Songoftheday 3/23/22 - Did you really think that I would really take you back, let you back in my heart one more time...

 

 

"I Learned From The Best" - Whitney Houston

from the album My Love Is Your Love (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 5

 

Today's song is from Whitney Houston, whose fourth album My Love Is Your Love had already spun off three top-40 pop hits with "Heartbreak Hotel", "It's Not Right But It's Okay", and "My Love Is Your Love", as well as containing her top-20 duet with Mariah Carey, "When You Believe". The fifth and final release from the album was the epic kiss-off of "I Learned From The Best". Written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren and produced by David Foster, the song has Whitney confronting an ex-lover who wants to reunite, explaining how devastated she was and that she will never return to that. The title, taken from the longstanding anti-drug commercial with a son and his father (oh yeah, irony), is turned to mean that she learned how to be as callous towards him as he was towards her. Between the ballad-style main version, which has beautiful horn section that sounds a bit like Foster-produced band Chicago,  and the house music transformation for the club, the song would bring Whitney back to the American top-40 for the last time with an original recording. Here's the original album/radio version...

...and then the remixed version for the club...

 

 "I Learned From The Best" became Whitney's 29th top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in March of 2000. The song also rose to #20 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio chart, and went to #13 on their R&B Singles list. The remixes of the track, done by Hex Hector and Junior Vasquez, helped it top the Dance Club Play chart for three weeks. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Poland and Romania, and reached the top ten in Iceland (#3), Finland (#6), Spain (#8), Belgium (#8F), and Hungary (#10). It also made the top-40 in Ireland (#18), the UK (#19), Sweden (#23), Switzerland (#28), and the Netherlands (#34). 

Even though Whitney's fortunes were growing with this album, personally her life was just starting to fall apart, as drugs, alcohol, and a toxic relationship with husband Bobby Brown was bubbling enough to the surface to start to get celebrity media's attention. While her double-disc Greatest hits album was released in 2000, which spent three weeks at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, cancelled performances and a drug sting at an airport started to cast a shadow on her. Nevertheless, four singles were generated from the collection, with "Could I Have This Kiss Forever", a duet with Latin explosion loverboy Enrique Iglesias and another Diane Warren song, returned Houston to the top ten in the UK at #7, as well as on the American Adult Contemporary radio list at #10, but the single stalled under the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 at #52. A second pairing with George Michael on the Darkchild-helmed "If I Told You That" also got to #9 in the UK, but missed the American charts altogether. Both songs deserved much better, but I think by that time mainstream radio was souring on her for some reason.

Despite the tabloid fervor, Whitney re-signed with Arista for a massive amount of money in 2001, when she got a brief renaissance when her version of "The Star Spangled Banner" from the Super Bowl returned to the top ten at #6 after the September 11 terrorist attacks (where the single was used to raise money for charity). However it wouldn't be until 2002 that she would return with a fifth studio album Just Whitney. The album set a high mark for first-week sales for the singer even though it entered the Billboard 200 at just #9 (it was right in the middle of the holiday buying season), but radio faltered even more. lead single "Whatchulookinat", co-produced by Brown, stalled at a dismal #96 on the Hot 100 and #75 on the R&B chart, although the gays still showed love and helped bring her back to the top of the Dance Club Play list. It also did a little better overseas, reaching the top ten in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Greece and #13 in the UK. That was followed by "One of Those Days", which at least got her back in the R&B top-40 at #29, and did the best from the set on the Hot 100 at #72. For the third try, the Babyface written/produced "Try It On My Own", she went with the ballad/house music dual versions, and made #10 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart and #1 on the Dance Club Play list, but again stopped at #84 and #80 on the pop and R&B charts respectively in America. Another Babyface cut from the record, "Love That Man", scored another #1 dance hit, though that was the only place it did anything. A year later, Whitney released her first true holiday album, One Wish.

But instead of delivering on that six-album deal for 100 million, Houston went on tour and ended up as the sidekick on her husband's reality show debacle Being Bobby Brown, where the idea of "doody bubbles" will imprint itself on anyone who watched it. She ended up leaving Brown and finally entering rehab, and in 2009 she finally came back with another record, and what would sadly be her last, I Look To You. The record went to #1 on the Billboard 200 as well as the R&B Albums chart, and sold over a million copies, but again American pop radio had pretty much exiled her. The title track "I Look To You", written by the then-not-totally-disgraced R. Kelly, went to #19 on the R&B Singles chart and #22 on the Adult Contemporary list, but faltered down at #70 on the Hot 100. Then came what would be her final "great" single, "Million Dollar Bill", which was co-written by Alicia Keys and Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean, which got to #16 on the R&B chart, with remixes by Freemasons, Frankie Knuckles, and Peter Rauhofer that topped the dance chart, but it spent a single week at #100 on the Hot 100, a true damn crime. 

Whitney went back to rehab, but was looking up as she filmed a remake of the 70s movie Sparkle with American Idol winner Jordin Sparks. However her song "Celebrate" from the movie would end up being her last recording. Right before she was scheduled to perform at the Grammy Awards, Houston was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton, an accident aided by a large amount of drugs in her. Her death was probably was the most shocking to the world psyche since the passing of Michael Jackson a few years before. 

Most recently, the vocals from Whitney's cover of Steve Winwood's "Higher Love", which was a bonus track on the Asian version of her I'm Your Baby Tonight album, was converted into a new single by Norwegian DJ/producer Kygo, and ended up going to #1 on Billboard's dance chart, #12 on the Adult Top-40 radio chart, and #63 on the pop Hot 100. 

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Here's the Junior Vasquez "Disco" remix, which Whitney recorded new vocals for, that helped it become her biggest club success tied with "It's Not Right But It's Okay"...

 Next up, performing the song on The Tonight Show...

 

and finally, live in concert...

Up tomorrow: Wannabe cowboy is gloating on this reunion.