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moar music! today, let's talk about the "Kygo & Whitney Houston" (more on that billing later) track "Higher Love" and see what it illustrates about pop music, genre, race and authorial credit 1/
First off, *amazing* track - Houston's vocals, recorded in 1990, offer her singing prowess at it's height, right in the middle of her chart-dominating run from the mid-80s to the early 90s. Clear as a bell, powerful as a volcano, Houston bounds across the verses and chorus. 2/
We don't get the breathier rasp that would characterize her voice later in the 90s, but this song, and her vision for it, wouldn't be served by a torchier delivery. But before we talk more about this Kygo-produced version, let's go back and look at the *original* version. 3/
Because I think her choice of this song says something really interesting about what she thought of her body of work at the time of recording. And to understand *that*, we need to go back even further to the *original* original version - the Steve Winwood single from 1986. 4/
*And* we need to think about where Houston found herself vis-a-vis audience perceptions of her - in particular, the African-American audience perception of her - in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For a primer on that, see this article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jul/07/not-black-enough-the-identity-crisis-that-haunted-whitney-houston 5/
Pull quote (from Houston herself): “Sometimes it gets down to ‘You’re not black enough for them. You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.’” 6/
In the late 1980s the African-American audience seemed to have developed something of an ambivalence toward Houston, or at least her pop chart success. For great coverage of this, see this Slate podcast: https://slate.com/podcasts/hit-parade/2020/02/whitney-houston-pop-crossover 7/
So... back to Steve Winwood in 1986. Winwood co-wrote and released "Higher Love" as a single in 1986, off his phenomenal album Back In the High Life. Featuring vocals from Chaka Khan, it hit #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart:
There are a lot of great things to say about this song and Winwood's version of it: he sings it with an urgency and a pleading note that make it one of his best. It's a great song. But what's interesting for present purposes is exactly *who* Steve Winwood was. 9/
By the mid-80s, Winwood had been a successful musician for more than twenty years - a child prodigy who broke into the British scene in the mid-1960s when he was *14* as the lead singer of the Spencer David Group. He went on to work with Eric Clapton, Traffic and Blind Faith. 10/
He also had a successful solo career through the 1970s, confidently moving from genre to genre - but for our purposes, it's his inclusion in the "blue-eyed soul" category which is most relevant. 11/
Now, "blue-eyed soul" is basically just a polite euphemism for "white guys singing soul music" ("soul" is tough to pin down, but think of Motown). Membership required being white, a good set of pipes and flaunting the influence of African-American vocal stylings. 12/
Winwood had all of those. A top tier vocal and songwriting talent, if his version of "Higher Love" was all we'd ever heard, we'd have been well-served. BUT, Whitney did something audacious with his song, which would echo more than thirty years later with her own huge hit. 13/
Back to Whitney in the late 80s: stung by the insinuation that her musical choices are "too white" she - wait for it - seizes on a hit by a *blue-eyed soul* singer and then amps up the gospel notes already present in Winwood's version, emphasizing choral harmonies over horns. 14/
Now *that* is re-appropriation. 15/
Houston's original recorded version only ever appeared on the Japanese version of her third album. But this live version from her 1990 tour gives a good sense of her arrangement: 16/
It's a period-specific mix of 80s synths and computerized drums, but once those backing vocals come in (around the 1:30 mark) - that's a gospel sensibility being pushed to the front of the mix. 17/
And then, unfortunately, Houston's version basically sat there unnoticed for the better part of three decades. 18/
Enter Norwegian DJ/producer/songwriter Kygo. He takes the Houston version and remixes it as a "tropical house" track - emphasizing bright and shiny instrumentation and sternum-rattling bass and drums. It's a great version! Might even be the best of the three. 19/
But make no mistake: it's Houston's vocals that drive this track forward, the sense of fervor found in her crisp vocal delivery that propels the song. What's really interesting is the billing that the version receives: it's credited to "Kygo & Whitney Houston". 20/
The order of the names alone gives an indication of how the role of music producer has changed over the last twenty or so years - how on earth did the guy who remixed the thing get first billing? 21/
Note that the songwriters (Steve Winwood and Will Jennings) of course get no play (unless you're the type who reads liner notes). Putting Kygo first indicates a significant shift in how credit is dispensed in the music industry - away from performers, in favour of technicians 22/
I don't want that to come off as petulant - it's not a criticism. (It's a bit of a criticism.) Though I should also note that the idea of revving up Whitney Houston songs isn't particularly original: 23/
Thunderpuss did it more than 20 years ago with their *amazing* remix of "It's Not Right, But It's Okay", which is top-shelf late career Whitney Houston: 24/
(And, indicating the prevailing norms of the late 90s, that release was just billed to Whitney, with "(Thunderpuss Remix)" tagged on at the end.) 25/
Final point, which might serve to tie up the references to identity and genre which prompted this thread: when Houston released "It's Not Right...", there were *two* versions released to radio, the Thunderpuss mix (which dominated pop airplay) 26/
and the original Rodney Jerkins-produced version, which dominated airplay at "urban" stations 27/
