Whitney by Whitney Houston

Whitney, Whitney Houston's second album, came out on Arista in June 1987, and it's the sound of a young star deciding not to fix what wasn't broken. Narada Michael Walden and Michael Masser produced most of it, with Kashif and John "Jellybean" Benitez chipping in, and the recipe is the same as her debut: sweeping ballads and love songs, plus a few shots of pure dance-floor sugar.

"I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" is the sugar rush, all bright synths and joyous, lung-busting release, and it won her a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. It was the first of four straight number-one singles from the album, with "Didn't We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" close behind, giving Houston seven consecutive number ones. Whitney was the first album by a woman to enter the Billboard 200 at number one, it stayed there eleven weeks, it earned an Album of the Year nomination, and worldwide sales are put at around 20 million.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.