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- Whitney Houston's I'm Your Baby Tonight
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Description
Whitney Houston's first two albums, Whitney Houston (1985) and Whitney (1987), propelled her to international fame and produced a record-setting run of seven consecutive No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Yet those triumphs were accompanied by criticism that she had diluted her racial identity to appeal to white audiences. With her third album, 1990's I'm Your Baby Tonight, she confronted those charges by more fully embracing a Black musical lineage.
At a moment when Houston's cultural presence is enjoying a resurgence and critics are reexamining U.S. media's treatment of women celebrities, this book positions I'm Your Baby Tonight as a vital act of self-assertion. The album revealed the racialized pressures often placed on Black crossover artists--and demonstrated how Houston, the superstar beloved as “The Voice,” charted her own path while redefining the terms of pop success.
Table of Contents
I: “Pop's New Queen”
II: “You Got the Magic and I Gotta Have It”
III: “He's All I've Got in This World”
IV: “Show Some Respect for the Love You Receive”
V: “For the Love of Whitney Houston”
Conclusion: “She's Also Making Room for Us”
Product details
| Published | 12 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 152 |
| ISBN | 9798765132630 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Dimensions | 165 x 121 mm |
| Series | 33 1/3 |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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In I'm Your Baby Tonight, Brandon Tensley gives 'R&B Whitney' the respect she deserves and was too long denied. Tensley writes beautifully about the music, the recording industry, the political era, and the miracle of that singular voice and steadfast personality. Most of all, it is a loving tribute to Whitney the performer, Whitney the star who lifted up a chosen family of Black women artists, Whitney who raised money for AIDS research and spoke lovingly of friends lost to the disease at a time when fear was the dominant response, and Whitney who refused to be pushed around and pigeonholed. An utter delight.
June Thomas, author of A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture
ONLINE RESOURCES
Bloomsbury Collections
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