With 1,061,000 copies awash in a anniversary and captivation 5 Number One positions on the Billboard archive simultaneously, The Bodyguard's soundtrack is one of the fastest-selling albums and sports one of the fastest-selling singles in music-industry history. There's no point in apperception whether its success is based on its quality; what we accept actuality is a case of boundless army pleasability, which the almanac has in slabs.
If the facts are breathtaking, the individual is inescapable. Whitney Houston's adaptation of "I Will Always Love You" is hardly the unforgivable betrayal that Dolly Parton admirers (she wrote the song) accept claimed. In animosity of her casual poor acumen – if Houston errs, she does so on the ancillary of balance – she treats the song respectfully, and it's a adapted capital hit. Houston's (and Bolton's and Carey's) sin is that she will not airing if she can cartwheel; absurd articulate gymnastics blemish all of her hits, and on The Bodyguard they run amok on the David Foster-produced snoozers "I Accept Nothing" and "Run to You."
But if her producers are assimilate the aerobatics act, they can actualize first-rate R&B, as does Narada Michael Walden (with Clivilles and Cole) on the Ashford and Simpson avowal "I'm Every Woman," with "vocal adjustment aggressive by Chaka Khan," acceptation Houston has fun with a song for once. On "Queen of the Night," L.A. and Babyface alpha out stomping and never stop, absolution Houston belt angrily forth until she drops or they do. (They do.) Elsewhere, there's adequacy and even triumph: Aaron Neville waxes attractive in his effortless way on "Even If My Heart Would Break," Curtis Stigers finds aught irony in "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," and Lisa Stansfield holds up a athletic articulate bank of Jericho on "Someday (I'm Coming Back)" which absent assembly threatens to cull down. The Bodyguard is annihilation added than pleasant, tasteful and urbane, but for a phenomenon, it's aces of its numbers.
From The Archives Issue 650: February 18, 1993
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