New Houston single is out
Previously unreleased duet with R. Kelly,
Whitney Houston’s legacy is being celebrated this fall with a greatesthits album, a coffee-table book and TV specials, but it’s the just-released duet with R. Kelly, I Look to You, that will immediately remind people why the singer was called “The Voice.”
The song is a new version of the title track of her 2009 album, which its songwriter, Kelly, sang at her funeral in February. Mentor Clive Davis, Sony Music’s chief creative officer, says the previously unused vocals were recorded when she had given up smoking for two weeks while getting dental work done, and the effect on her voice was striking.
“She did two verses and a chorus, and it’s just terribly sad that this incredible, unique treasure is not here anymore,” Davis says. The song will be
included on the 18-track tribute album I Will Always Love You: The Best
of Whitney Houston, out Nov. 13. “I really wanted the public to hear Whitney with her voice intact,” he says. “Tragically, it shows what her voice could have sounded like if, as she had promised me, she was going to give up cigarettes entirely.”
Houston, 48, drowned in a bathtub Feb. 11 in Los Angeles. She had struggled for years with substance abuse.
The hits album will also include the previously unreleased Never Give Up, written by Jermaine Dupri, BryanMichael Cox and Junta Austin.
Also new this fall: photo book Whitney: Tribute to an Icon (Atria, $40), which arrives Nov. 27 and features 130 images, many of them never before published. “You can just see the glow and brilliance of her smile, and you can’t hear the vocals — but you can — because she’s putting everything she has into that moment when she’s being photographed,” says sister-in-law and manager Pat Houston.
The lives of Houston’s family as they cope with their loss will be chronicled in Lifetime’s The Hous
tons: On Our Own, which premieres Oct. 24. Lifetime also will air a special,
Remembering Whitney (Oct. 17), that will feature home videos and interviews with the singer’s family.
On Nov. 5, Home Shopping Network devotes its HSN Live show to Houston. An exclusive pre-order version of the hits album will include a bonus CD of duets with Teddy Pendergrass, Aretha Franklin and others.
“Her legacy is based on what she was able to accomplish,” says Davis, who believes history will treat Houston kindly. “She had the hearts of so many hoping and praying for her.”