Songoftheday 10/14/14 - I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadows, if I fail if i succeed at least I lived how I believe...

Whitney Houston - "The Greatest Love Of All"
from the album Whitney Houston (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day comes from the late pop/R&B singer Whitney Houston, whose debut album had already spun off a top-3 initial hit with "You Give Good Love" followed by a pair of #1's in "Saving All My Love For You" and "How Will I Know". For the fourth release from the record, Whitney covered a song that was a hit for jazz-soul musician George Benson, who took the inspirational "Greatest Love Of All" to #24 on the pop and #2 on the R&B chart in 1977.

While George's take was delicate and plainspoken, Whitney pulled the pyrotechnics, shouting out the lyrics like a house on fire, and truly brought the "power ballad" to the record. It brought a Broadway showstopper quality to it, and with her vocal theatrics, it worked...

Whitney's version of "Greatest Love Of All" became her third consecutive #1 pop hit in the U.S. in May of 1986. The single also went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary and #3 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the record topped the chart in Canada and Australia, and landed in the top-10 in England and Ireland. After Whitney's tragic death in 2012, the song came back on the chart, checking in at #41 on the Hot 100.

Most importantly, this is the record that solidified Whitney as a true pop superstar instead of an R&B/dance ingenue, and set her up for the mega-success of her second album. And it brought back the idea of the "big voice" onto pop radio, something taken for granted in the post-Mariah world.

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Whitney performed "The Greatest Love Of All" at the Grammys in 1986...

...next up, from her tour in 1988...

Skip ahead a couple of years to her performance on Arista Records' anniversary show...

and finally, from her DC show in 1997...

Up tomorrow: a prog-rock guitarist requires something extraordinary...