The Top Ten: February 2012

Whitney Houston was always my favorite. Her voice made me happy. In the thirteen years of my Top Ten charts she had more songs on my lists, more #1s and won more awards than anyone else. (Yes, I gave out awards. Shut up. And no, no one ever showed up to collect them in person. Not Mariah Carey. Not Tina Turner. Or The Pointer Sisters. Or Pet Shop Boys. Not Wham! Aretha Franklin. Taylor Dayne. Cyndi Lauper. Or Rick Astley. And not Whitney Houston.)

“You Give Good Love” was her first single but it was her second, “Saving All My Love For You,” that first got my attention and the first to make it onto my Top 10 chart in the Fall of 1985. My sister was appalled. “Ian,” she said, “she’s singing about having an affair with a married man!” She cited the song's opening lyrics as proof. A few stolen moments is all that we share. You’ve got your family and they need you there. “Well maybe he’s got a sick mother at home,” I said, determined to defend both this so-called “married” man and, more importantly, Whitney herself. “Maybe he's a widower and he’s got two kids to take care of.” My sister looked at me. “Mom!” she said, in a tone that meant: “Are you listening to this? Your son’s a fucking idiot. Would you please set him straight.” But my mother, perhaps reminding herself that art is open to interpretation, wasn’t taking sides. “No, no,” she said. “He could be right. Maybe we’re just looking at it the wrong way.”

The day Whitney looked at me was the day I went to see her in concert. July 30, 1991. The “I’m Your Baby Tonight” tour. She was singing at an amphitheater in Canandaigua, New York, and my friend John had gotten a group of us front row seats. It was a relatively small venue that held about 2,600 seats under the roof. Sitting in the front row, I could easily kick my leg out and hit the stage.

Whitney opened with “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” which, until that time, was the biggest song to hit my Top Ten, having spent three months at number one in the summer of 1987. The entire theater was on its feet, dancing and jumping, a bunch of arms in the air.

My friends, too, were flailing about beside me. But I just sat there. “Come on, Ian! Get up! Dance!” they said. But no. Dancing would have been a distraction. I wanted to simply watch and listen to Whitney Houston, live and in person, right there in front of me, with nothing in the way.

Her voice was stronger and fuller than I imagined it could be. Freed from the constraints of a radio-friendly four minutes, her voice had room to expand. Bending and twisting the notes, she turned the most familiar and overplayed of her songs into something new and, in some cases, better. So I sat there, perfectly still, arms folded, taking it all in. And then she looked at me.

People often look at me and ask, “What’s wrong?” Because my normal, static face makes me look as if something is wrong. I could be in a perfectly good mood or, at the very least, not in a bad mood, and someone will think something is seriously wrong with me. And so, sitting there in the front row, when Whitney Houston looked at me, she saw the one person not on his feet, the one person who wasn’t shouting or dancing or singing along. She saw someone just sitting there. And she must have hated me. If only she had known.

No one loved listening to her more than I. As much as? Perhaps. But more than?

Impossible.