MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE: LIVE
DETROIT FREE PRESS REVIEW - 26 JUNE 1999

Vocal powerhouse tries on new trends

June 26, 1999

BY BRIAN McCOLLUM
FREE PRESS POP MUSIC CRITIC

OK, so she's not exactly Aretha Franklin.

But then, nobody expects Whitney Houston to be a queen of soul, even when she tries her darndest, as she did Friday night at a sold-out Fox Theatre.

In her first Detroit appearance in five years -- the third stop on the tour -- Houston plunged right into the hot material off her latest album, "My Love is Your Love," the slinky, hip-hop-tinged stuff that represents her most ambitiously trendy effort.

There was no doubt, however, that "luxurious" was the key word for the night, which found Houston in a green fur coat that had the star sweating two songs into the set. Soon she was traipsing through five octaves -- and a couple of costume changes -- as she powered her way through the balladry that made her name: songs like "Until You Come Back," whose arrangements left ample room for her vocal pyrotechnics.

Still, you got the impression that her latest creative moves -- revealed again with new, funky tunes like "In My Business" and bass-heavy renditions of "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" -- are less artistic gestures than manifestations of a creative identity crisis. Houston often tried to come off loose, imploring the crowd to get its hands in the air and mocking her diva image by saying she hit the tour trail at long last "because I wanted to."

Indeed, early on, she rarely transmitted the sort of energy that grabs an audience. As the evening moved on, however, she found fires to light, kicking into a sharp "I'm Every Woman" and igniting the theater with gospel tunes, including "I Can Go to the Rock, for which she was joined by Detroit's the Rev. Marvin Winans.