Artist · chart history
Whitney Houston
Solo artist Newark United States
Whitney Houston is an artist from Newark. Whitney Houston has 26 chart appearances on 13 radio countdowns from 8 stations on RockLists, spanning 1987–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, which appears on 8 lists with a best position of #11. The station that charted Whitney Houston most often is WFPK (Louisville, KY), with 10 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1987.
Whitney Houston had the kind of voice that made other singers reconsider their line of work, and the world knew it by the late '80s. Born in Newark in 1963, she was modelling in her teens and signed to Arista Records at 19, and her first two albums, Whitney Houston in 1985 and Whitney in 1987, turned a singer steeped in gospel into pop's heaviest hitter. Whitney carried "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", a burst of synth-pop joy with a vocal that keeps climbing long after anyone else would have run out of air.
I'm Your Baby Tonight, in 1990, pushed her toward a harder, more urban R&B sound, and her take on "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 drew wide acclaim. Then came the movies. The Bodyguard in 1992 put her on screen and gave her "I Will Always Love You", a ballad that starts in a whisper and ends in a thunderclap; its soundtrack won the Grammy for Album of the Year. The Preacher's Wife let her go back to church on record.
My Love Is Your Love followed in 1998, and after rough years she returned to the top with I Look to You in 2009. She drowned accidentally in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub in 2012. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted her in 2020, a fitting nod to the singer everyone simply called "the Voice".
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Whitney Houston on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) | 8 | #11 | – | 1987 | |
| 2 | I Will Always Love You | 8 | #17 | – | – | |
| 3 | Didn't We Almost Have It All | 1 | #84 | – | – | |
| 4 | Exhale | 1 | #156 | – | – | |
| 5 | Saving All My Love for You | 1 | #177 | – | – | |
| 6 | I'm Every Woman | 1 | #420 | – | – | |
| 7 | I'm Your Baby Tonight | 2 | #400 | – | – | |
| 8 | Greatest Love of All | 1 | #307 | – | – | |
| 9 | I Have Nothing | 1 | #346 | – | – | |
| 10 | How Will I Know | 1 | #380 | – | – | |
| 11 | So Emotional | 1 | #473 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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