Whitney Houston

Bodyguard

Whitney Houston's soundtrack rules as the Queen of the Night

Review Score:

(8/10)
There have been a lot of successful soundtrack albums from "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music" to "Grease" and "Titanic," but in all of those cases the movies were big successes as well. However, in the case of "The Bodyguard" the album was way more successful than the film selling over 15 million copies, spending 20 weeks at the top of the charts, and winning the Grammy award for Album of the Year. Then there was the hit single, "I Will Always Love You," a powerful cover of Dolly Parton's sweet little song, which hit the #1 spot on the Billboard singles chart and stayed there for 15 weeks. Of course where "The Bodyguard" was different from most soundtracks was that the leading lady not only did her own singing but happened to be at the top of her game. True, she only sang the first six songs on the album (what would have been the first side of the record back in the olden days), but these were songs that sounded like Houston was still recording "I'm Your Baby Tonight," except with better songs. Consequently, there is nothing here that is regarded as a stretch for the singer turned actress (compare the results with what Bette Midler had to do in her first film, "The Rose"; Midler is a pretty good singer but Janis Joplin-type songs are not her forte).

Most of the other songs made it high up on various charts: "I Have Nothing" was #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Run to You" was #10 on Adult Contemporary, "I'm Every Woman" was #1 for Hot Dance Music/Club Play; and "Queen Of The Night" was #1 for Hot Dance Music/Club Play. For four years the album made it to the top spot on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. If you want more of an explanation for the album's success than Whitney Houston's voice and Kevin Costner's buzz cut, then the variety of charts these songs covered evidences its widespread popularity. The only serious complaint is that Houston only does the first half of the ablum and the rest is just the sort of filler than usually makes its way onto soundtrack albums in the last decade or so even if having Kenny G, Aaron Neville, and Joe Cocker doing the filling was above average. But in comparison to the way the album started the second half could not help but suffer in comparison. There had not been a soundtrack so "A" side "B" side since the Beatles put out "Yellow Submarine" and I just cannot round this one up when it comes to the rating.

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