
Exhale (Shoop Shoop)
Babyface hummed a placeholder where the words should go, kept it, and watched the record debut at number one.

Babyface hummed a placeholder where the words should go, kept it, and watched the record debut at number one.

Written first as a breakup ballad until director Mick Jackson asked for a love song, keeping only the title.

Goffin and Masser's song, first recorded by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.; Tom Scott's saxophone, Houston's first number one.

A new jack swing pivot from L.A. Reid and Babyface, and by Reid's account the vocal took one take.

Linda Creed wrote the words while ill with cancer, and died weeks before Houston's version reached number one.

Cut at Encore Studios in 1991, a year before the film, Houston riding a modulation most singers would refuse.

A demo Janet Jackson's camp turned down, which Houston rode to number one over her cousin Dionne Warwick.

Walden thought the demo too country, funked it up, and Houston cut it while shaking off a bronchial infection.

Parton wrote it to leave Porter Wagoner; Houston opened a cappella and held the Hot 100 for fourteen weeks.