The producers of the 2022 biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” are facing a lawsuit for purportedly failing to compensate for the use of over 20 of Houston’s songs in the film.
Reportedly, the lawsuit was filed in New York federal court on Thursday against the media companies behind the Kasi Lemmons-directed film, including Anthem Films and Black Label Media.
Naomi Ackie, the film’s lead, extensively lip-synced to recordings of the late vocalist. The production entities had signed synchronization license agreements for Houston’s hits, such as “The Greatest Love of All,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “I’m Every Woman,” to be used in the film. But more than a year since the film’s release, Sony Music claims they haven’t received payment.
“To date, Anthem has not paid the fees, or any portion of the fees, due under the agreements,” Sony Music lawyer, Christine Lepera of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, wrote in the legal complaint.
Less than two weeks before the movie’s theatrical release, on December 5, 2022, the aforementioned companies supposedly signed a sync license agreement.
“Unlike other types of films, musical biopics by their nature require use of the subject musician’s music, as it is nearly impossible to explain the importance of a musician’s creative genius or unique style and talent without the use of the musician’s music,” Sony Music stated.
“Aware of the need for authorization to use Plaintiffs’ sound recordings in order to produce a biopic about the life and music of Whitney Houston, and aware of the value of plaintiffs’ catalog, Anthem entered into a license agreement.”
Sony claims that upon approaching Anthem about the overdue payment, the company said they were waiting until a tax credit owed by the state of Massachusetts was issued.
However, the delay resulted in “failure to pay the fees to SME.”
Legal representatives for Sony continued, “It is clear that there was no license or authorization to use the SME Recordings used in the film. Nevertheless, the film embodying the SME recordings was, and continues to be, exhibited, distributed, and exploited.”
The lawsuit names Anthem Films, NYBO Productions LLC, Black Label Media and its successor company, WH Movie LLC, as co-defendants.
In a statement to Billboard, Black Label Media said they were “one of many investors in this film” that “should not have been named in the lawsuit, and looks forward to being dismissed from it promptly.”
American singer, actress, and talk show host, Jennifer Hudson, paid a glorious tribute to the late American singer and actress, Whitney Houston at the Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy party, with an outstanding performance of “The Greatest Love of All.”
The crowd collectively roared and clapped in tribute to Whitney Houston—the singer who made the song famous.
Hudson was one of a stellar lineup of performers during Davis’ pre-Grammy party which has been a tradition since 1976. Saturday’s event is the first time the party has happened in person since the pandemic.
In 2012 when Houston passed during Grammy weekend, Hudson performed the late singer’s biggest hit “I Will Always Love You” at the Award’s ceremony. This weekend, the Dream Girls alum was tasked once more to tribute “The Voice.”
More actors attended Davis’ pre-Grammy party than in previous years per Variety. That list included, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Sharon Stone, Adrien Brody, and new mother Paris Hilton. Red carpet regulars Lizzo, Offset and Cardi B, Wiz Khalifa, and Janelle Monae were all present as well.
But there was an eerie silence in the room when Kevin Costner took to the microphone.
“Neither one of us, in the end, could protect your beloved Whitney,” Costner said speaking directly to Davis. Both Houston and Costner famously starred together in the blockbuster film, The Bodyguard.
“But your fingerprints on her life are clean my friend. You were a miracle in her life. Thank you for being her bodyguard, Clive. Everyone in this business has a mom, but not everyone has a Clive,” Costner added.
In I Wanna Dance with Somebody, it was revealed that Costner brought the Dolly Parton hit, “I Will Always Love You” to Davis, who brought it to Houston. To date, it is the best-selling single of all time from a female vocalist.
At 90, Davis told Vanity Fair that he still had things to do, including making sure that I Wanna Dance with Somebody made it to the big screen. In the big-budget biopic, Stanley Tucci plays the iconic music mogul. Davis said the two Zoomed twice. “We’ve become quite friendly.”
Davis signed the singer when she was 19, and though the producer had many iconic moments in the industry, his new-gen claim to fame was the fresh-faced church girl from Newark, N.J. with the musically connected family that included ties to Dionne Warwick (her cousin), and Aretha Franklin (for whom her mother sang background).
Houston was 49 when she was found dead in the tub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. She’d been in rehearsals to perform at Clive’s pre-Grammy party that weekend, but she never made it. Her last public performance was an impromptu rendition of “Jesus Loves Me,” at Kelly Price’s pre-Grammy celebration.
In an interview Davis did on Friday with the official publication for the Grammy’s, he said, “I’m gratified that she was not a one-hit wonder or a passing fad, but she’ll be a permanent influence and inspiration to young artists forever because she was that unique. So it’s been very gratifying.”
The 2023 Grammy Awards is set to take place on Sunday night at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
Stormzyhas said he has made a conscious decision to promote his black peers and predecessors, to combat prejudice in the music industry.
“I’ve always understood I’m the black act. Maybe the token black act,” the superstar British rapper told DJ Trevor Nelson in a one-off BBC special.
“I want to kill that where it stands.”
That’s why, the star explained, he paused his historic Glastonbury Festival set to read a list of 52 rappers who influenced him.
It also prompted him to populate the video for his recent single, Mel Made Me Do It, with musicians Little Simz, Dave and Gabrielle; sports legends Usain Bolt, Ian Wright and Dina Asher-Smith; and the author Malorie Blackman.
“There’s always been this stigma of, ‘let one through’,” he said. “There’s one black [man], one black woman at a time. That needs to die.
“So that’s why when I get Glasto, when I do Mel Made Me Do It, it’s like, ‘This is us… We stand on your shoulders.’
“I didn’t just pop out of the blue and break the matrix.”
Stormzy
Stormzy is also supporting new generations of black talent through his Merky foundation, which offers scholarships to Cambridge University; and Merky FC, which aims to improve diversity among football managers, coaches and other behind-the-scenes roles.
The 45-minute BBC special saw Stormzy perform a mix of classic hits and new songs, and sit down for a candid interview with Nelson about his origins, his rise to fame and why headlining Glastonbury had calmed his inner demons.
“It gave me such a peace in terms of knowing, all right, if it all falls [apart], you’ve done it. Now you can walk with your head high.”
The musician said the performance had given him the confidence to pursue a more soulful, spiritual direction on his new album This Is What I Mean.
He cited Stevie Wonder, Frank Ocean and Lauryn Hill among the record’s influences – but reserved his highest praise for Whitney Houston, who he named the “greatest of all time”.
“I’ve got a lot of GOATs, but Whitney is my GOAT GOAT,” he said.
“If I leave here and I get in my car and I listen to Whitney, I’m thinking, you’ve done something that’s intangible.
“You haven’t put your hand on my back, you haven’t shaken my hand, you haven’t given me a hug – but you have just hit me in my soul.”
Stormzy also talked about his long-standing friendship with fellow Londoner Adele.
“I’m a genuine fan,” he told Nelson. “She’s blessed with a gift of a stunning, beautiful, moving voice and a phenomenal pen. And her ability to marry what she’s gone through, her experiences, her feelings, with art and melody, is second to none.”
However, he said he had never considered asking her to appear on one of his records.
“Our friendship ain’t based off [that]. That’s never the conversation.
“Anyone who does music that is my real-life friend… Adele, Ed [Sheeran], Dave, Chris Martin, it’s never off that basis. I’ll be fine to never make music with any of them.
“However, if I could get a hook…!” he joked, before adding: “But no, I never, I never.”
Whitney Houston’s recording of I Will Always Love You wasn’t just a hit, but an unstoppable cultural phenomenon. Released in November 1992 as the lead single from The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 consecutive weeks – then a record – and won two Grammy awards.
Thirty years after it came out, it remains the best-selling single of all time by a female artist. The Bodyguard’s soundtrack album, which reeled off four further hits from Houston including I’m Every Woman and I Have Nothing, went on to sell 45 million copies worldwide.
Famously, I Will Always Love You was originally written and recorded in 1973 by Dolly Parton, who conceived it as a tribute and farewell to her early mentor Porter Wagoner. Parton’s lovely, understated version was a number one hit on the US Hot Country Songs chart, but she has always been gracious about the way Houston transformed the song into the ultimate power ballad.
Recalling the first time she heard Houston’s cover, Parton said in 2020: “It was one of the most overwhelming feelings I have ever had to hear it done so well, so beautifully and so big. I had no idea I’d written a song that could be that important… She just took it and made it so much more than what it would ever have been.”
As well as providing songs for The Bodyguard’s soundtrack album, Houston starred in the 1992 film – it was her acting debut (Credit: Alamy)
Houston’s interpretation of the song captivated the world because it mixes bewildering technical brilliance with a heartfelt reading of Parton’s tender lyrics. From the moment she sings “so I’ll go, but I know I’ll think of you every step of the way”, it’s clear Houston is giving a vocal performance of rare quality. “Whitney knew how to use the full range in her voice to fully connect emotionally with the song and create such drama,” Dami Im, a Korean-Australian singer-songwriter who has been influenced by Houston, tells BBC Culture.
Vocal coach Yvie Burnett believes I Will Always Love You is a “masterpiece” because of the “outstanding combination of what Whitney does vocally combined with perfect production from David Foster”, a music industry veteran who had previously worked with Celine Dion and Aretha Franklin.
Houston’s restraint during the song’s a cappella opening section is a vital ingredient. “Whitney starts the song holding back all her vocal abilities and relying on raw emotion,” Burnett tells BBC Culture. “Then when the music kicks in, she maintains that ethereal vocal quality, hitting the higher notes perfectly while staying quiet and holding back her vocal strength.” She believes this “incredible build-up” makes Houston’s subsequent vocal fireworks at the song’s climax even more moving. “Either she is an incredible actress,” Burnett adds, “or she has experienced these feelings in real life. In which case, she is telling us her story”.
Either way, Burnett describes Houston’s rendition of I Will Always Love You as “one of the most important vocal performances of our generation”. This is no exaggeration: along with Mariah Carey’s Hero and Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, it set a template – and a very high bar – for many female singers who sought to break through on the popular TV talent shows of the early 2000s. Leona Lewis, who scored a transatlantic number one hit with Bleeding Love in 2007, a year after winning the British version of The X Factor, said at the time: “When I was growing up, I used to listen to Whitney Houston [and] Mariah Carey – those kind of big powerful kind of singers – so that influences my music and a lot of the songs I like to sing.”
Houston’s success wasn’t fleeting; she influenced the next generation of singers (Credit: Getty Images)
In fact, it could be argued that Houston’s vocal performance was, at times, a little too influential. Vocal coaches Carrie and David Grant, who worked with contestants on the British talent shows Pop Idol and Fame Academy, as well as with artists including Demi Lovato and the Spice Girls, say that Houston’s most famous songs became a gold standard that was rarely attainable. “Just about every singer we taught or auditioned for about five years wanted to master I Will Always Love You or The Greatest Love of All or I Have Nothing,” Carrie Grant tells BBC Culture. “Most of [them] should have tried something a little easier – many a singer has been wiped out in an attempt to do Whitney!”
David Grant believes that Houston’s influence “cannot be underestimated” because “for most female singers, she was the voice of her generation”. Though she became known mainly for singing pop, soul and R&B music, Grant points out that you could always hear her “gospel roots” in her delivery. The daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, a longtime backing vocalist for Aretha Houston as well as a Grammy-winning artist in her own right, Whitney honed her vocal skills in the gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. “Even if they had the [vocal] riffs, many who followed her could not mirror this history,” Grant tells BBC Culture.
Bringing R&B to the mainstream
I Will Always Love You remains Houston’s best-selling single, but she had already enjoyed seven years of globe-conquering success by the time she released it. Between 1985 and 1987, she scored a record seven consecutive Billboard Hot 100 number ones with songs including Saving All My Love for You, I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) and So Emotional. “Whitney was the standard bearer in a line of great R&B singers, from the ’60s with Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin, into the ’70s with Gladys Knight and Patti Labelle,” says David Grant. “But what she did was to take R&B to a market bigger than any of them had experienced. Without Whitney, there would arguably have been no mass market for Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé or Jennifer Hudson.”
Houston’s crossover success as an artist who could sing pop, soul, rock, R&B and dance music was unprecedented at the time, but not necessarily popular in all quarters. She was reportedly booed by audience members at the 1989 Soul Train Awards, a ceremony recognising the best in soul, R&B and hip-hop music. Houston addressed this incredibly awkward moment in a 1991 interview on The Arsenio Hall Show, saying: “I think that I’ve got a lot of flak about ‘I sing too white’ or ‘I sing… white’ or something like that.” She added defiantly: “I do sing the way God intended for me to sing and I’m using what he gave me and I’m using it to the best of my ability.”
Nicknamed ‘The Voice’, Houston is one of the bestselling music artists of all time (Credit: Getty Images)
For the most part, these criticisms ebbed away in subsequent decades as the full scale of her impact became clear. After Houston’s death in February 2012, Beyoncé posted a poignant tribute to the artist who had long inspired her. “I, like every singer, always wanted to be just like her. Her voice was perfect. Strong but soothing. Soulful and classic,” she wrote. “She is our queen and she opened doors and provided a blueprint for all of us.” At the previous year’s Grammy Awards, Lady Gaga namechecked Houston when she collected the Best Pop Vocal Album trophy. “I need to say thank you tonight to Whitney Houston,” Gaga said. “I wanted to thank Whitney because when I wrote Born This Way, I imagined she was singing it – because I wasn’t secure enough in myself to imagine I was a superstar.”
More than a decade after her death, Houston’s place in music history is assured. In December, Bafta-winning actress Naomi Ackie will portray her in I Wanna Dance with Somebody, a glossy Hollywood biopic in the mould of Elton John’s Rocketman and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. But at the same time, the type of powerhouse singing that she exemplified with I Will Always Love You has rather fallen out of fashion. “The definition of ‘singer’ has become broader,” says David Grant. “For a while, if you couldn’t sing as high or riff as fast as Whitney or Mariah, you didn’t qualify for the title of ‘great singer’. But vocal styles go in cycles, and in this cycle singers are more likely to sound like Rihanna or Amy Winehouse.”
Carrie Grant argues that the growing popularity of Auto-Tune, a production tool that corrects minor imperfections in vocal pitch, means that having “great tonal quality” is no longer a prerequisite for singers hoping to climb the charts. She also points out that bombastic power ballads like I Will Always Love You are no longer in vogue. “Few songs written now have those ‘money moments’ in them, so big voices aren’t required,” she says. “Torch singers do still exist – Adele, for example – but the sound isn’t required to be as smooth or technically perfect.”
Still, there’s no doubt that Houston’s work on hits including I Will Always Love You remains inspirational. “She raised the bar for all female vocalists with her use of range and dynamics,” says Dami Im. “She’s shown me that vocally you can be both so delicate and gentle and also extremely powerful when you need to be.” It’s fair to say that 30 years after its release, Houston’s rendition of I Will Always Love You remains the Olympic gold standard of performances.
Fresh off her career-making performance in Jordan Peele’s latest film Nope, Keke Palmer is launching a digital platform for creators to thrive and learn.
Palmer took to Instagram on Friday to announce the news, sharing a video in which she explained what her new network KeyTV would be about.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, but this is what I’m most proud of,” she captioned the clip. “Y’all always say I keep a job, now I’m making sure we ALL got one. Sharing the keys to the culture is my greatest gift – this is for you & for us, from me.”
“Most importantly, I learned how to be a collaborator and I want to share everything I learned with you,” Palmer continued. “Because this is my greatest dream of all. All it takes is one of us to unlock a door to unlock a million doors for each other. I’m so excited to introduce you guys to KeyTV, where our stories matter and where we are representing as the keys to the culture.”
After starring in Nope, Palmer has bigger roles on her radar. When a fan tweeted, “Keke Palmer and Whitney Houston act exactly the same” on Whitney Houston’s birthday in August, Palmer responded, writing, “Let’s get the movie made y’all. I’m ready to ACK, we abt to weep in the theaters.”
Check out Keke’s tweet below, and read Complex’s Karla Rodriguez wax poetic about Palmer’s performance in Nopehere.
