Most Influential Albums: Day Two

I know part of the reason for this challenge is to show how interesting your tastes are - the more obscure alternative bands you can mention, the better. You won't find any of that here. My tastes lean pretty heavily towards Top 40 and if that makes me shallow, so be it. The main radio station we listened to growing up was KOB out of Albuquerque and that's what they played.

Whitney Houston basically ruled the world for a 10-year-period from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties. Whitney was released in 1987, just before I hit my adolescence, so it's probably the one that had the most impact on me. I was beginning to go to school dances, so it was like, yeah, I also wanna dance with somebody (who loves me). I never had to purchase any of her albums with my own money because my dad was a big Whitney fan and so we had everything. In fact, when she did her post-Gulf War HBO concert, not only did my dad videotape it, but he also figured out a way to copy it onto a cassette tape so that we could listen to it on a car trip.

I suppose my admiration for Whitney led to a later enthusiasm for the early-90s version of Mariah Carey. When she hit the big screen with The Bodyguard and the accompanying "I Will Always Love You" in 1992, I was ALL IN for that, even though I was a junior in high school and should have been listening to Nirvana or Pearl Jam or something. I was just never had the requisite angst for grunge metal. Whitney Houston seemed to be about celebrating and appreciating life, so she was basically the opposite. I just wish her story had a happier ending.