You might want to hide the breakables for this post…
It’s time to get our Wednesday hate on and sock it to another completely unworthy song that got played just a little too much on our radios in The Nest’s Top 30 Iconic Songs I Can’t Stand countdown! Can you believe we’re already one third of the way through this series, and ready to enter the Top (or should it be bottom?) 20? It seems like just yesterday me and my assorted helper equines started smashing platters that should never have mattered. Heck, who knows, maybe even Christmas is just around the corner….
#20. “I Will Always Love You” – Whitney Houston
Most people love the music of their high school and college years, and will go to their graves thinking that the chart topping pop stars who rocked their prom were only the very best. That is so not me. The 90’s are my least favorite decade in rock history, which will become increasingly obvious as we get into the upper reaches of this countdown. There are many reasons music began to take a turn for the worse during the elder Bush’s administration… for now, I present Exhibit A:
This was a number one song for 14 weeks in 1992-93. It is the all time best selling single by a female artist. This song came from the soundtrack to the movie The Bodyguard, where Whitney Houston plays the singer while Kevin Costner plays the title role. It becomes very obvious upon listening to this song (especially that horrible, awful, moment at 3:10 when suddenly your life just no longer seems to matter) just why Whitney needed a bodyguard in the first place. The angry village mob who had to endure this alarm clock muzak from hell for months on end was coming at her harder than Bobby Brown in a crack induced rage.
And weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee will alwaaaaays hate yoooooooooooooooooouuuuuuu!!!!!
This song is a prime example of what happens when singers who have a talented voice let their inner diva take over and get this crazy notion that we’d actually want to listen to their eardrum splitting vocal theatrics they can belt out somewhere near the range of the dog whistle in all of their songs. Mariah Carey started this shit, and just about every other female singer with a higher pitched voice than Ma Fratelli decided to try one-upping each other on who can create the most shattered glass in the concert hall. That is NOT singing…. that’s just fucking annoying!
And yes, Whitney, your National Anthem sucked ass too. Not what Francis Scott Key had in mind…
I always thought we had only Whitney and her handlers to blame for this atrocity of a song, but as someone (who knows who they are) clued me into a few years ago, this song is actually one of Dolly Parton’s greatest tits hits. It’s slightly better than the more famous version, if only because Dolly doesn’t feel the need to cause the snow to avalanche off the Smoky Mountains in the final chorus…
Dolly Parton wrote this song forty years ago as a tribute to her professional partner Porter Wagoner, whom she was parting ways with to begin a solo career. Whom exactly Whitney was trying to pay tribute to that made us want to stuff cotton in our ears, we have no idea…
Probably not him…
Come back next Wednesday for another over-ballyhooed song that makes my ears bleed…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Ok, I confess this is actually a member in my iTunes nostalgic folder. A little does go a long way. I guess the heartbreak of the song is such a beautiful voice wasted on a life of tortured pain. Still like the Dolly Parton version with her slow, vocal expression of devotion to a mentor who held his thumb over her progress. As for Bobby Brown, I never figured out part out. No clue and no like. Makes Whitney’s downfall that much more sad. Hmm…now that I’m fully depressed, think I’ll go back to bed and start over. Or rock on to some upbeat 80’s tunes. 🎶
80’s music is the cure-all for what ails you….
Amen.
Confession time… I once out-Whitney’d Whitney singing along to this. Although I don’t think I’ve actually heard it since that occasion.
Of course, you could make it much more bearable if you change the lyrics to “I will always love poo”. 😉
A little more bearable…. but nobody should go around singing about their love of poo that loudly!
I will always be with you for this song…. and after 87 audiences at talent shows where people performed this song the worst way it is really something I can not stand…
Oh man, it’s a karaoke audience’s worst nightmare. About the best you can hope for is it will break the voice of the awful singer…
It is the favourite choice of far too bad female singers who can hardly hold a note … I sometimes wonder why the juries do not attack those singers physically.
I can’t argue with you on this one. The vision of Kevin Costner carrying her off to God knows where is starting to burn into my mind – and not in a good way. But I can forgive him because of “Field of Dreams.” I have to laugh with faithhopechocolate on the lyric changes. And now I’m going to have Dolly Parton songs turning into earworms for the rest of the day. I need either more sleep or more coffee right now.
What a sad cautionary tale Whitney Houston’s life turned out to be. Insanely talented and beautiful woman marries a creepy guy, and gives everything including her looks, her voice, her child, over to drugs. Holy shit.
I don’t even know very many Dolly Parton songs… other than 9 to 5, which I think everyone knows. And that song she did with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream… I like the hip hop song that sampled it better than the original.
Okay, own up….. you did this on purpose, didn’t you?
Signed,
Somebody who knows who they are
I have no idea what I supposedly did on purpose, but I’m happy that you know who you are!
I’m 100% with you on this one and the ear-piercing shrieking of the female artists of the 90’s. Just yesterday my husband told me that one of the area’s three country stations went adult contemporary and that they were playing Whitney Houston when he turned it on. I told him to delete the station from my presets because I will never listen to it again. There are too many overplayed songs that my nerves just can’t take ever hearing again and this is one of them!
Stupid radio stations changing formats! I’ve had that happen for the worse too many times over the past couple decades. I’ll bet radio stations didn’t change out their formats that often back in the day when they still had to play records!
They played it at our wedding. I hated the song even then, but they played it anyway. Oh and Wind Beneath My Wings — even MORE reprehensible. At MY wedding. Horrible.
God, that one is awful too! Most wedding and funeral songs are just horrible… why ruin the occasion or bring everyone even further down?
I wholeheartedly concur.
I never really got into Whitney’s music that much. I don’t remember either daughter being a huge fan. She’s probably got a song or two I may like in hindsight, but I can’t think of any offhand. My god this was overplayed for sure! Not as badly as that flipping Freebird but still.
I like some of Whitney’s early stuff from the 80’s, but absolutely nothing she did in the 90’s. I think every 80’s artist who kept going stunk up the 90’s, a subject I’ll discuss further in a (far off) future countdown post….
I’ll be looking forward to that!
Absolutely NO argument whatsoever on this one. I HATE this song beyond reason. When she blasts that note near the end every air raid siren within 100 miles goes off. Then she tops that with those damn vocal acrobatics that drive me insane. The only thing I can nitpick with you is the chronology of divas. In an ever-increasing level of histrionics, I would trace the over-the-top vocal factor starting with Patti LaBelle (although Aretha Franklin of more recent vintage fell victim to this type of overbaked “singing”, she wasn’t like that in her prime). Anyway, LaBelle begat Whitney, who begat Mariah, who begat the QUEEN of ridiculous oversinging, Christina Aguilera. Truly the worst. Her philosophy is “why use just 3 or 4 notes on a three-syllable word when you can stretch it into 40?” So now every young “diva” from Ariana Grande to the latest contestant on “The Voice” and so on emulates these “singers”..ugh. Getting back to LaBelle, when her name comes up I always recall the time she was part of the big “We Are The World” finale at Live Aid. She was caterwauling at the top of her lungs, hogging one of the microphone stands. The camera panned down the line of performers, and while she was out of camera range, you stopped hearing her–somebody must’ve moved the microphone ..when the camera went back to where she was–no mike. The camera kept moving, and before long, you could hear her blasting away. She had moved to plant herself behind a different microphone! Watching that on TV, I laughed at the same time I was cursing her out.
That’s funny! I picked on Mariah because Whitney wasn’t this annoying before she came along. Plus, Mecca Radio loves to play that one damn Mariah Carey song where she gets so high up there towards the end that it sets off the fire alarm…. so I’m less than enamored with her entirely.
I hate that song. I was never a Whitney fan. The only thing she ever did that I liked was I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and that was early on.
I’m OK with just about everything she did in the 80’s, but everything she did after she wrecked the Anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991 is just unlistenable to me…
Yup! I hate it also! sorry not feeling good, not talkative…
No need to waste words on this garbage!
lol…
Whitney was a sad case all the way around. She had a voice – which she overused and overexposed in a variety of ear-piercing songs all the while battling drugs and her wack husband and THAT is a shame. I got to the point where I thought “if I hear that song one more time my head will explode” just as everyone else did…..then she was gone forever. I’m not a big fan of Dolly either but she did a MUCH better job with that song…….much.
Pam
Well said. The music was lame, but her story was tragic…
Yes, this song blows monkey balls, man. I agree with you 100%…
Wait…agreeing with you feels so, like, unnatural.
Just wait until I run the rest of the 90’s through the blender. You’ll get your chance to call me a douchebag…
Aw, I love it when you taunt me…
ody N biskit; even uz catz a greez….we canna STAND that song…it waz nice…ONCE….knot a trillion timez ~~~~~~~ ♥♥☺☺
LOL, I’m not even sure it was nice once!
I’m with you on this one. It rankles.
Not a soul has stepped forward and admitted they like this one. I am worried…
I rather like this song. Which will come as no surprise as I either rather like or love all the songs you hate. I didn’t know it was a Dolly Parton song, though. I have also discovered that if you start one video before stopping the other you can listen to both simultaneously!
This song is famous for hilariously bringing low aspiring singers at X Factor auditions (I assume you have Simon Cowell in America? All countries seem to have Simon Cowell. Sorry.).
It’s a great song…to ruin by belting it out as loudly and off-key as possible. Karaoke anyone? 😉