September 30, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
I Have Nothing
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Happy Birthday to You
You Are So Beautiful
His Eye is on the Sparrow (Performed by Cissy Houston)
For the Love of You
Amazing Grace
I Will Always Love You
(Setlist incomplete)
September 28, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
All the Man That I Need
Run to You
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Wonderful Counselor
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist incomplete and may be incorrect)
September 27, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
All the Man That I Need
Run to You
Queen of the Night
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Jesus Loves Me
His Eye is on the Sparrow (Performed by Cissy Houston)
For the Love of You
Amazing Grace
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist incomplete and may be incorrect)
September 21, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Wonderful Counselor (Contains elements of "Freeway of Love")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect and incomplete)
September 20, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Wonderful Counselor (Contains elements of "Freeway of Love")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect and incomplete)
September 17, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Wonderful Counselor (Contains elements of "Freeway of Love")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect and incomplete)
September 16, 1994
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$380,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go / Say You Love Me
All the Man That I Need
Old MacDonald Had a Farm (Sung to Bobbi Kristina)
I Have Nothing
Run to You
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Say a Little Prayer / Walk on By / A House Is Not a Home / Alfie
Wonderful Counselor (Contains elements of "Freeway of Love")
I Will Always Love You (Dedicated to her dad)
The Greatest Love of All
(Setlist may be incomplete)
In a show that began spectacularly and ended up strange, the singer was joined onstage by her husband, Bobby Brown, the couple’s toddler, and a dancer who is Houston’s sister-in-law. The willowy star also turned a spotlight on her mother, Cissy Houston. Whitney Houston’s Radio City Music Hall shows continue through Sept. 27. Later, backed by an orchestra, Houston sang a tribute to her cousin, Dionne Warwick.
Near the end of the concert, following band introductions and a mighty, house-shaking gospel song in praise of the Heavenly Father, Houston announced that her “daddy” had just entered the hospital and dedicated “I Will Always Love You” to him. That was when things got weird. Otherwise in superb form, Houston’s voice had tired slightly as the show progressed, and she hit a few dead spots, notes that failed to come out when she reached for them. As the orchestra began the song, she took a long, emotional pause before opening her mouth. The third word broke and vanished, and a look of stricken surprise crossed her face.
She recovered to gamely finish the song, but did so tentatively, avoiding stress on her unexpectedly treacherous instrument. Visibly overwrought, she blew kisses to the crowd and then rushed offstage into the arms of Brown, who was waiting anxiously in the wings. In the fairy-tale land of pop superstardom, this dramatic exit was a bracing reality check. With the house lights down and the curtain up, the orchestra and audience waited for five suspenseful minutes. Under the circumstances, there was no reason to expect more than a curtain call.
After all, she had already delivered a complete, top-drawer, 105-minute performance of her biggest hits. She had made two spectacular entrances: crooning a taste of “Greatest Love of All” from the back of the house, and returning after intermission, with a full orchestra supplementing her seven-piece band and vocal trio, to wring every ounce of passion from a show-stopping “I Have Nothing.” If her exit was not entirely smooth, it was neither premature nor abrupt.
Up to that point, Houston had been the model of relaxed confidence. Her remarks, other than an attack on the gossip papers, were good-natured and ingratiating. She was equally unflappable in the face of “go on, girl” shouts from the balcony and her knee-high daughter, who received a swinging rendition of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” from her momentarily upstaged mother.
Small flaws notwithstanding, Houston’s singing was magnificent. Her breathtaking ability to leap octaves and accurately hit distant notes during flights of ecstasy was largely intact. She put herself into each song with expressive invention, making up for the creative effort that was absent from last year’s Radio City show. At worst, the arrangements of a few ballads, most notably a plodding “All the Man That I Need,” were not up to par.
The first half got its best mileage from peppy, upbeat tunes like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” “How Will I Know,” “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” “Queen of the Night,” and a spot of Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love.” After the powerful one-two punch of “I Have Nothing” and a rendition of “Run to You” so compelling it would not have been shocking to see Kevin Costner jog onstage, the second half never quite matched that energy level.
Houston peaked in the Warwick segment with marvelous adaptations of “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Alfie,” an unlikely choice that she nailed. The wait following Houston’s hasty exit was bathed in an afterglow of satisfaction and sympathy, which evaporated when she emerged in a different gown to sing a wobbly encore of “Greatest Love of All.” She may have been motivated by a sense of show-must-go-on duty, but having already shared a moment that absolved her of further obligation, it was a miscalculation to proceed as if nothing had happened. Intentional or not, it felt as though emotions had been tugged simply to justify an encore.
(Newsday)
September 10, 1994
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
September 09, 1994
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
September 07, 1994
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
September 04, 1994
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
September 03, 1994
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
September 01, 1994
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
August 25, 1994
Houston, TX
The Summit
Attendance: 10,000+
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Jesus Loves Me
Blessed Assurance
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
The third time was the charm for Whitney Houston. After twice postponing previously scheduled appearances in the city that shares her name, Houston concluded her summer tour Thursday night at The Summit. “Thanks for coming back,” she told the not-quite sold-out crowd of more than 10,000. She didn’t mention the miscarriage that occurred before her first scheduled concert in July, or the throat problems that forced her to postpone several additional dates on the tour.
Houston took the stage at 9:10 p.m. to the strains of “Jesus Loves Me” and “The Greatest Love of All.” She was wearing a black leotard and black tights under a shiny gold miniskirt. Her spiked heels accentuated her long-legged, former teen-model figure. The heels made it difficult, if not impossible, for her to dance, but dancing is not what this diva is about anyway.
As she reminded on the second song of the night, “Saving All My Love for You,” Houston is the best pop-soul ballad singer of her generation. When your voice can stop time, it doesn’t really matter if you can shake a leg. Houston is a marvelous performer as long as she sticks to big-production ballads such as “I Have Nothing,” from the spectacularly successful soundtrack album to the movie The Bodyguard, in which she also starred. It’s when she tries to get funky that she runs into trouble. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” featured four female hip-hop dancers incongruously high-stepping to the song’s old-fashioned disco groove.
But the evening was, on balance, a triumph for the best-selling woman pop artist of all time. On “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” she introduced her husband, Bobby Brown, and told the audience not to believe what they read in the scandal sheets. Brown returned a bit later holding the couple’s young daughter. Houston also dedicated the song “All the Man I Need” to Brown, who led the audience in a hip-hop-style pep rally during an interlude while Houston went backstage to change.
In the middle of the show, Houston appeared to be struggling to hang on to her voice. She sipped tea, then started gulping water between tunes. But she recovered to establish her soulful credentials beyond a shadow of doubt on a spine-tingling medley of Aretha Franklin classics, including “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” and “Ain’t No Way.” Houston’s backing band benefited from superb, gospel-style harmony vocals, which shouldn’t be surprising considering that her mother, Cissy Houston, is among the most respected backup singers in the business.
Houston returned to her gospel roots on “Blessed Assurance” before concluding with her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” The song set a record in 1993 by remaining at No. 1 for 14 weeks and spurred international sales of 28 million for The Bodyguard soundtrack. The encore was “I’m Every Woman.”
(The Houston Chronicle)
August 23, 1994
Phoenix, AZ
America West Arena
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
August 21, 1994
Anaheim, CA
Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Whitney Houston’s show at the Pond of Anaheim started with all the dispiriting earmarks of a Vegas-style revue. Yet she pulled it out of the bag in a big way, retreating from the hits to material that clearly held far more meaning for her.
She will always love us. That, we know. But is Whitney Houston evergreen? Premiering with great fanfare on television Sunday was the Barbra Streisand cable special, filmed principally at the former Funny Lady’s final show at the Pond of Anaheim a month ago.
Appearing in person at the same arena, meanwhile, was arguably the most naturally gifted pop vocalist of a subsequent generation, diva-in-waiting Whitney. And inescapably, given the timing and venue at least, Houston was facing some substantial footsteps to follow. For anyone truly interested in charting a comparison between these two leading ladies of successive eras, the odds pointed toward anticlimax.
Houston’s show (rescheduled from its original July date because of the singer’s throat ailment) certainly started badly, if slickly, with all the dispiriting earmarks of a prematurely rote, Vegas-style revue. Yet she pulled it out of the bag in a big way, eventually loosening up and letting more of a playful, spontaneous personality shine through, while retreating from the hits to less obligatory material that clearly held far more personal meaning for her.
And like Barbra, Whitney now spends a fair amount of stage time ruminating on her personal life as well as the public perception of it. Severe ego-phobes need not apply in either case, obviously. Whereas Streisand’s presentation of self is carefully scripted, though, Houston’s is messy; she seems alternately guarded and extemporaneous in ways that are both frustrating and fascinating.
At least, unlike some of her melismatic rivals on the charts, there seems to be a “there” there. The “there” is publicly tough, through and through; there is no waxing vulnerable. When Houston defends herself and her husband, Bobby Brown, against tabloid accounts of their supposedly rocky relationship (“I am a woman in love, and I have a man in love with me. You know how I know? Because I give him every reason to stay”), she is cocky on behalf of family. When she moves into gospel territory, she is cocky for the Lord.
You might wish for just a small crack in all this emotional armor, without necessarily asking her to succumb to the tragedian instincts of divas past. Houston did get teary once, not on her own behalf but while noting that the children of O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson were in the audience and had sent her flowers. When she asked for a spotlight to be put on the presumably unsuspecting Simpson kids, it was a classically weird, mortifying moment.
But if anyone has the material goods to convincingly carry off stoutheartedness, it’s Houston. By her own admission, she wasn’t in top voice Sunday, and she had to ask for the Pond’s air conditioning to be shut off mid-set to protect herself from the draft. That said, she approached sheer vocal perfection at virtually every turn. If she ever before succumbed to the temptation to oversing, at this seasoned date she consistently finds just the right impressive peaks and exquisite valleys without ever unduly extending a phrase past what it’s worth. In the second half of the show, she got to apply that astonishing instrument to some material worthy of it.
By way of paying homage to her mother Cissy Houston’s vocal quartet, the Sweet Inspirations, Houston launched into a long medley of late-’60s secular and gospel oldies, starting with the Aretha Franklin smash “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” whose original vocal arrangements were done by the senior Houston. The inevitable conclusion: Whitney was born 20 years too late. Two decades too late, that is, to be consistently provided with the kind of material (and overall career guidance, perhaps) that would do justice to her full talent.
Watching her progress emotionally through a gospel standard or a great ’60s ballad made it all the more difficult to see Houston go back and end the show as she began it, with peppy but decidedly unmoving up-tempo numbers, augmented by Bobby Brown’s female dancers in workout gear, or by doing balladry more suited to contemporary Broadway than to the stuff of classic soul. There were several mostly vain attempts to get the crowd on its feet during “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” when what we wanted more of was Houston herself.
(The Los Angeles Times)
August 19, 1994
Sacramento, CA
ARCO Arena
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
At the halfway point, with the singer standing in a stark spotlight and looking for all the world like that bucket of water from Flashdance was about to splash over her, Houston seemed to have been going through the motions until then—hitting all the high points and high notes (and they were all high)—but this was a moment full of life. It yielded an excellent performance of “I Have Nothing,” followed by a brief intermission during which she changed from a creamy, skin-tight, military Michael-Jackson-inspired outfit into a dazzling white, skin-tight, sexy-Whitney-Houston-looking ensemble.
And then she did something incredible: she paid tribute to her mother and sang a series of Aretha Franklin songs that really kicked the concert into gear.
“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” and “Ain’t No Way” showcased Houston’s voice—perhaps the best in the business—as equally expressive as Franklin’s on material so closely identified with the legend. Houston’s mother, Cissy Houston, had been a member of Franklin’s backup group, the Sweet Inspirations, and it was she—proud daughter Whitney told the crowd—who had done the backing vocal arrangements on those classic tunes. “She got paid for it. She got the money, but she never got the credit,” Houston said. “Today, I am giving her her props.” And then, as proof her mother still knew exactly what she was doing, she added, “My mama came in and showed us how to do it right.”
And they did. A little later in the set, Houston tossed off another bit of Franklin material in a bright but brief “Freeway of Love.”
All the hits were there somewhere in the evening’s concert, from “The Greatest Love of All,” which opened the show, to “I Will Always Love You,” which closed it—before the singer returned at husband Bobby Brown’s insistence for “I’m Every Woman.” In between came “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” “How Will I Know,” “So Emotional,” and several more. The crowd of roughly 10,000 seemed well pleased with the performance. They wanted Whitney, and they got plenty of her. She worked the stage, engaging the audience, perhaps a little too much so. Shouts of “Whitney!” and “We love you!” were answered from the stage, encouraging the crowd even more.
The excitement nearly ended when a woman at the front of the stage tried to hold Houston’s baby, who had been brought out. “I don’t think so,” the singer said, and had Brown take the child away.
Houston also spoke directly to the audience about herself and her family. Referring to tabloid newspapers, she said, “I am here to tell you that they are lying to you. It matters to me what you think of me and my family. Bobby and I and the kids are doing just fine, thank you very much. Ain’t that right, baby?” she added as Brown came out and kissed her.
Brown acted as emcee throughout the evening, introducing Houston, acting as cheerleader, working with the crowd, and interacting with the trio of dancers. He also introduced the opening act, Smoothe Sylk, a vocal duo and the first act signed to his new record label. They were adequate, but lacked spark, performing to canned music so slick that one had to wonder how much their voices really stood out.
(The Sacramento Bee)
August 17, 1994
Tacoma, WA
Tacoma Dome
Attendance: ≈11,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Fans plunked down $50 and $35 to hear Whitney Houston’s million-dollar voice Wednesday night in Tacoma. What they got was more like pocket change. The pop diva just didn’t have it. And she knew it. “I’m a little hoarse,” she admitted at the start of the show.
The sparse but eager crowd of 11,000 forgave her, however. They wanted to bask in the glory of a star, and the hit-making Houston knows she shines bright, even on an off night. “Welcome to Whitney Houston,” she said by way of grand introduction. Little did the crowd know her hair would be bigger than her voice.
Houston ran through a string of upbeat, early hits, including “How Will I Know” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” She didn’t move as much as her three dancers, and she didn’t sing as much as her three backup vocalists.
By the time she got to “Queen of the Night,” from the landmark Bodyguard soundtrack, it was obvious that Houston’s dancers, singers, and seven-piece band were covering for her. They performed most of the song without the star, who added only “ooh yeahs” and small steps in a too-tight dress.
The love-song portion of the evening gave Houston a chance to sit and highlight the loves of her life. Her husband, Bobby Brown, brought out their toddler daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and one of his daughters from a previous relationship. “This is my family,” Houston said proudly, hugging Bobbi and planting a few major smooches on her spouse. The audience ate it up.
They also cheered when Houston inserted Bobby’s name into “All the Man That I Need” and when she addressed tabloid rumors of trouble in their marriage. “Like any other family, we go through our things,” Houston said. “But don’t believe what you hear and what you read. They’re lying to you.”
Houston limped through versions of “All at Once,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” along with other memorable songs. Every tune was familiar, which made her choppy renditions all the more painful to hear. Perhaps Houston should have just canceled the show when she had the chance.
It was originally scheduled for a month ago, but the singer postponed it after suffering a miscarriage and some vocal problems. To her credit, such travails might have kept a lesser performer off the stage. Houston is a pro. She made the most of the voice she had, handing off many high notes and choruses to the able backup singers and engaging the eager crowd.
(The News Tribune)
Whitney Houston with Smoothe Sylk at the Tacoma Dome last night.
The most spontaneous moment of Whitney Houston's show came about three songs into the singer's two-hour plus set.
She was talking to the audience in the right-side seats about love and love songs when suddenly, from out of nowhere, a moth broke through security and flew into her face! She shrieked and was on the other side of the stage before her cry faded.
Her bodyguard—definitely not Kevin Costner—did not attempt to throw himself between the moth and the singer but rather laughed from the wings. When Houston finally gathered her wits, she told the perplexed audience, "You have to realize, I don't play with bugs." It was undoubtedly the only unscripted line of the night.
Then she went right into "Saving All My Love for You," her snappy little hit single about infidelity and marathon sex, and managed to turn it into a six-minute dirge.
And so it went.
Whitney Houston has always been a terrific singer. She has a truly expressive instrument, beautiful tone and pitch and even a fair idea of what decent phrasing is about. How else could she have done as well as she has with some of the dog material she's recorded. She even had a hit with "The Star-Spangled Banner." Now that takes talent, it is not a very good tune.
But she is not a performer, never has been. It's a role she has always appeared uncomfortable with. Early in her performing career she was accused of being cold and undemonstrative, cut off—seemingly by choice—from an adoring audience.
Now she's over compensating. Last night she almost gushed. Almost. She talked about love, her husband, her baby, then she brought her baby and her husband—Bobby Brown—on stage. Twice. She bumped with the girl dancers, she drank lots of water, she toweled off often. She was not the child diva, she was the grown and worldly woman who also managed to acknowledge her spiritual side. But it felt as contrived as any 'Vegas variety show. She treated herself as someone else. Her first words to the audience were "Welcome to Whitney Houston." Why thank you. Where is she?
Houston's rearranged hits were almost as long as her introductions. Slowing a song down can often give the singer a chance for some flashy vocal acrobatics, but many of Houston's songs didn't stretch that well. While she pulled off triple somersaults with "I Will Always Love You," finishing with waterfalls and golden geysers of fireworks, "The Greatest Love of All" and "All The Man That I Need" were endless. In fact, the first half of the show, before the first costume change, ran too slow.
The tempo picked up briefly during the second half with Brown cheerleading from the sidelines, but it didn't last. Things improved after an interminable introduction when Houston did some Aretha Franklin songs. "(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman" was a fine start, but ironically, Houston cut it short.
Houston did some gospel, took forever to introduce the band and dancers and somewhere worked "I'm Every Woman" into the lineup, but by the end everything was becoming a blur. Not that the audience of 11,000, about half the Tacoma Dome's capacity, didn't love Whitney back, they did. But the exodus for the door started well before the last note ended, whenever that finally occurred.
(Seattle Times)
August 16, 1994
Portland, OR
Portland Memorial Coliseum
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Hundreds of the roughly 10,000 people present waved green and purple luminescent tubes, and a few resorted to the lower-tech expedient of holding aloft flaring butane lighters. Everyone cheered and clapped at Houston’s every move and note. Onstage, four dancers high-kicked, spun, and aerobicized their way through a dozen songs and nearly as many costume changes. Houston’s large band provided perfect backup, from the simmering atmospherics of a long “Love Medley” to the industrial dance groove of “Queen of the Night.” Backup singers supplied dense vocal interplay behind Houston, allowing her to scat through choruses and syncopate her voice against theirs—and she didn’t need them to shine.
Houston’s voice is such a marvel, such a filling presence, that she could have stood alone on the stage. It is the sort of voice bestowed on perhaps one in a million people, and Houston has worked hard in the 31 years since she was born to harness it. Growing up with a gospel-singing mother and years of hard work in recording studios have resulted in a soprano that can do anything. It can swell from an earthy whisper into soaring fortissimo and from there flow seamlessly into flawless falsetto. As robust as that voice sounded Tuesday, it was also the reason Houston postponed the last half of her summer tour, from mid-July to August.
On Tuesday night, Houston asked for the air conditioning to be shut down in deference to her voice. The growing heat didn’t bother the crowd, which was notable in a couple of ways: it was easily one of the most diverse audiences in ethnicity and age to be seen at a coliseum concert, and it loved absolutely everything Houston did—even the excruciatingly schlocky moments, such as when she brought her husband and baby daughter onstage and later her stepdaughter.
Fourteen-year-old Jennifer M. Verrastro of Tualatin typified the intensity of the true fan. She stood before the sound-mixing board, clutching a rolled-up piece of gift wrap on which she and her sister, Kim, 12, had painstakingly printed “WE LOVE WHITNEY!” She hoped to hang the sign near the mixing console. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Verrastro said. In her case, that’s not a cliché.
“We were supposed to go see Whitney Houston the last time, when Kim was 4. But my sister broke her arm, and all the money had to go to doctor’s bills. She cried all day when she heard that we couldn’t go. Then we got tickets for this concert, and she canceled and rescheduled for when we were supposed to go on vacation. Then Kim hurt the same arm again. My mom just said, ‘Whatever it takes. We’re going to that concert this time.’”
The nagging question is how that unconditional love is repaid. As far as could be seen, Jennifer’s sign never did get hung. Spontaneity doesn’t flourish in the corporate juggernaut that Houston—who has sold 65 million records in her career—has become. Lovingly hand-painted sentiments look out of place amid the $60 Whitney Houston polo shirts, the $50 tickets, and the slick but ultimately superficial stage show. Whitney Houston is a tremendous entertainer, and for her fans, that is enough.
(The Oregonian)
August 14, 1994
San Jose, CA
San Jose Arena
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
August 12, 1994
Las Vegas, NV
MGM Grand Garden Arena
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
July 13, 1994
Las Cruces, NM
Pan American Center
Attendance: ≈13,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Revelation
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
July 11, 1994
Denver, CO
McNichols Sports Arena
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
For all of her accomplishments and achievements within the pop culture pantheon, the biggest-selling female artist of all time hasn't developed a stage act.
It's been on-the-job training for Whitney Houston.
Past concerts have been magnets for criticism—she lacks seasoning, she can't dance a lick, she has no idea how to talk to an audience. It takes time to learn stagecraft, and it's time that the diva still hasn't spent.
Houston's U.S. concert tour continued at McNichols Sports Arena on Monday night, and she was cool and at ease belting out the hits, throwing off the studio shackles applied by her mentors.
Backed by a seven-member band, three singers and four dancers, she stuck notes in the corners of a "Love Medley" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)." She gave rousing performances of "I Have Nothing" and a playful "Queen of the Night."
And, of course, her monster single "I Will Always Love You" built into a hair-raising crescendo replete with pyrotechnics.
Yet in many ways, the show felt canned, more like a television special.
That soprano is an oh-so-rare instrument—she hit the notes perfectly, with spiritual warmth or subtle expressiveness—but Houston was just going through the motions with her vocal acrobatics. She wasn't a part of her band—the musicians played around her.
And she remained unable to project her personality to the back rows. The exception: A medley of Aretha Franklin songs circa 1968 gave her real R&B legitimacy. Houston's husband, Bobby Brown, was in attendance, and on stage she hotly denied the tabloid gossip about their personal life.
On the recording front, Houston plans to release a greatest hits album, which will include four new songs, before year's end. And she can be heard in the current TV ads for AT&T's True Voice system, singing the theme song.
(Denver Post)
July 07, 1994
Lafayette, LA
Cajundome
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
Amazing Grace (Request from the audience)
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Recently, Whitney Houston appeared at the Cajundome in Lafayette and proceeded to give a sizzling performance: literally! It seems as though Houston prefers that the air conditioning be turned off before she performs. As you might guess, her performance was somewhat steamy.
Houston is coming off an unparalleled year, by any standards, for a musician. The Bodyguard' soundtrack, in which Houston performed six songs for, was named album of the year in 1993 and remained on top of the charts for 13 weeks. Houston had three number one songs off the album, including her soulful rendition of the Dolly Parton son "I Will Always Love You." As of May 1994, the album had sold over 26 million copies, which is more than any single selling album by 'the Beatles.' In addition, Houston broke all records at the 1993 Billboard Music Awards by taking home 11 trophies, eclipsing Janet Jackson's record of eight awards.
Not to be outdone by her musical accomplishments, Houston also made her acting debut by costarring with Academy Award winner Kevin Costner in "The Bodyguard." Feedback from moviegoers was overwhelmingly positive.
Houston's musical career began in 1985 when she signed with Arista Records, thus releasing her debut album, 'Whitney Houston." The album sold more than 18 million copies. Her second album, 'Whitney,' debuted at no. 1 on the record charts in 1987, a first for a female vocalist. Whitney's third and final album before The Bodyguard' album, "I'm Your Baby Tonight," was released in 1990.
As the curtain raised in the Cajundome, Houston appeared in the center of the stage wearing a lavish, gold sequined evening gown. She was a picture of beauty and elegance. Houston's first song of the evening was "So Emotional," off of her second album titled 'Whitney."' For her next three songs, Houston continued to treat the near capacity crowd to some of her earlier songs: "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," also from the second LP, and "Saving All My Love for You," and "How Will I Know" from her debut album "Whitney Houston."
Houston then paused for a moment to wish a happy birthday to a very stunned, but jubilant woman in the audience. She then proceeded to make another touching announcement to the crowd; that she is expecting her second child.
Next, the 'pop diva' began to sing a medley of her songs including: "Didn't We Almost Have It All;" "Where Do Broken Hearts Go;" and "All the Man That I Needed." Following her medley, Houston sang two songs from The Bodyguard' album; "I Have Nothing," and "Queen of the Night."
Once again, the versatile singer began to address the audience. Houston spoke of her childhood, the importance of church throughout her life, as well as the love she shares with her family. She also spoke of the two people who most influenced her singing career, her mother and idol, Aretha Franklin. Houston further elaborated on the two; saying that although it is not common knowledge, her mom was responsible for arranging many of the background vocals for Franklin's early songs. At that time, Houston said she would like to sing three of those sons. She then delivered a rousing version of the Franklin smash "Natural Woman," followed by "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" and "Ain't No Way."
The Cajundome once again became energized. As Houston then put it Its time for church. She began singing a medley of gospel songs still very close to her heart. Houston paused once again and surprised the audience by bringing out her husband Bobby Brown, and their baby girl. Jokingly she said that she not only had her husband with her, but she had also borrowed his dancers for a while also. Much to the crowd's delight, Whitney expressed that there was a request for her to sing "Amazing Grace," and amidst a tremendous roar she, she gave a powerful rendition of the gospel song.
Finally, after thanking her fans for all of the love and support they have given to her, Houston began to sing the son that everyone was anxiously awaiting. Her closing song was a soulful masterpiece; the Dolly Parton song "I Will Always Love You."
It is obvious that Whitney Houston is more than capable of successfully balancing singing, acting, marriage and motherhood; however, can she top 1993?
(Southwest Daily News)
July 05, 1994
Atlanta, GA
The Omni
Attendance: ≈13,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
Miracle (Snippet)
You Give Good Love (Snippet)
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
July 02, 1994
Rosemont, IL
Rosemont Horizon
Attendance: ≈18,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
July 01, 1994
Minneapolis, MN
Target Center
Attendance: 12,406
Revenue: $486,645
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Of course, it’s hard to inject personality into fluff, at least when you’re making safe, slick, please-the-masses records. But put Houston, 30, onstage singing those songs, and you can witness the wonders of Whitney. Her musical personality shone through Friday night at the Target Center as she took 12,406 fans to Houston’s Gospel Church of Las Vegas. The diva rearranged several of her hits, taking “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and “All the Man That I Need” into church.
Even more intriguing were the unexpected detours: a medley of vintage Aretha Franklin songs, a stirring gospel excursion into “Wonderful Counselor” and a version of Franklin’s “Freeway of Love.” “Freeway of Love” is fun fluff, in the tradition of Houston’s own up-tempo hits.
But the other material was, for Houston, an uncommon triumph of substance over style. She seemed natural rather than studied when singing “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” was a right-on, soulful country-blues number, with a traditional call-and-response between Houston and her backup singers. Then she sang what she called her favorite Aretha song, “Ain’t No Way,” and she did it her way—a swelling Las Vegas arrangement with a stentorian vocal workout. Her approach bordered on overkill, but somehow it worked because the rendition reflected her personality, something her own records seldom do.
Houston asserted her trademark vocal bombast on “I Will Always Love You,” her biggest hit from The Bodyguard movie, which stayed on top of the Billboard pop chart for a record 14 consecutive weeks in early 1993. She stretched the short, simple Dolly Parton tune to a full eight minutes, complete with a Gerald Albright saxophone solo and a waterfall of fireworks that perfectly accompanied her final vocal blast of “I—I—I will always love you.” How could Houston follow that? With a startlingly loud bang—perhaps the assassin’s gun from her Bodyguard movie—that kicked off “I’m Every Woman,” her other smash from The Bodyguard. She ended the energetic number by bringing out her husband, the sometimes controversial singer Bobby Brown.
There were other surprises during her two-hour concert. She brought her young niece and nephew and three stepchildren onstage just as the clock was about to strike 11. (She said her own toddler daughter, Bobbi Kristina, was asleep.) She also skipped several of her hits, including “I’m Your Baby Tonight." Other hits were crammed into medleys: “The Greatest Love of All” was reduced to a single chorus that opened the concert. Some songs were transported to church, giving them more texture and grit, though it seemed done for show rather than soul.
Opening the concert was Smoothe Sylk, a male-female duo signed to Brown’s record label. The pair showed vocal potential, but their performance, accompanied by taped music, seemed chintzy when concert tickets were $55 and $40.
(Star Tribune)
June 29, 1994
Dayton, OH
Ervin J. Nutter Center
Attendance: 10,800
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Whitney Houston is a singer, not an entertainer. That point was made abundantly clear on Wednesday night before a sold-out crowd of 10,800 at Wright State University’s Ervin J. Nutter Center. Houston’s voice was magnificent. Her performance was mediocre.
From the moment the tight white spotlight hit her face at the opening note of “The Greatest Love of All,” Houston was the center of the show, but she never really seemed part of it. Four female dancers flitted around her like cheerleaders during “So Emotional,” the up-tempo number that set the two-hour show in motion, yet the most the singer managed were a few halfhearted moves. She was outmaneuvered during her rousing encore of “I’m Every Woman” by the dynamic footwork of her husband, Bobby Brown, who made a surprise appearance.
Houston’s strength is her supremely powerful voice, which she wielded as deftly as a saber, darting and parrying through elaborate arrangements of “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and “I Will Always Love You.” The latter song is the longest-running No. 1 single in history, logging 14 weeks at the top of the chart, and she milked it for every elongated note, to the delight of her swooning fans.
A major portion of the show was devoted to a medley of love songs, including hits such as “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” which Houston delivered while seated on a bar stool at center stage, sipping hot water and honey to soothe her overtaxed vocal cords. A beautifully sung set of Aretha Franklin classics, whose backing vocals had been arranged by her mother, Cissy Houston, lacked the histrionics of Houston’s own material but resonated with heartfelt soul.
Despite keeping her audience waiting for nearly an hour prior to her performance, the singer was fairly gracious to her fans, singing hello in dulcet tones and turning the spotlight on a couple celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. However, Houston was more than a little defensive when it came to her own marriage, which has provided ample fodder for the supermarket tabloids.
“They’re lying to you,” she sternly told the crowd. “I’m in love with my husband, and my husband is very much in love with me.” As proof, she trotted out Brown and their baby daughter, Bobbi Kristina. With her voice and his moves, their child could be a true entertainer.
Opening the show was Smoothe Sylk, the first act signed to Brown’s Triple record label. The Atlanta-based vocal duo performed a 25-minute set to pre-recorded backing tracks, harmonizing on romantic ballads such as their debut single, “Slow,” and a cover of the Roberta Flack–Donny Hathaway hit, “The Closer I Get to You.” Their voices were, however, virtually drowned out by the overpowering bass of their taped accompaniment.
(Dayton Daily News)
June 27, 1994
Auburn Hills, MI
The Palace of Auburn Hills
Attendance: ≈14,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Whitney Houston captured the Palace with her heartfelt delivery, and the crowd barely had time to warm up before — like a tidal wave — she flooded the hall with an emotion-wracked “I Have Nothing.” After a short break, Houston returned as the self-proclaimed “Queen of the Night,” reigning over a second half drawn largely from the multi-platinum Bodyguard soundtrack, including “I Will Always Love You” and her encore, “I’m Every Woman.”
Houston is a joy to see in concert, partly because of her voice and partly because she works a crowd like nobody’s business. Still, on Monday night at the Palace in Auburn Hills — one of the year’s more dramatic concert openings — it became clear early on that Houston was not in full voice. Right in the middle of her powerhouse anthem “The Greatest Love of All,” some of her top notes were scratchy, her midrange a little breathy.
Houston had a cold. But even under the weather, she possesses a rare and fine instrument, and she put it to the test. In a skintight purple sheath that shrink-wrapped her pencil-thin form, Houston morphed the opener into an upbeat “So Emotional.” She doesn’t dance much anymore — thankfully — leaving that to four professional dancers who join her on numbers that require movement. But in their bustiers and minis, they created a strange juxtaposition of classy and trashy, better suited to her husband Bobby Brown’s road shows.
And speaking of family: Brown and their daughter, Bobbi, were seated just offstage behind a curtain throughout the performance. This may be taking family values a bit far, but Houston is serious about hers. At one point she reminded the audience that the media doesn’t always report the truth and that she “cares what you think about me and my family.”
This was a kinder, gentler Houston than on her last tour, when she hushed crowds and demanded attention during quiet moments. With a cup of warm tea in hand, the diva strolled to both sides of the stage during a medley of love songs — “All at Once,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” and “All the Man That I Need” — to give everyone a better view.
Then it seemed as if her voice truly returned. During the final notes of “I Have Nothing,” she walked away from the mic, took a swig of tea, then another, sang a note, then another — and brought the house down. She did this throughout the show: rearranging songs so they sounded fresh from the versions on CD, filling them with pregnant pauses and stretching notes long past their expected ending.
It’s kitschy and overwrought — but it’s Whitney. And in the end, both her prayers and ours were answered.
(Detroit Free Press)
June 26, 1994
Richfield, OH
Richfield Coliseum
Attendance: ≈9,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
Freeway of Love
You Got the Love
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
First, let’s get that song out of the way. Yes, Whitney Houston brought the house down Sunday night at the Coliseum when she ended her nearly two-hour set belting out her rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from the 11-million-selling The Bodyguard soundtrack (still No. 55 after 82 weeks on Billboard’s Top Albums chart). We’ve heard and seen it a million times over the last 19 months or so, and now that she finally brought the song to our area live and in person, maybe it can finally be pulled from Cleveland’s radio airwaves and put to rest. For many of the 9,200 in attendance, it was the moment they came to bear witness to, but it wasn’t Houston’s finest time in the spotlight.
No, that came during “I Have Nothing,” another Bodyguard track, for which she commanded attention with her overwhelming, though satisfying, powerhouse delivery. Houston, in her silver, clinging gown, put the “diva” in diva, stopping partway through “I Have Nothing” to sip water, fluff her hair, and pat down her face with a cloth while standing center stage with her back to the audience. During other dramatic pauses in the song, fans shouted phrases such as “Go on, girl,” “Sing it, girl,” and “Take your time.”
She gave similar treatments to “All at Once,” “Saving All My Love for You,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” and the opening song, “The Greatest Love of All” (which she preceded with a band snippet of “Jesus Loves Me”). These songs are all Houston at her most bland and formulaic, though they take on a new feeling when fleshed out live.
Although she’s known for these types of pop songs, Houston did stick her toes into other waters. Her take on Chaka Khan’s “You Got the Love” possessed funk we’re not used to hearing from her. “All the Man That I Need” segued into Toni Braxton’s classic-to-be “Breathe Again,” then back to the original song for a reggae turn. She explored her gospel roots as well and brought out her mother, Cissy Houston, to sing a few notes. The younger Houston paid homage to her mother and Aretha Franklin (she said her mother’s group, the Sweet Inspirations, helped arrange some of Franklin’s hits), performing an OK medley of “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” and “Ain’t No Way.”
She introduced the band to Franklin’s “Freeway of Love.” While fully able to work a ballad, Houston stumbles over dance tunes. “So Emotional,” “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” and “How Will I Know” are barely worth a toe tap on the radio and not worth much more live. She also included “Queen of the Night,” an unreleased and unnecessary song from The Bodyguard.
When your list of hits is as expansive as Houston’s, omissions are particularly noticeable. Missing were “Run to You,” “You Give Good Love,” “Love Will Save the Day,” “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” and “Miracle.” She did find time, however, to address rumors of fighting with husband Bobby Brown (she reportedly called him a no-talent backstage at the Soul Train Awards earlier this year, and he allegedly had a recent affair with a much younger girl). Houston and Brown have been dogged with speculation since before they ever said their “I do’s.”
“I don’t care about what the media thinks. I only care about what you think,” Houston told the cheering crowd. “Don’t believe what you read, what you hear in those newspapers you take with you to the bathroom.” Referring to her husband and addressing her Black “sistas” in the audience (there weren’t all that many), Houston said, “I give him good reason to stay home.” She later incorporated Brown into “All the Man That I Need.”
A couple of surprises in the band included contemporary jazz artists Paul Jackson Jr. on guitar and Kirk Whalum on saxophone. The duo Smoothe Sylk, the first act signed to Brown’s new record label, opened with 30 minutes of plush R&B, including their new single “Slow” and Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “The Closer I Get to You.”
(The Akron Beacon Journal)
June 24, 1994
Providence, RI
Providence Civic Center
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
Only an incredible performance can make a fan out of a frowning cynic like myself, who for years has said, “She has a voice, no question, but she has horrible material.” Last night, Houston proved that if handed a cereal box, she could turn the label into a lullaby. Of the few hundred performers I see each year, few can make my scalp stubble bristle the way Whitney Houston did. Her version of “The Greatest Love of All,” which she used to open her show, is a wonderful introduction to her rare blend of power and subtlety.
She can caress a song, as on “Saving All My Love for You.” More often, her voice coils around a lyric like a boa constrictor, not letting go until it has drained it dry of emotion. “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” was such a song. She ran through her early hits early in the 110-minute set, clicking past “So Emotional,” “Saving All My Love for You,” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” with barely a ripple in her slinky sheath dress.
Those pop bonbons have none of the substance of her more recent work on the soundtrack for The Bodyguard. Her dance-pop diva days galvanized her popularity, although it would be tough to find a fan who loves her for the interplay of strength and fragility in her songs. Her considerable support is based on a more fundamental level: the lady can sing.
The best way to prove that is to handle a standard or take a song by someone else and leave an indelible stamp. Houston has done both, first with the goosebump-raising “The Star-Spangled Banner” several years ago. Most recently, it’s been her wrenching “I Will Always Love You,” the Dolly Parton–penned song from The Bodyguard. Her version last night elicited screams as much for the cascade of fireworks as for her vocal pyrotechnics. And, as if to further her case, she tore into a medley of Aretha Franklin songs, taking the audience to church and signifying her love for both God and her husband, Bobby Brown. I saw her sing, and now I’m a believer.
It’s always an encouraging sign when the opening act is good. It’s usually an accurate barometer of the talent to come. Smoothe Sylk was a credible crowd-warming act, a male-female duo with buttery harmonies and potent solo turns. They’re the first performers on Bobby Brown’s BBB Records and may prove to be a savvy signing.
(The Boston Globe)
June 23, 1994
Philadelphia, PA
The Spectrum
Attendance: ≈18,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
June 20, 1994
Uniondale, NY
Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum
Attendance: ≈20,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
June 17, 1994
Hartford, CT
Hartford Civic Center
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Despite the dozens of awards she has amassed, mostly this year for her work on The Bodyguard soundtrack, Whitney Houston still has a lot to prove. She has occasionally gotten a bad rap for her concert performances, for one thing, and she has been in the tabloids lately for trouble in her high-profile marriage to star Bobby Brown.
Friday at the Hartford Civic Center, she pushed both notions forcibly aside in her classy, often thrilling show. Of course, it helps any performance to have a star who has amassed 16 No. 1 hits in less than a decade and become the biggest-selling female artist in the world. But Houston, from the beginning, seemed almost too good to be true: too great a gospel voice coming out of too beautiful a package. Some early shows seemed to prove the skeptics right, as she felt distant from her audience, coldly and mechanically running through her hits.
By now, though, Houston, at 30, has the soul and life experience to inhabit those familiar songs and really make them ring. On an elegant stage, in front of a half-dozen musicians, three backup singers, and even a quartet of dancers borrowed from Brown’s show, the focus was always on Houston. And though she began the night far from the audience, mid-fanfare halfway through “The Greatest Love of All,” she quickly moved upstage with generous and inventive versions of “So Emotional,” “Saving All My Love for You,” and “How Will I Know.” If she wasn’t really enjoying herself onstage (and sweating through her slinky dresses), then her acting lessons continue to serve her well.
For all the dancing early on, an early high point came when she sat to sing a string of romantic songs in which she set the record straight about her domestic situation. “Don’t believe what you hear,” she said. “They’re lying!” Proof was not far offstage, where husband Brown was sitting, enjoying the performance, clapping and marveling, like everyone else in the arena, at her limitless talent. His presence, in turn, seemed to make her dig deeper in some songs, from a stirring “All the Man That I Need” to the emotional high point of “I Have Nothing,” which earned her mid-song ovations.
There were other wonderful personal moments, too, when she chose an old gospel song rather than another of her own hits, and especially when she dedicated an Aretha Franklin medley to her mother, who, as a member of the Sweet Inspirations, helped arrange the marvelous backing for Lady Soul’s original hits “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” and “Ain’t No Way.”
Of course, the night ended with her record-setting “I Will Always Love You,” which she managed to breathe life into despite its saturation airplay and, unbelievably, what she said was a head cold that kept her from hitting some notes. By then, you felt like giving her a trophy yourself.
(Hartford Courant)
June 15, 1994
Albany, NY
Knickerbocker Arena
Attendance: ≈17,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
So Emotional (Tour debut)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man / Ain't No Way
Wonderful Counselor
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Wednesday night's show at the Knickerbocker Arena was the first date of Whitney Houston's current U.S. tour, and you Would have thought that the electricity would be palpable.
It should have been an event, but in the end it was just another big arena pop show.
Part of the problem was the audience, rather than Houston's towering performance. The near-capacity crowd seemed content to just sit in their seats and watch rather than get involved in the action. But then, who can blame them, really? When you're paying $50 a ticket, I guess you want to try to get your money's worth out of your seat.
Another part of the problem was an interminable intermission that stretched on for more than an hour, although no stage equipment needed to be moved.
Once Houston hit the stage for a dramatic opening with "The Greatest Love of All," all was forgiven, however. Dressed in a clinging black floor-length gown, Houston wailed in front of a seven-piece band, a trio of background singers and four perky dancers.
Houston front-loaded her show with upbeat, up-tempo tunes like "So Emotional," "Love Will Save the Day, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)" and a radically rearranged rendition of "How Will I Know," but she couldn't pull the crowd to its feet.
"I am very much in love with somebody. And, yes, that person is very much in love with me... contrary to what you might read," Houston told her cheering fans in reference to the continuing tabloid rumors of trouble between her and her husband, Bobby Brown.
To underscore her point, she dedicated "All the Man that I Need" to Brown and followed it with "I Have Nothing," from the smash soundtrack to her film "The Bodyguard.” Despite her chart success with dance-oriented numbers, Houston is at her best on the ballads, and she scored big with "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" and a jazz-flecked torch song version of "Saving All My Love for You."
She padded her hour-and-a-half concert with a medley tribute to Aretha Franklin and a gospel rave-up, but she was just teasing the audience before giving them what they really came to hear.
She finally cased into the tour-de-force "I Will Always Love You" and, the crowd fell into a collective swoon. And she finally got the crowd to its feet, too, although it was a wall of pyrotechnics that showered the stage behind her rather than her singing that did the job.
(Times-Union)
Whitney Houston may have put on a classy show at Knickerbocker Arena Wednesday night, but whether it was worth the wait is questionable at best.
Houston dug a hole for herself even before she hit the stage by making a house packed full of sweaty, tired-looking fans sit waiting for an hour before she decided to grace the crowd with her presence.
Her absence did not go unnoticed.
After about 45 minutes, the catcalls started, followed by a chorus of boos that echoed the auditorium about five minutes later. The crowd booed Houston loudly three more times, peppering its distaste with shouts of "Go home" and "I want my money back."
A singer of Houston's caliber being roundly booed was an unusual sight to be sure, but more than warranted given the heat and humidity in the arena. The singer, who offered nary an apology after hitting the stage, should have been more concerned with her fans, who paid $50 each for a chance to see her perform.
Houston finally took the stage at 9:20 p.m. and the crowd greeted her with a mix of boos and cheers. The boos quickly disappeared the minute she opened her mouth to sing though, the fans both happy to see Houston as well as glad the outrageous wait had finally ended.
Wiping the sweat from her brow and chest with a white hankie between songs, the singer may not have won any humanitarian awards Wednesday night, but she showed she could certainly crawl into a song and make it breathe.
She started out slowly at first, almost as if she was warming up her incredible voice on early hits like "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"—two bouncy songs that seem- ed ill-fitted to such a poised singer in a long black velvet gown.
But things picked up quickly. Her versions of "Saving All My Love For You" and a seven-song medley featuring Houston classics like "All At Once," "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" and "Didn't We Almost Have It All" were simply electrifying.
From that point on Houston owned the stage, her capable 10-piece band and four dancers a part of the scenery as she leaned back and belted out songs like "I Have Nothing" and "Queen of the Night" (from "The Bodyguard" soundtrack) with real attitude. Hand on hip, she sold the swagger and the crowd ate it right up.
Houston seemed much more at home singing her newer songs, tunes that seemed to mesh with her elegant-but-spoiled-brat demeanor and her sizzling vocal attack.
(Daily Gazette)
April 24, 1994
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Estadio Hiram Bithorn
Attendance: ≈17,000
Revenue: $685,845
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Jesus Loves Me (Contains elements of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands")
Me and Mrs. Jones (Changed the lyrics to "Me and Mr. Brown")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Pop diva Whitney Houston delighted a capacity crowd here Sunday night by wrapping her powerful voice around an energetic mix of pop hits, gospel, and rhythm and blues.
Houston—tall and slim in tight black shorts and a sparkly purple tunic—strutted onto the Hiram Bithorn Stadium's outdoor stage amid blasts from red rockets and opened with three signature ballads. Then she switched gears, bringing the crowd of 17,000 to its feet as she belted out the upbeat “How Will I Know.”
“Puerto Rico, I love you!” Houston shouted to her screaming fans on the warm tropical night beneath a nearly full moon.
A gospel set—a tribute to the roots of the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston—was capped by an arm-waving audience sing-along of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” The one-night concert climaxed the Latin American leg of Houston’s world tour.
Her opening act was the Barrio Boyzz, a quartet of Puerto Ricans raised in New York City, who combined rap, hip-hop, and gospel.
The crowd screamed anytime Houston performed a song from the hit movie “The Bodyguard.” She could barely be heard above the audience when she sang “I Will Always Love You,” which dominated radio airplay for months.
The soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” which also featured actor Kevin Costner, has sold 28 million copies and garnered Houston several Grammy Awards. Hundreds of fans flew into San Juan from the U.S. Virgin Islands and other parts of the Caribbean for Houston’s performance.
(The Recorder)
April 21, 1994
Caracas, Venezuela
Poliedro de Caracas
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Jesus Loves Me (Contains elements of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
April 17, 1994
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Estadio Vélez Sarsfield
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Jesus Loves Me (Contains elements of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
April 16, 1994
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Estadio Vélez Sarsfield
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I'm Your Baby Tonight
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Revelation (Contains elements of "The Love You Save")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
April 14, 1994
Santiago, Chile
Estadio San Carlos de Apoquindo
Attendance: 20,000+
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
January 23, 1994
Hollywood Rock Rio de Janeiro
Praça da Apoteose / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Attendance: ≈45,000
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me (Contains elements of "He's Alright")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
January 18, 1994
São Paulo, Brazil
Olympia
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Revelation
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist incomplete)
January 16, 1994
Hollywood Rock São Paulo
Estádio do Morumbi / São Paulo, Brazil
Attendance: ≈40,000
Revenue: N/A
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Revelation
It Had to Be You
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
Whitney Houston forgot she was in a stadium and gave an intimate show last Friday. The audience applauded even the singer's breathing, who wore a shimmering purple suit with rhinestones. The reflection of the lights on the outfit suggested a Las Vegas casino neon sign. The singer is giving an extra show today at the Olympia.
Whitney's sound was the most perfect of the festival. Even performing with the extravagant number of two drummers and three keyboardists, the band sounded like programmed equipment. Few noticed that a slip-up at the start of a song managed to elicit a dismissive look from the loving Whitney.
The singer loved the audience. She didn't tire of repeating "I love you" between songs. The romantic melancholy of the songs, most with the word "love" in the title, didn't faze the audience who, minutes before, had been dancing to Benjor's carnival music. Whitney seduced Morumbi in true cabaret style, flirting with the front row crowd, who even received sweaty handkerchiefs.
Despite being overwhelmed, the singer didn't lose her composure even when her microphone malfunctioned in the middle of a medley of romantic ballads.
Unconcerned with her reputation for being over-the-top, Whitney prepared the show's apotheosis with a moment from the movie The Bodyguard. During "I Will Always Love You," the singer's bodyguards flew over a fan who invaded the stage, seconds before cascades of fireworks illuminated the scene. The festival's Hollywood-esque name was justified.
The encore, "I'm Every Woman," a dance hit recorded by Chaka Khan, was watched by a slightly larger audience than at the Olympia.
November 30, 1993
Paris, France
Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist is incomplete)
November 29, 1993
Paris, France
Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Blessed Assurance
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
November 27, 1993
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Ahoy
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
None currently available :(
November 26, 1993
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Ahoy
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 24, 1993
Dortmund, Germany
Westfalenhalle 1
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 23, 1993
Munich, Germany
Olympiahalle
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
November 21, 1993
Linz, Austria
Sporthalle
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
None currently available :(
November 19, 1993
Stuttgart, Germany
Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
None currently available :(
November 15, 1993
Madrid, Spain
Palacio de Deportes de la Comunidad de Madrid
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may incorrect)
The velvet voice
Madrid—American pop singer Whitney Houston gave a sophisticated and romantic concert last night before 10,000 people who packed the Palacio de la Comunidad in Madrid and were carried away by her velvet voice, which shone in soulful ballads.
The concert, which lasted just an hour and a half, began a few minutes before a quarter to ten in the evening, when the silver curtain rose and the four spotlights, placed on a platform hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the stage, illuminated Whitney's slender figure.
Dressed in a long, tight fuchsia pink dress with a wide opening at the back, transparent high-heeled shoes, and short, straight hair, the sophisticated singer shouted “Spaniards!” and began to descend the four steps that separated the upper part of the black stage from the wide front area where she moved throughout the concert.
She began with one of her old pop songs, “Love Will Save the Day,” and then explained that she was going to sing some songs from her early albums and then continue with her latest work, the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard.”
“Savin' All My Love,” her second song, allowed her to showcase her clear and strong voice, the greatest asset of this singer who became famous with “Wanna Dance with Somebody,” a catchy song that “Savin all my love,” her second song, allowed her to showcase her clear, strong voice, the greatest asset of this singer who became famous with “Wanna dance with somebody,” a catchy song she chose to get the audience going and get the audience to sing along to the phrase “I love you” and, among the choral sounds.
After the first hit of the night, the slender Whitney stepped forward to the front of the stage, sat on a high stool, and, while a kind of white curtain printed with flowers and illuminated by tiny spotlights slid across the stage, she sang some of her best ballads to the audience.
“I'm going to sing to the men,” she said, playing with her voice and improvising rhythms with the sounds of a clarinet solo, one of her best-known songs was heard: “Nobody loves me like you do.”
After the emotional outburst, Whitney Houston left the stage, leaving her brother Gary in charge of the band, and reappeared minutes later dressed in black and ready to fill the second half of the concert with the songs that serve as the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard.”
November 12, 1993
Ghent, Belgium
Flanders Expo
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 10, 1993
Dublin, Ireland
Point Theatre
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 09, 1993
Dublin, Ireland
Point Theatre
Attendance: ≈8,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist incomplete)
November 07, 1993
London, England
Earls Court
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
Run to You
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 06, 1993
London, England
Earls Court
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 05, 1993
London, England
Earls Court
Attendance: ≈19,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
Run to You (Tour debut)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
November 03, 1993
Sheffield, England
Sheffield Arena
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
None currently available :(
November 02, 1993
Sheffield, England
Sheffield Arena
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may incorrect)
October 31, 1993
Sheffield, England
Sheffield Arena
Attendance: ≈12,500
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may incorrect)
Whitney Houston danced, sang, and introduced her new baby. Joseph Gallivan sat in the stalls and went “aaah.”
After all, it’s not as though she needs the money. When your latest album has just sold its 23 millionth copy and everybody on the planet has seen the movie “The Bodyguard,” you don’t kick around the arenas of Europe with a husband and an eight-month-old baby in tow for the cash. No way. Whitney Houston does it because she loves the sound of her own voice.
Fortunately, so do the rest of us.
From the pompous overture of the opening number, “The Greatest Love of All,” to the closing bars of “I’m Every Woman,” when she curtsied and skipped off the stage with husband Bobby Brown, the evening’s sport lay in wondering what next she would do with that flawless instrument.
For there isn’t a lot else to do at a Whitney Houston concert. You can look at her cute posterior—which she invited us to do during one homily on post-natal water retention and the tabloids. You can strain through your binoculars to see if her button nose wrinkles on the high note—so it did in the video for “I Will Always Love You.” And you can go in search of the loo while she changes her frock and her brother Gary sings a sweet soul version of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” The band remain in the background, and the chorus are not encouraged to show off.
The focus is on the voice. And the voice was in good shape.
Not one to ease her throat gently into the action, she followed the ambitious opening number with “Love Will Save the Day,” switching from towering sustain to percussive phrases that made her the first person to sing her own camp classics convincingly. “Do you believe in love?” she asked rhetorically, over and over—a theme she was to return to in just about every song.
She also talked a lot. Because she doesn’t write her own songs, it’s tempting to fill in the personality void by dwelling on her technique.
In the warm and wistful “Saving All My Love for You,” there was a velvety high-frequency rasp on the edge of each note. That, and the near-terminally deferred ending, were the reassurance you needed that the coffee-coloured Cindy doll was human after all.
Barely into the show, we seemed for a moment to be on the edge of some Prince-type prank. “Wanna?” she cooed to the lone photographer in the pit, then looked into the wings. “She’s not here yet. She’s getting her stage clothes on.”
Perhaps, to borrow a cheap trick from “The Crying Game,” the figure in the velvet paisley gown wiggling like a mermaid was a stand-in?
It only became clear what Houston was up to a few songs later when Bobby Brown carried their daughter onto the stage to a mixture of roars and “aaahs.” Bobbi Kristina Brown was formally introduced, and daddy left them alone for some quality time.
The little girl—wearing foam yellow earplugs, Health and Safety officials please note—could not be persuaded to give up sucking the microphone and sing something. So her mother launched into a little riff of her own: “Mommy loves you, oh-oh, mommy loves you more than you know.”
It was, strange to tell, curiously affecting, this public display of maternal affection. Even if you weren’t a committed Whitney-watcher, you couldn’t deny her this little moment of indulgence.
There weren’t many other moments of indulgence, strangely enough. Houston’s magic is in the way she leaves room to improvise vocal lines—in the gospel tradition—while at the same time singing the bits you recognize with the purity of the digital recording on your CD shelf at home.
“I Have Nothing” was the perfect example. She stood in silence with her back to the band before unleashing the song’s dramatic climb.
There was little dancing to be done in the two-hour spell. That despite the fact that she collapsed several of her many ballads into a love medley, and later “took us to church” with overt gospel material. The fact is, it’s not groove music.
The next time Bobby came back on—he loves her and he needs the publicity—he did a little twist, as if to remind her that some dancing might be appreciated. But his wife just smiled and kissed him instead. She’s a serious woman after all.
She’ll glide about in the name of elegance, but all her other movements are strictly connected to the voice—a slight bend at the waist to get under a high note, a pump of the right leg, or a swing of the arm for emphasis.
“I Will Always Love You” was saved for the penultimate number and lived up to its reputation. Her version of the Dolly Parton song was already an assault course of key changes, shifts in volume, and unpredictable pockets of vibrato. But live, she added a fascinating touch.
(The Independent)
October 30, 1993
Birmingham, England
NEC Arena
Attendance: ≈16,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
October 28, 1993
Birmingham, England
NEC Arena
Attendance: ≈16,000
Revenue: N/A
None currently available :(
October 27, 1993
Birmingham, England
NEC Arena
Attendance: ≈16,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Amazing Grace
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may incomplete)
Whitney took Birmingham by storm last night at the start of her latest British tour—and with a new, very special fan in tow.
The American singing star, Whitney Houston, with ten No. 1 hit singles to her name, produced a rapturous response when she presented seven-month-old daughter Bobbi Kristina on stage. Whitney had been apart from her only child for two weeks while she performed on tour in Europe with husband Bobby Brown, the singer she married last year. Baby Bobbi, dressed in a pale jumpsuit and hat, was flown in from America yesterday.
The American queen of song—with 55 million album sales making her the best-selling female artist in history—produced a string of classic love songs to delight the sell-out NEC crowd.
From the moment she opened with "Love Will Save the Day," she had the audience in the palm of her hand. She brought them to their feet with "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" before a medley of her most successful ballads.
Whitney—with a string of music awards including two Emmys—reverted to her childhood Baptist church roots with an uplifting gospel sequence, including a soul version of "Amazing Grace."
But a cheer went up when Whitney brought down the curtain on a great show with the recent massive hit "I Will Always Love You" from the album of the hit film "The Bodyguard." Whitney appears again at the NEC tonight and on Saturday.
(Birmingham Evening Mail)
October 25, 1993
Frankfurt, Germany
Festhalle
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
October 23, 1993
Maastricht, Netherlands
MECC
Attendance: ≈5,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Stay in My Life
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may incomplete)
MAASTRICHT—Whitney Houston was happy that we came to see her. And she loved us too, she said on Saturday, at around nine o'clock, when she arrived at a sold-out concert in Maastricht. She repeated this a few times later on. It must have been sincere.
At the Thialf stadium in Heerenveen, she had no fewer than twenty thousand people at once, a few of whom had managed to get a seat in one of the four stands that were about 150 meters away from the stage. On Saturday, she had about five thousand fans at her party. The luckier ones at the front undoubtedly experienced her as better and more impressive. After all, they were really there. They could also see her instead of just hearing her. And that's a nice bonus to listening to someone.
“It's hot here, but it's getting hotter,” promised the black singer in the distance. Reportedly, she had demanded that during her performance on and around the stage, the temperature would be at least 26 degrees Celsius. The air conditioning in the huge building was therefore not allowed to be turned on. And the first aid department knew it. Especially at the front, fans were falling like flies. Unfortunately, only because of the literal heat.
Whitney and her seven-piece band opened the show with the hit ballad “Saving All My Love For You,” setting the tone for the rest of the evening. And someone who has had a classy voice since she was twelve, which she first developed in the church choir of her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, can also pull off quite a few tricks. She did so more than once on Saturday night: impressive long notes. Sometimes she waited a little too long, causing the fans in the hall to finish the notes for her. And that didn't always please her, judging by her waving hands.
And with “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” she ended up with a medley of love songs. In a nightclub atmosphere, sitting on a bar stool, she chatted with the
Whitney Houston, Saturday night in a sold-out Mecc in Maastricht. Tomorrow and Wednesday she will perform at Ahoy in Rotterdam, for which tickets are also sold out. She is so happy with her daughter Bobbi and her husband Bobby Brown. She wanted to share that. And what could be more fitting in the program than “Stay In My Life,” just before she changed her red gala dress for a glittering pantsuit and started a sweet gospel song. In the meantime, her brother Gary Houston, who is part of the four-piece backing choir and also has an excellent voice, performed a song by Eric Clapton.
The well-directed, pre-programmed, and distant show of an elusive star was almost over. The distance between Whitney on the perfectly lit stage and our listening spot about 150 meters away unfortunately did not decrease during the course of the evening. What everyone was waiting for was the monster hit from the movie “The Bodyguard.” Just like on Friday in Thialf, the perfectly sung ‘I Will Always Love You’ was illuminated by hundreds of lighter flames from the stands and the auditorium. But no matter how hot it got, they didn't catch fire.
October 22, 1993
Heerenveen, Netherlands
IJsstadion Thialf
Attendance: ≈15,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
Amazing Grace
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Last Friday evening, the north of our country had the premiere of one of the shows from the Whitney Houston circus, which is currently touring Europe. After a tour in America, following the immense success of the film ‘Bodyguard’, in which the 30-year-old singer and multi-millionaire starred alongside Oscar winner Kevin Costner, Whitney crossed the ocean to please her fans in person. Because, of course, the packed and sultry ice palace Thialf in Heerenveen was waiting for only one thing: the love song from the film and one of the best-selling singles of recent times, the ballad ‘I Will Always Love You’.
You save the best for last, and Whitney is no different. The recently remembered hit was therefore only at the end of the show, and what we saw before that was a typical American concert. In other words: a perfectly staged, but absolutely soulless performance of over an hour around the diva dressed in a golden glitter dress. Sophisticated lighting, beautiful sets, perfect sound, an excellent seven-piece band, a background choir to die for, and ear-pleasing arrangements could not hide the fact that the American megastar had left her soul and bliss at home. Nice for the Hilton in Las Vegas, but not for Thialf in Heerenveen, where the already petite Houston took on the proportions of a microphone stand halfway through the enormous and far too elongated hall.
With the exception of a few faster songs (including “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”), most of Whitney's concert consisted of her slower work. Fortunately, because she is at her best in drama. Didn't We Almost Have It All, All at Once, Saving All My Love for You, Amazing Grace... When she sings, she often holds the microphone toward the audience and lets the fans finish the song. It sends shivers down your spine.
A little dance with her husband and pop star Bobbi Brown; brother Gary indulging in Eric Clapton's ‘Tears in Heaven’ during a costume change; overly long intros and outros; obligatory curtain calls; taking a quarter of an hour to introduce the band: it's all part of Houston's glamorous shows. The fans in Thialf participated enthusiastically, but those who really wanted value for money would have been better off watching a Whitney video...
Are you having a good time? Well, no.
HEERENVEEN—Whitney Houston will never win a prize for originality. But the way in which the American singer elevated predictability to an art form during her performance at Thialf last Friday was a bit too much, even for her.
Let's be clear: I am certainly not a fan of Whitney Houston. She represents everything I dislike about pop music. She is the most well-behaved girl in the class, devoutly religious, learned her craft in her mother's gospel choir, thanks God first and then her parents on her CDs, and is a patriot. Who was crazy enough to sing the American national anthem at a Super Bowl event in 1991 to benefit the Gulf Crisis Fund? Whitney Houston.
The worst thing about the 30-year-old singer, however, is that in her music she has managed to raise the total lack of risk and lack of ideas to new heights.
Hous Houston doesn't write a single note herself, but limits herself to interpreting other people's work. From someone who named her first album “Whitney Houston” and her second “Whitney,” you should be glad that the third wasn't called “Houston.”
When it became apparent that sales of the third CD, which had a rougher sound, were not as good as its predecessors, Houston immediately turned to well-known covers for her contribution to the soundtrack of ‘The Bodyguard’. She turned Dolly Parton's country ballad ‘I Will Always Love You’, which in its original version has simple instrumentation and is sung with a touch of irony, into a sentimental tearjerker, filled with lingering violins. But the cash registers rang, and that was what it was all about. In the same way, she also took on Chaka Khan's “I'm Every Woman,” with Khan appearing in the accompanying video for a nanosecond as a thank you. That's not inspiration, that's plagiarism.
Nevertheless, Houston could have redeemed herself somewhat by putting on a solid concert at the sold-out Thialf ice stadium. But even that proved too much to ask at the first of four sold-out concerts in the Netherlands.
Once again, she opted for the ultimate playability, thereby demonstrating that she may be a reasonable studio musician with an impressive voice, but has no idea what live performance is all about. Once again, she opted for the ultimate predictability, thereby demonstrating that she may be a reasonable studio musician with an impressive voice, but has no idea what live performance is all about.
The misery began even before the concert, because the diva took her sweet time arriving. Hunger makes raw beans sweet, she must have thought. Not so. Because once she took the stage, the show just wouldn't get going. At the most illogical moments, the most inexplicable breaks were inserted, taking all the momentum out of the concert. And between songs, Houston treated her fans to “spontaneous” questions. “Are you having a good time?” Well, not really. Are you warm?" Yes, thank you, but not from dancing. To make matters worse, halfway through, her husband Bobby Brown was dragged onto the stage and hugged extensively. “This is the sweetest man in the whole world. We are so happy.”
The final blow, however, was the way Houston presented a cross-section of her hits. A few old hits at the beginning to warm up the audience, then some ballads, and towards the end the songs everyone was waiting for, the recent hits like “I Will Always Love You” and “I'm Every Woman.” And as if this predictability wasn't enough, Houston seemed to have only two modes in Thialf: bombastic, which was cringe-worthy, and quasi-intimate, which might work in a small jazz club, but was extremely boring in Thialf.
Some of the fans agreed, so halfway through the show, the corridors, where nothing of the show could be heard and even less seen, were bustling with activity and people were already starting to leave.
Actually, Houston's performance wasn't a concert at all. It was a 90-minute crash course in combating insomnia.
It's the voice that does it for Whitney Houston. And that voice carried last night's concert. Whitney makes a point of not relying too heavily on theatrical strategies, unlike most of the stadium and sports hall generation in pop music. Just a huge, semi-circular projection screen as a backdrop, a not-too-exuberant light show, no elaborate ballet dancers. And Whitney? Whitney walks to the left, Whitney walks to the right, Whitney turns around again and Whitney grabs the microphone. And sings.
She belts it out at the top of her lungs, then holds back for a moment, twists and turns around a melody line, lets her voice curl at the end of a phrase, then lets it soar again. That's how you do it when you have such a huge voice, honed in church and shaped in the best session work. The question is, what kind of material does that voice work best with?
On her records, she swings back and forth between pretty funky stuff, sometimes with a modern swing beat, and the kind of ballads that bring many a couple closer together. Live, Whitney unambiguously chose the latter category, which gave her ample opportunity to showcase her impressive vocal power in the form of strong notes and long notes.
Dressed in a dazzling, long glitter dress, Whitney proved to be a charming hostess, engaging in lengthy conversations with the audience. She talked extensively about her happy family life with her beloved daughter Bobbi and husband Bobby Brown (who later joined her on stage), told the audience how wonderful they were, and quenched the thirst of the lucky ones in the front rows: she personally distributed at least ten bottles among them.
It was a pleasant chat, but there was also singing. The band started off at a fairly upbeat tempo, but the ballad “Saving All My Love For You” set the tone for the evening: creating atmosphere with slow songs seemed to be the motto. Within that framework, she varied from ballads deeply rooted in soul to saccharine sweet songs, which are generally marketed as “middle of the road.”
This ruined the build-up of the concert, because the tension dropped considerably, no matter how beautifully Whitney sang and how compassionately the seven-piece band accompanied her.
Only lighter manufacturers benefited from such an approach. Only lighter manufacturers benefit from such an approach. On the other hand, that choice was understandable. Because the songs with a bit more tempo, such as “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” didn't really come across, partly due to the largely absent low tones in the sound. Try getting into the groove then.
In the background choir, we actually found Gary Houston, who also got to sing a song. Meanwhile, Whitney changed into an equally glittering pantsuit, which she wore for the finale. This included the very long gospel song “Jesus Loves Me,” in which the band members were introduced at length, and the monster hit from the movie “The Bodyguard”: “I Will Always Love You,” visually supported by a sea of sparklers. The exodus to the open air had already begun, because the concert turned out to be too one-sided after all.
Whitney Houston currently finds herself somewhere between the rich history of soul and the better glittery ‘entertainment’ of illustrious predecessors such as Diana Ross and Shirley Bassey. I would rather see her move towards soul. But then again, annual sales figures also need to be achieved.
Whitney warm, warm, and compelling
HEERENVEEN Oh dear, oh dear, Whitney, is that really necessary? Many had to swallow hard when Whitney Houston embraced the awful disco singer Bobby Brown intimately, right there on stage. But then again, Whitney loves her husband dearly, as she made abundantly clear to 15,000 fans in a sold-out Thialf arena. And the fans love Whitney dearly, so a little later, the beautiful singer was once again showered with thunderous applause and community singing.
While the fans let themselves go, Whitney remained in control, as always. She may have a past as a singer in her mother Cissy's gospel choir and nightclub act, but wild ecstasy is not her thing. Whitney Houston is a product of the 1980s through and through. Since she was launched with military precision in 1985, she has been a true megastar, someone who has her affairs well organized.
What was particularly striking during the concert was that Whitney sounds so much more convincing, not to say livelier, on stage than on those annoyingly polished record productions. No matter how routine the show was (very) and how middle of the road her repertoire may have been (very much so), at least here was a woman of flesh and blood. A phenomenal singer, too. In the higher registers, we heard some vocal tricks, but in the lower regions, she sounded warm and compelling.
The attempts made on her third album, I'm You Baby Tonight, to give her a more contemporary and ‘darker’ repertoire are still not very convincing, as was once again evident. As a result, not much modern disco soul was played. Whitney and her staff wanted to respond to complaints from the black community that she was too “white.”
But that crossover potential is precisely her great strength; in that respect, she is somewhat like her aunt Dionne Warwick.
Only her songs don't have it. While Warwick was spoiled by the Bacharach-David duo with classic pop songs at the time, Whitney has to make do with mediocrity, although there is little wrong with such an adaptation of I Will Always Love You, provided you don't hear it too often. The seven-piece band, equipped with two drummers, didn't really help either. They tended to be a bit pompous, although songs like All At Once and Saving All My Love For You are hard to ruin. No, Whitney certainly doesn't make timeless pop music.
Houston is, as mentioned, blessed with a phenomenal voice, but she also has to rely on her charisma. A few years ago, that was still very fresh. Now, after her marriage and the birth of her daughter Bobby Christina, she looks a lot more mature. Yet she has not let the attention of the mass media and her role in the blockbuster movie The Bodyguard go to her head. Compare that to a “prickly mare” like Diana Ross.
This was primarily a mature singer. It is because she has already achieved significant success with millions of sales, otherwise one would predict a future for her in Las Vegas, given the experienced and sometimes somewhat bored manner in which she worked her way through the set. When she sat down on a bar stool, dressed in a gold glitter dress with a deep slit, the microphone tucked into a white satin handkerchief, between the curtains and under the star-shaped spotlights, we felt like we were in a first-class nightclub.
October 19, 1993
Oslo, Norway
Oslo Spektrum
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
Whitney Houston (30) was greeted with a thunderous roar that would probably have registered on the Richter scale when she took to the stage at Oslo Spektrum on Tuesday evening. The colorful American singer quickly connected with the enthusiastic audience and opened the concert with the song "Love Will Save the Day" from her second album.
She followed up with one of her biggest hits, "Saving All My Love for You." Whitney Houston wore a sky blue floor-length dress covered with sequins on the chest. Despite her elegant attire, she stomped to the beat in her high-heeled shoes and discreetly wiggled her hips toward the audience. All in all, she appeared rougher and sexier than many would have believed her to be.
Beautiful and blessed with a divine voice, the popular singer delighted the nearly 10,000 audience members who had come to see and hear her at Oslo Spektrum on Tuesday evening. The band had real energy and everything technical worked perfectly with an elegant light show worthy of Whitney Houston.
For a performance of this magnitude, Whitney's concert was relatively short, lasting about an hour and a half. Nevertheless, the packed hall seemed very satisfied.
Houston sang one hit after another and flirted a little with the audience from time to time. She handed out bottles of water to fans right behind the barriers, who were feeling the extra heat in the warm hall, and asked them to calm down. She also said that her husband Bobby Brown was the man in her life and that she missed her little daughter Bobbi Kristina. Neither her co-star Kevin Costner in the movie "The Bodyguard" nor her husband Bobby Brown showed up.
After changing into a shiny steel-gray suit jacket, black tights, and black high-heeled ankle boots, she sat on the shoulders of a muscleman and shook hands with everyone who reached out to her in front of the stage. After finishing by kissing a little girl on the cheek, she began to talk about God, Jesus, and creation in general, interrupted by gospel singing.
However, the stage was free of bodyguards and armed police. They were in place when the star arrived at Fornebu in her private jet on Monday evening. The press in attendance caught a glimpse of the singer before she slipped into a waiting limousine that drove her to the Royal Christiania Hotel.
Time stood still when she sang her last big hit, “I Will Always Love You.” Admittedly, the ballad is rather banal, but when Whitney sang it at Oslo Spektrum, she raised the roof. The cheers from the audience reached the heavens and almost lifted the roof. The last song was Chaka Khan's “I'm Every Woman,” which is also on her Bodyguard album.
Her band consisted of Ricky Minor (bass). Bette Sussman (keyboards), Wayne Linsey (keyboards), Carlos Rios (guitar), Kirk Whalum (saxophone). Bashiri Johnson (percussion) and Michael Baker (drums). Whitney's brother Gary Houston, who also contributed a decent version of Eric Clapton's “Tears in Heaven,” Olivia McClurkin, Pattie Howard, and Valerie Davis sang in the four-part chorus.
Whitney Houston's next concert is in Heerenveen in the Netherlands this coming Friday. She will have performed a total of 33 concerts in Europe when she concludes her tour in Paris on November 30.
It is inevitable that there will be a lot of glitz and glamour when a star like Whitney Houston takes to the stage. That was certainly the case for the 9,000 people at Oslo Spektrum yesterday. But there was also room for a little soul in the 90-minute show.
Whitney Houston has become a mother and a mature woman since she sang at Drammenshallen in 1988. Perhaps that is why she took it easier this time. She did not have any dancers with her to compete with. She concentrated on singing, and she can do that.
We quickly noticed where this was going. After a few verses of “The Greatest Love of All,” the evening really got started with “Love Will Save The Day,” her liveliest song, which, however, did not sound so lively here. When she continued with “Saving All My Love For You” and “You Give Good Love,” two formidable ballads from her debut album, things went much better. Her phrasing made the well-known songs almost new, and we heard that Whitney has ambitions to sing more than just simple pop songs.
There were many more ballads during the evening, because Whitney Houston took this very calmly. She also gave long speeches where she said, “I love you,” but I suspect she says that to all guys. Because right after that, she talked about her marriage, saying that Bobby Brown is "the man," to loud applause from the girls and boos from the others. She also let her brother Gary sing Eric Clapton's “Tears In Heaven” while she was out changing clothes, without either part making much of an impression.
Whitney Houston returned for more hit songs, and naturally didn't leave until everyone had heard the one song they had come to hear, the inevitable “I Will Always Love You” complete with sing-along, lighters, and all the rest. It was an evening entirely according to plan, where she showed how good she is at singing without generating much enthusiasm either. She should come up with something new for next time, since she solemnly promised to return before long.
October 17, 1993
Gothenburg, Sweden
Scandinavium
Attendance: 11,147
Revenue: N/A
None currently available :(
October 16, 1993
Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm Globe Arena
Attendance: ≈13,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
October 14, 1993
Berlin, Germany
Deutschlandhalle
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
Revelation (Contains elements of "The Love You Save")
Blessed Assurance
I Have Nothing
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
October 13, 1993
Berlin, Germany
Deutschlandhalle
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
Revelation (Contains elements of "Tell Me Something Good")
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
Does success make you confident? At the age of 30, Whitney Houston had achieved almost everything there is to achieve in the pop business. It was a success built on hard work, and unfortunately, you can still see that today in the slim singer with the huge voice. She earned her first musical spurs at a young age in the gospel choir led by her mother and later as a backing singer, before embarking on her solo career in a well-planned and perfectly organized manner.
Whitney won over listeners around the world with her easy-listening soul ballads. Then, after a temporary slump, came the absolute zenith of her career. With the romantic film The Bodyguard, Whitney, the pop star, and Kevin Costner, the bodyguard, moved millions of viewers to tears. This was one reason why Whitney was able to delight a sold-out Deutschlandhalle for two days.
The mood was already jubilant in the run-up to the event. EYC, Express Yourself Clearly, is the name of the trio warming up the crowd: young men with acrobatic dance moves and erotic movements, their upper bodies bare. Their playback performance, with a little soul and a little rap without dirty words, earns cheers just as loud as those for the lighting technician who climbs a rope ladder to his workplace under the roof.
But that is nothing compared to the storm of applause with which Berlin welcomes the star of the evening. When the curtain rises on the stage, bathed in opulent lighting, one feels anxious for the walls of the Deutschlandhalle. Eventually, the shouting, whistling, and stomping subside a little, and you can hear Whitney Houston singing "The Greatest Love of All." Compared to the band and choir, her voice is a little too high-pitched, but that is ultimately her artistic capital, as "Saving All My Love for You," her breakthrough hit, makes clear. Louder, stronger, higher seems to be the motto.
Yet Whitney is anything but relaxed. Her steps are almost awkward in her high-necked evening gown, her nervous arms adjusting her old-fashioned hairstyle. It is hard to believe her desire to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." It would not be possible anyway with this strict seating arrangement.
Whitney feels noticeably more comfortable on the bar stool. A few love songs, interrupted again and again by cheers, her brother Gary is allowed to sing in between, and then comes the music that is clearly Whitney Houston’s element. The hot gospel sounds seem far more authentic than the rather anemic soul songs.
Then finally, the eagerly awaited country song from the film. "I Will Always Love You" brings tears to the eyes of many in the audience. But that is it. After only an hour, it is time to say goodbye, with a cheered encore of "I’m Every Woman." Then the bright lights of the hall come on mercilessly. Everyone peacefully makes their way to the exit, without thinking aloud about whether one might expect a little more from a concert by a megastar.
October 11, 1993
Zurich, Switzerland
Hallenstadion
Attendance: ≈13,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
(Setlist may be incorrect)
October 10, 1993
Zurich, Switzerland
Hallenstadion
Attendance: ≈13,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I Will Always Love You
(Setlist incomplete)
At the first of her two sold-out concerts at Zurich's Hallenstadion, Whitney Houston was enthusiastically applauded by the audience. For five quarter hours, she led her listeners through a selection of her best love songs.
Whitney Houston turned 30 this year and is a happy mother to boot. The singer from Newark, New Jersey, has sold 55 million records worldwide since her debut album "Whitney Houston" in 1985. Two hundred thousand copies of her last album were sold in Switzerland alone.
With her unmistakable voice alone, Whitney sets accents in her meticulously calculated numbers, which elegantly oscillate between pop-soul-gospel crossover, kitsch, and department-store Muzak. Nevertheless, in recent years, her songs have secured their place in the musical lexicon.
Hits like "Saving All My Love for You" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" are still somehow present in people's minds even after years.
With her slick sound and a clever alliance with the film industry—she co-starred with Kevin Costner in the film "The Bodyguard" and also performed half of the soundtrack—she appeals, thanks to market analyses, to a cross-generational audience.
This was also reflected in the extremely diverse crowd at the Hallenstadion: from proto-yuppies to ordinary people, from retirees to young families, whose children immediately took the opportunity to wear out their pants on the wooden track of the Six-Day Race, which was used as a slide.
Whitney Houston as a classic adult act, so to speak; and it was probably no coincidence that, for a change, DRS 1 was conspicuously present at a concert in the Hallenstadion instead of their younger rivals at DRS 3.
Live, Whitney appeared on stage with an impressive line-up of personnel: three backing vocalists, one additional backing vocalist, two keyboards, drums, percussion, bass, a wind instrument, a keyboardist, and a guitarist. The considerable amount of equipment was probably necessary to convey the CD sound on stage.
The songs were in no way different from the well-known studio versions. Characterized by a dominating harmonica, Houston—whose repertoire could actually produce an entire soft-rock CD solo—played her way through a collection of her best love songs during her 75-minute set.
At times there was almost a pre-Christmas atmosphere, with lights glowing throughout the audience. The die-hard Whitney fan, who obviously knew what was coming, wisely brought a candle instead of burning his fingers on a hot lighter.
"I love Switzerland." You just have to love Whitney, just like she loves Switzerland.
"I love Switzerland, it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen," she said—"honestly"—at the beginning. And, just as clearly, the audience on Sunday was the best of all.
And what lonely heart didn’t bleed during the furious staging of "I Will Always Love You," the megahit from the film "The Bodyguard"?
The girl next door sang along fervently—and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.
October 08, 1993
Milan, Italy
Forum di Assago
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Tears in Heaven (Performed by Gary Garland)
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
October 07, 1993
Milan, Italy
Forum di Assago
Attendance: ≈12,000
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Revelation
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
The almost new Black Venus, the golden voice of pop gospel Whitney Houston arrived in Milan the other night to kick off her European tour promoting the successful soundtrack of the hugely popular film The Bodyguard, in which she starred alongside Kevin Costner. The event sold out for two nights at the Forum di Assago, which can hold 11,000 to 12,000 people, attracted major media attention, and featured a front row of celebrities such as Gianni Versace, Giorgio Armani, and even Dematté.
There was also considerable confusion. A number of tickets stolen months earlier led to very unpleasant misunderstandings, with people who had paid as much as 120,000 lire being turned away because others had taken their seats. Scuffles broke out in the disabled seating area, where some wheelchair users could not find places because, according to organizer Mimmo D'Alessandro, the section had reached capacity. In short, it was an eventful evening for the premiere.
But was it really worth it? Thirty-year-old Whitney Houston is certainly one of the most beautiful voices on today’s pop market. Her simple, clean-cut image, full of virtue, was a hit with Italian audiences at the Sanremo Festival eight years ago, where Pippo Baudo presented her so effectively that she immediately sold an enormous number of records. Since then, she has remained in the hearts of Italians, especially those who are not avid music lovers, like many who flocked to Assago. They were struck by her confident, dramatic, sublimely virtuosic voice, so much so that they interrupted a blues song with applause, almost sacrilegiously.
In reality, Houston has often been criticized for aspects related to her voice: a lack of emotional warmth and a certain human rigidity that affects her performances. Her apparent absence of inner turmoil or sensual thrill can make her seem too cold for live audiences. She married her colleague Bobby Brown and had a baby girl, and the Forum audience seemed to expect an artistic demonstration that love changes people. She spoke frequently of love and affection from the stage, perhaps too much.
The show itself was somewhat disappointing and kitschy, better suited to Las Vegas. There were few songs, too many spoken interludes, numerous pauses, and a general sense of boredom. The cheers at the beginning gradually gave way to perplexed silence and, by the end, to a hasty exit by many attendees.
Dressed first like a gray velvet lampshade and later like a golden chandelier, in the hideous tradition of American divas, Whitney was accompanied by a rather mediocre band playing equally mediocre arrangements, though supported by four excellent backing singers who filled in gaps, perhaps caused by jet lag. Her voice has certainly grown darker and more intense, and some songs lived up to her reputation, notably "Saving All My Love for You" and especially "I Love You, Porgy" from Porgy and Bess. The latter was a welcome choice that broke from the glossy pop so often tailored to her and so often her greatest limitation.
Still, the soul and blues elements struggled to emerge, appearing only in brief, intense flashes during an evening dominated by often inconclusive virtuosity. The stage, set design, and curtain were extremely kitschy. Like Madonna, she too could benefit from an Italian stylist behind her.
September 28, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 27, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
None currently available :(
September 24, 1993
Yokohama, Japan
YOKOHAMA ARENA
Attendance: ≈17,000
Revenue: ≈$1,624,000
None currently available :(
September 22, 1993
Fukuoka, Japan
Fukuoka Dome
Attendance: 38,561
Revenue: $5,784,150
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 20, 1993
Yokohama, Japan
YOKOHAMA ARENA
Attendance: ≈17,000
Revenue: ≈$1,624,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 19, 1993
Yokohama, Japan
YOKOHAMA ARENA
Attendance: ≈17,000
Revenue: ≈$1,624,000
None currently available :(
September 17, 1993
Nagoya, Japan
Rainbow Hall
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: ≈$1,250,000
None currently available :(
September 16, 1993
Nagoya, Japan
Rainbow Hall
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: ≈$1,250,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 14, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
None currently available :(
September 13, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
None currently available :(
September 10, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
My Name Is Not Susan
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 09, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
None currently available :(
September 07, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
My Name Is Not Susan
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 06, 1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
Attendance: ≈14,200
Revenue: ≈$1,023,000
None currently available :(
September 02, 1993
Osaka, Japan
Osaka-jou Hall
Attendance: ≈16,000
Revenue: ≈$1,435,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
September 01, 1993
Osaka, Japan
Osaka-jou Hall
Attendance: ≈16,000
Revenue: ≈$1,435,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
August 28, 1993
Cerritos, CA
Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts
Attendance: ≈1,700
Revenue: ≈$157,700
None currently available :(
August 27, 1993
Cerritos, CA
Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts
Attendance: ≈1,700
Revenue: ≈$157,700
None currently available :(
August 25, 1993
Cerritos, CA
Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts
Attendance: ≈1,700
Revenue: ≈$157,700
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
Stormy Weather
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
(Setlist may be incorrect)
CERRITOS — Given her intimate surroundings Wednesday night, Whitney Houston could have stooped to conquer.
Instead, she spent her concert at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts swooping and soaring to overwhelm.
Houston didn’t concern herself with establishing a mood of closeness with homey chatter or one-to-one repartee with her fans. Instead, the technically impressive but emotionally distant Houston did her usual thing, choosing to be Olympian rather than drawing near to the 1,710 people who watched her concert in-the-round.
Those closest to her were just 12 feet or so below her; if Houston had any acquaintances in the balconies, she could easily have hailed them and carried on a conversation, given the theater’s cozy layout. (Having opened her Southern California swing in the vastness of the Hollywood Bowl, Houston will finish it with sold-out shows at Cerritos, tonight and Saturday.)
Routine greetings and adieus were all the contact Houston cared to make. She almost never ventured to the stage apron, preferring to maintain a buffer rather than move to an exposed spot where a fan might be encouraged to step forward.
That was in marked contrast to the approach that gregarious pop-R & B stars such as Luther Vandross and Gladys Knight have taken in shows at the comparably intimate Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.
Houston wasn’t looking to reach out and touch anybody, and nobody in the crowd dared make the first step.
One fan did have the gumption to shout something at Houston while she paused for a sip of throat-soothing hot tea before a medley of ballads. She swiveled in her chair, bemused, but not wrathful (Houston evidently has learned a lesson from a recent episode in Miami, when her haughtiness toward a fan earned her a cascade of boos and a heap of bad publicity).
“He said, ‘I’m hotter than that tea,’ ” Houston repeated for the benefit of those who hadn’t heard what had been shouted. Instead of getting into some interesting banter and seeing where the moment would lead, Houston lightly but primly put an end to any nonsense by playing the Bobby Brown card. “My husband is here,” she warned Mr. Hotter Than Tea, “better be good.”
Musically, Houston manages to be simultaneously awe-inspiring and dismayingly bland.
There’s no question that she has a rare gift--a voice of piercing force and clarity, which she wields with great concentration and control. But the voice is all you get.
At 30, Houston is a grown-up now, but she still hasn’t learned to pick songs with resonance of their own. Instead, she goes for formulaic vehicles that show off a technical authority she wears like armor.
The obligatory set-closer, “I Will Always Love You,” managed to convey a sense of titanic determination with its repeated, storm-the-ramparts chorus, but few other songs in the 80-minute set had much of an expressive aura.
Houston didn’t seem transported by the act of performing or by the songs themselves, and she never created the illusion that she was singing feelings rather than notes. There’s something guarded about her, a reserve that would probably remain if she sang in a piano bar.
(Los Angeles Times)
August 23, 1993
San Diego, CA
Embarcadero Marina Park South
Attendance: 4,567
Revenue: $392,762
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incomplete)
She is fabulously rich, monumentally talented and—tabloid reports be damned—model thin. She is a newlywed, a new mother and a box-office-busting movie star.
But as she swept into town Monday night, Whitney Houston had one more role to add to her expanding cast of characters. With her 30th birthday barely under her belt and her singer career revived with the success of "The Bodyguard" soundtrack, Houston is an artist in transition.
Despite the impressive parade of hits from "The Bodyguard," Houston is far from settled or satisfied. Her show at the Embarcadero Marina Park South was an exploratory affair that had Houston attempting to flex her creative muscles without injuring herself or disappointing a devoted audience who never thought she was out of shape in the first place.
As any adolescent will tell you, growing up is no fun at all, and eight years after getting the first of her mind boggling string of Top-10 hits, Houston is experiencing her share of growing pains.
In Miami, when she started her show an hour late and added insult to insult by chewing out an overeager fan, the beloved entertainer became a spoiled diva overnight. Then there was that nasty bit with the New York tabloid reports about an overweight Whitney getting a look at skinny little Janet Jackson and overdosing on diet pills.
One look at Houston in her faded jeans and spangled bomber jacket (no sequined bell-bottoms for the San Diego crowd) blew the fat rumors into gossip hell where they belong, and while there were traces of diva behavior in the singer's gooey Vegas-style patter and pseudo-Garland theatrics, Houston spent most of her 80-minute show making up for the past mistakes while carving out an intriguing version of the future.
To begin with, she was nice. With the debacle in Miami still fresh in her mind, Houston chatted with the audience, inviting them to dance and sing along if the spirit moved them. She was comfortable, too. While past concerts have have featured a performer who was all ticks and mannerisms, Houston has wisely decided to sit back, relax and let her voice do the performing.
From the celebratory version of "Love Will Save the Day" that opened the sold-out show, through the sassy "All the Man That I Need" (featuring a brief walk-on by hubby Bobby Brown), and the galvanizing "I Will Always Love You," Houston let her amazing voice roam and ramble, turning minor songs into minor miracles and reinforcing her previously unsteady position as the Queen of Pop.
Like a dancer who has finally learned to turn raw physical force into a thing of power and beauty, Houston moved with grace and confidence, improvising here, stretching out there, even soaring on occasion.
There is no question that Houston lays on the vocal histrionics a few inches too thick, but her tendency to overinflate wouldn't be so distracting if the songs she chose to sing weren't so thin. Watching Houston dig into "I Have Nothing" (from "The Bodyguard" soundtrack) is like watching Baryshnikov sweat through a set with the Solid Gold dancers. It's impressive, but you wonder why she bothers.
Unfortunately, a fine match-up of singer and song didn't make it to San Diego. Perhaps due to the Embarcadero's curfew, Houston had to shorten her show, and the dream medley of "I Loves You, Porgy" and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" (from Broadway's "Dreamgirls" didn't make the cut.
As she attempts to warm up her image and expand her songs beyond their Top 40 limits, Whitney Houston is moving forward at a time when she could easily be standing still. And for the first time in a while, it will be interesting to see where she ends up.
(San Diego Union-Tribune)
August 22, 1993
Los Angeles, CA
Hollywood Bowl
Attendance: 17,006
Revenue: $625,030
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
(Setlist may be incorrect)
August 15, 1993
Kolding, Denmark
Kolding Stadion
Attendance: ≈10,000
Revenue: $855,600
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Queen of the Night
My Name Is Not Susan
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
I Have Nothing
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
August 13, 1993
Copenhagen, Denmark
Parken Stadium
Attendance: 38,065
Revenue: $3,806,500
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Queen of the Night
My Name Is Not Susan
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
Something in Common (With Bobby Brown)
August 01, 1993
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common
(Setlist may be incomplete)
July 31, 1993
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: $N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
Something in Common
(Setlist may be incomplete)
July 30, 1993
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: $N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
Stormy Weather
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
How Will I Know
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
(Setlist may be incorrect)
July 28, 1993
Atlantic City, NJ
Sands Atlantic City
Attendance: ≈850
Revenue: $N/A
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
Stormy Weather
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Revelation
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Will Always Love You
(Setlist may be incomplete and out of order)
Whitney Houston’s show at the Sands Hotel Casino was going well Wednesday night. She had just finished introducing her band and quartet of background vocalists, each of whom had sung a chorus of the gospel reverie "Revelation."
All night, audience members had been throwing Houston appreciative vocal bouquets: “I love you, Whitney!” and “You go, girl!” She responded warmly, telling one admirer, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
But after "Revelation," which Houston had introduced by telling the audience that they would be “going to church for a few minutes,” another voice rang out from the crowd.
“Are you a born-again Christian?” a woman asked.
Silence followed, along with a slightly confused and bemused look on Houston’s face.
You may remember how Houston dealt with an overeager fan earlier on this tour, icily sending an autograph seeker back to the seating area during the opening show in Miami. She took considerable criticism from both the media and the audience for that moment. So during Wednesday’s pause, only a couple of seconds but long enough to draw everyone’s attention, the atmosphere in the Sands’ intimate Copa Room seemed to tighten.
Houston handled the moment as best she could: “Am I a born-again Christian? Let’s go on to the next song.”
She did not criticize the woman who asked the question, something she has done before, but the transition out of the moment was not particularly smooth.
And that, essentially, is the paradox of Whitney Houston. She is a singer more than an entertainer. She walks onto the stage, extends her hands, holds her head high, and sings. And that she does extremely well.
Taking the stage after comedian and ventriloquist Jay Johnson’s opening act, which was often banal but occasionally funny, Houston appeared in a form-fitting deep lavender dress with three jeweled strands draped across her neck, shoulders, and hips. She looked every bit the diva.
Yes, Whitney Houston has hips now. Whether thanks to motherhood or simply maturity, Houston has changed since becoming a mother. She is no longer the skinny waif of earlier years, and her voice, always powerful and full of character, has matured as well.
During a performance that lasted just over an hour, Houston guided roughly 800 high rollers and devoted fans, some of whom had paid as much as $200 for their seats, through a repertoire heavy with dramatic, gospel-influenced love songs.
She handled these songs with restrained emotionalism and the musical intelligence that only a gifted performer can bring. "Didn’t We Almost Have It All" and "All at Once" were beautifully rendered as Houston experimented with register and timing, building toward satisfying climaxes.
On "All the Man That I Need," she injected genuine passion into the opening stanza, even referencing the name and image of her husband, Bobby Brown, at strategic moments, suggesting real emotion rather than mere performance.
Her soaring, melismatic voice, now slightly huskier than in earlier years, produced tasteful, even chilling embellishments on "I Will Always Love You."
In the end, the evening was satisfying. It would have been nice, however, to hear the adrenaline-charged "I’m Every Woman." But Houston did not perform an encore.
Her remaining shows tonight, Saturday, and Sunday, with tickets priced at $75 and $100, are already sold out.
(The Philadelphia Inquirer)
July 26, 1993
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$291,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
July 24, 1993
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$291,000
None currently available :(
July 23, 1993
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$291,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
July 21, 1993
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$291,000
None currently available :(
July 20, 1993
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Attendance: ≈5,700
Revenue: ≈$291,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
As Whitney Houston opened her five-show stand at Radio City Music Hall Tuesday night, she promised that no one would be running across the stage or flying to the top of the theater.
“I have no gimmicks,” she said. “All I have is what God gave me.”
She couldn’t resist adding fireworks, actual fireworks, to her show-closing version of "I Will Always Love You," her huge hit from The Bodyguard soundtrack, but in every other respect she remained true to her word. And what God gave her, her remarkable voice, provided more than enough substance for an enjoyable, occasionally thrilling concert.
Houston, who grew up in East Orange, began singing in the choir of New Hope Baptist Church in Newark and now lives in Mendham. She has never indulged in full-scale theatrical extravaganzas à la Madonna or Janet Jackson.
Her past tours balanced dance-filled production numbers for her uptempo hits with more visually minimal performances of her ballads. At Radio City, Houston mostly stood, sat, or walked around a little and sang. She has also modified her concert strategy so that many songs, including hits such as "The Greatest Love of All" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)," appeared only briefly as parts of medleys. It’s a classic compromise: there isn’t enough time to do everything, so you do bits and pieces of most of them.
The lasting impressions from Tuesday’s concert, however, came from the songs she fully committed to, such as "Love Will Save the Day," "Saving All My Love for You," "I Have Nothing," and "All the Man That I Need." On "Saving All My Love for You," Houston made the familiar melody sound fresh by singing behind the beat, and she made "All the Man That I Need" far more urgent than in its recorded form.
At her best, Houston is as much an actress as a singer, fully embracing a song’s sentiment. The biggest surprise of the evening came in a medley that included "I Loves You, Porgy" from Porgy and Bess and "And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going" from Dreamgirls. In the latter, Houston broke out of her trademark cool, conveying anguish while still maintaining impressive control over the song’s dramatic flourishes.
In addition to emphasizing her singing, Houston talked more than usual during the show. She introduced the gospel number "Jesus Loves Me" by responding to a New York Post story alleging she had overdosed on diet pills. She denied the story and said she had never taken a diet pill, adding, “Baby, ain’t no fat in this body!”
She also addressed her marriage to Bobby Brown, joking with the audience, “You didn’t think I’d make six months, did you?” before insisting that she is “truly in love.” Responding to shouted questions, she said their one-year-old daughter was “doin’ just fine.”
Not everything worked. "Jesus Loves Me" grew numbingly repetitive, and Houston did little to add a dynamic edge to it. "I Will Always Love You" remains her biggest hit, but it is still a flimsy song, all flourishes and little substance. The encore, "I’m Every Woman," featured the funkiest playing of the night from Houston’s eight-piece band, but her vocal performance felt rote before she brought her husband onstage.
Houston also performed at Radio City last night and will return tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday. She has additional shows scheduled at the Sands Casino in Atlantic City on July 28, 30, and 31, and August 1, 3, and 4.
(The Star-Ledger)
July 15, 1993
Mansfield, MA
Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts
Attendance: N/A
Revenue: ≈$497,000
None currently available :(
July 14, 1993
Mansfield, MA
Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts
Attendance: ≈13,500
Revenue: ≈$497,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
This was pure show business. That’s really what Whitney Houston is all about.
The question used to be, “Will her sense of schmaltz overwhelm her pure voice, or vice versa?” That battle is over. Now the question is, “Didn’t she look slimmer in Act 2, with her red double-breasted sequined jacket over red leggings, than she did in Act 1 with her green crushed-velvet dress with rhinestone clips?”
Did she play the hits? You bet. Well, most of them, although many appeared in medley form, and there were only a few bars of "The Greatest Love of All" in the introductory instrumental.
But there were all or parts of "Saving All My Love for You," "You Give Good Love," "I’m Your Baby Tonight," "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)," and even George Gershwin’s "I Loves You, Porgy."
And whether the lyrics are happy, which they usually are, or sad, they all come off cheerful. You do not get a sense of loss when she sings of waiting alone in "Saving All My Love for You." You know he will show up eventually. Who is he? These days, it is her husband, Bobby Brown.
In "All the Man That I Need," he even gets a mention: “You know I used to cry to myself, but that was all before Bobby came!”
In all honesty, Houston’s offstage life has more sparks. There have been rumors of marital trouble splashed across the National Enquirer, the New York Post’s report about a supposed diet pill overdose, which she denied and later sued over, teary reports about her postpartum weight, and a feistier-than-expected interview with Rolling Stone.
Onstage, however, with her 11-piece band, everything ran like clockwork. The problem is that watching Houston’s clock tick can feel like watching paint dry. Beautiful vermilion paint, perhaps, but paint nonetheless.
We left assured that she loved all 13,500 of us, those in the expensive seats and those on the lawn. The fact is, the 27-year-old pop star, actress, celebrity wife, mother, and reluctant tabloid figure seems quite comfortable dealing in greeting-card sentiments most of the time through glossy uptempo pop and slick ballads.
What redeems her occasionally is her voice, the seemingly effortless swoops that can still send a shudder down the spine. If only the emotional rush were as powerful.
Frankly, last night’s 90-minute, two-set performance was low on emotional impact and high on show-business schmaltz. It is exactly what many critics have feared from Houston, and it contrasts sharply with what I saw and heard on Boston Common six years ago. There, Houston rose above the sterile pop production of her first two albums and revealed deep gospel-soul roots that the records only hinted at.
Last night was different. Her one gospel number, "Jesus Loves Me," complete with fake stained-glass window patterns on the backdrop, came across as light stage shtick. She even used the song, of all songs, to break from the devotional message and introduce the band.
The only thing she clearly disliked was the bugs, as a few flying insects seemed determined to land on her.
The regular set closed, of course, with "I Will Always Love You," her biggest hit of the previous year and a song whose multiple crescendos no doubt conjured images of her The Bodyguard co-star Kevin Costner in the minds of many female fans.
(The Boston Globe)
July 12, 1993
Vienna, VA
Filene Center at Wolf Trap
Attendance: ≈7,000
Revenue: ≈$180,000
None currently available :(
July 11, 1993
Vienna, VA
Filene Center at Wolf Trap
Attendance: ≈7,000
Revenue: ≈$180,000
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
I Loves You, Porgy / And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
Happy Birthday to You (Dedicated to her saxophonist, Kirk Whalum)
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
“I’m trying, baby,” the pop princess answered. But the chanteuse wasn’t just being chatty; she also clarified rumors that have dogged her recently. “This must be ‘Pick on Whitney,’” she said. “I’m recovering from a diet I was never on.” She and Bobby Brown have been married “for almost a year. Some people didn’t think we would last six months. My husband and I and the baby (Bobbi, 4 months) are very happy. You heard it from the horse’s mouth. Don’t believe what you hear and what you read.”
Smartly relinquishing the new-jack, high-tech gimmicks of her ’91 tour, she focused on vocals, singing intimately from a stool or sauntering with a wireless microphone. Unfortunately, the new mother wore a clingy catsuit that didn’t flatter her post-partum figure, and the show was slowed by breaks.
No matter. This tour (in Mansfield, Wednesday & Thursday) is all about that voice—a gutsy, gospel-infused pop instrument. Aided by a crackerjack seven-piece band and four singers with honey-baked harmonies, she focused on love songs. Mrs. Bobby Brown belted out “Saving All My Love for You,” “You Give Good Love,” and “How Will I Know” with the passion of a lovestruck teen. The vocals had the crowd on its feet.
Despite screaming herself hoarse on an amusement-park ride the previous day, Houston met the vocal challenges of her material, only occasionally reforging its own identity. Clearing up those rumors, of course, opinions are provisional at this point: the show is undergoing so many last-minute changes, its quality may not be clear until the eagerly awaited—(review cuts off).
Surprises included a jazzy “I Loves You, Porgy” and Jennifer Holliday’s vocally acrobatic “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” After a thunderous “I Have Nothing,” though, she took a 20-minute break. The only visible result was the addition of a rhinestone jacket.
Houston retained her giddy mood, singing “Happy Birthday” to her saxophonist (and opening act) Kirk Whalum and testifying before launching into “Jesus Loves Me.” Of course, everyone awaited the finale, her hit “I Will Always Love You.” Standing still, she threw her head back and wailed the lyrics effortlessly, bringing shrieking fans to their feet. Here’s one singer who doesn’t need show-biz glitz to do that.
(USA Today)
July 08, 1993
Miami, FL
James L. Knight Center
Attendance: ≈4,700
Revenue: ≈$163,700
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
July 06, 1993
Miami, FL
James L. Knight Center
Attendance: ≈4,700
Revenue: ≈$163,700
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman
July 05, 1993
Miami, FL
James L. Knight Center
Attendance: ≈4,700
Revenue: ≈$163,700
The Greatest Love of All (Intro)
Love Will Save the Day
Saving All My Love for You
You Give Good Love
How Will I Know
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
All at Once / Nobody Loves Me Like You Do / Didn't We Almost Have It All / Where Do Broken Hearts Go
All the Man That I Need
I Have Nothing
Queen of the Night
I'm Your Baby Tonight
Jesus Loves Me
I Will Always Love You
I'm Every Woman