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I Look to You by Whitney Houston

I Look to You

Release Date: 8/28/2009

Recording Date: 8/2009

Tracks: 11

Length: 00:44:38 Hrs

Label: Arista

Type: CD

Genre/Styles:
Pop/Rock, Urban, Adult Contemporary, Pop, Adult Contemporary R&B

Album Tracks (11)

Song Title
Length
1.
Million Dollar Bill
03:24
2.
Nothin' But Love
03:36
3.
Call You Tonight
04:10
4.
I Look to You
04:27
5.
Like I Never Left
03:51
6.
A Song for You
04:12
7.
I Didn't Know My Own Strength
03:41
8.
Worth It
04:40
9.
For the Lovers
04:14
10.
I Got You
04:13
11.
Salute
04:10

What the Critics Say

It's only been seven years between Just Whitney and 2009's I Look to You, not even Houston's longest time between albums, but it feels much, much longer, her glory days obscured in hazy memories of lost luster chiefly deriving from a bad marriage with Bobby Brown, chronicled in an embarrassing reality show for Bravo in 2004. I Look to You attempts to wash this all away with something of a return to roots -- a celebration of Houston's deep disco beginnings, tempered with a few skyscraping ballads designed to showcase her soaring voice. Houston's rocky decade isn't ignored, but it isn't explored, either: songs allude to Whitney's strength, her willpower as a survivor struggling through some unnamed struggle -- enough for listeners to fill in the blanks, either with their own experience or their imaginings of Houston's life. More than the songs, Whitney's voice tells the tale of her lost decade. The highs are diminished, the sweetness sanded away, leaving her a thick, powerful growl that has an emotional pull not quite like a ravaged latter-day Billie Holiday, but not all that far removed, either; at the very least, Whitney can still sing, knowing when to wring emotion out of a phrase, knowing when not to push for the glory notes that she can no longer hit. This diminished skill set actually serves the showboating showstoppers well, turning them into something that operates on a human scale, injecting them with something approximating warmth, something that the songs quite deliberately avoid. Also, there just aren't that many of them on I Look to You, either. Most of the album splits the difference between burnished neo-disco and modern soul, aware of fashion but not pandering to it. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

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