Last night, Clive Davis threw a splashy party in London to celebrate the forthcoming release of Whitney Houston’s I Turn To You, which comes out in the States on Sept. 1. According to Billboard, the nine-song preview was marked by Davis telling the crowd, “We didn’t try to fit Whitney Houston into the market…. The copyrights associated with Whitney in the 1980s and ’90s are part of the fabric of music today.” (So sentimental!) The R. Kelly-penned title track would seem to bear out Davis’ assertion—not that I’ve heard Houston’s version of it yet, but there is a preview that Kells gave to an interviewer last year floating around the Internet:





Obviously this is a very rough version (the full track will probably have a gear-change key shift near the end), but it sounds like something that would fit into U Saved Me, if that album had been released at the height of Whitney’s Bodyguard era. And Kelly’s appropriations of Houston’s vocal tics are a nice touch—they make me really want to hear her version of it, actually.


Whitney Houston – New Song [YouTube]
Whitney Houston Premieres New Album In London [Billboard