style at close to its best. It’s the kind of pop stardom which turned out much later to transfer best to reality TV, but the astonishing success of Whitney and her successors means we’ll see plenty of it before that. Because of all the versions of pop we’ve seen in 1985 – good, bad, old-fashioned, cheap or ugly – this is one of the most enduring: the glamorous young soul diva with the colossal voice. It’s a great performance, and an important single. In Houston’s you feel something’s going to give, not tonight, no, but soon – and it won’t be pretty when it happens. In McCoo’s version, the man-and-mistress arrangement is stable. For feeling al-RIGHT.” – you can almost hear the cutlery slamming down on the table as she lays it, ready for him to walk in the door. Houston isn’t at her best on sweet songs – harshness and force have always been weapons available to her and on “Saving” they come out at just the right time: “To-NIGHT, Is the NIGHT.
The winsome sax-and-keys arrangements (so bland, to be honest, that their bluff goes too far and spoils the record) are a taunt for Whitney: this isn’t a slow dance, it’s a bad deal, and she’s on the end of it. This “Saving” smarts with the unfairness of the situation, the shock of crushed expectations. “It’ll have to do” is not a concept the Whitney version recognises. She’s calculated the angles as much as her married lover has, and knows that what she has is the least worst option: it’s a compromised sort-of happiness, but it’ll have to do. On its – pretty obscure – original recording, by Marilyn McCoo, the arrangement is richer and McCoo sounds rueful but warm, almost good-humoured. This is a bluff and a lie: “Saving” isn’t a song about romance, it’s a song about pain and anger, and how its singer copes with and channels those. The chiming, soft-focus keyboards that open “Saving All My Love For You” suggest late-night romance, low lights and the chink of glasses.
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