Houston began singing at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, as a child and became a background vocalist while in high school. She was one of the first black women to appear on the cover of Seventeen after becoming a teen model in 1981. With the guidance of Arista Records chairman Clive Davis, Houston signed to the label at age 19. Her first two studio albums, Whitney Houston (1985) and Whitney (1987), both peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 and are among the best-selling albums of all time. Hit singles from the albums, including "How Will I Know", "Greatest Love of All" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", established her as a catalyst in the acceptance of black female artists on MTV. Her third studio album, I'm Your Baby Tonight (1990), yielded two Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles, the title track and "All the Man That I Need". Houston's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 received widespread media coverage.
Houston made her acting debut with the romantic thriller film The Bodyguard (1992), which despite its mixed reviews became the tenth highest-grossing film to that date. Its soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and remains the bestselling soundtrack album of all time. It generated multiple hit singles, including "I Have Nothing", "I'm Every Woman" and "I Will Always Love You"; the latter won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, spent a then-record 14 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and became the best-selling single by a woman in music history. Subsequently, she went on to star in the films Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher's Wife (1996), and she recorded their respective soundtracks; the former scored her last Billboard Hot 100 number-one single, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)", while the latter, produced by Houston herself, became the bestselling gospel album of all time. As a film producer, she produced multicultural movies and series such as Cinderella (1997) and The Princess Diaries and The Cheetah Girls.
Houston's first studio album in eight years, My Love Is Your Love (1998), spawned several hit singles, including the title track, "Heartbreak Hotel", "It's Not Right but It's Okay" and the Academy Award-winning Mariah Carey duet "When You Believe". Following the success, she renewed her contract with Arista for $100 million in 2001, one of the biggest recording deals of all time. However, her personal problems began to overshadow her career. Her 2002 studio album, Just Whitney, received mixed reviews, while her drug use and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown received widespread media coverage. After divorcing Brown, Houston returned to the top of the Billboard 200 chart with her final studio album, I Look to You (2009). In February 2012, Houston accidentally drowned in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, with heart disease and cocaine use as contributing factors. News of her death coincided with the 2012 Grammy Awards, which took place the day following her death, and was covered internationally. Her life and career were dramatized in the 2022 biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Her assets amounted to $250 million, earned over a 25-year career.
Full Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Houston
Discography
Whitney Houston (1985)
Whitney (1987)
I'm Your Baby Tonight (1990)
My Love Is Your Love (1998)
Just Whitney (2002)
One Wish: The Holiday Album (2003)
I Look to You (2009)
Didn't We Almost Have It All
Whitney Houston Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The night we almost lost it
Once again we can take the night into tomorrow
Living on feelings
Touching you I feel it all again
Didn't we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
Loving you makes life worth living
Didn't we almost have it all
The night we held on till the morning
You know you'll never love that way again
Didn't we almost have it all
The way you used to touch me felt so fine
We kept our hearts together down the line
A moment in the soul can last forever
Comfort and keep us
Help me bring the feeling back again
Didn't we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Loving you makes life worth living
Didn't we almost have it all
The night we held on till the morning
You know you'll never love that way again
Didn't we almost have it all
Didn't we have the best of times
When love was young and new?
Couldn't we reach inside and find
The world of me and you?
We'll never lose it again
'Cause once you know what love is
You never let it end
Didn't we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Loving you makes life worth living
Didn't we almost have it all
The night we held on till the morning
You know you'll never love that way again
Didn't we almost have it all
Whitney Houston's song "Didn't We Almost Have It All" is a melancholic ballad about losing true love. Listening to this song, one can imagine a couple standing in the rain, holding on to each other, reminiscing their past moments together, and the good times they had. It's a beautiful description of a painful memory, but also serves as a reminder of how beautiful love can be. The line "Once again, we can take the night into tomorrow" symbolizes their willingness to try again and make things work. Through the lyrics, Whitney Houston expresses the idea that a moment shared with a loved one can stay with us forever.
The song's chorus, "Didn't we almost have it all, when love was all we had worth giving?" highlights the importance of love in one's life. Even though the couple has lost what they had, they realize that it was worth the fall. Their love was worth taking the risk, and they wish they could relive those moments again. Furthermore, the lines "You know you'll never love that way again, Didn't we almost have it all?" further emphasize the idea that they may never find a love that is as fulfilling and meaningful as the one they lost.
Line by Line Meaning
Remember when we held on in the rain
We have a memory of holding on tight to each other while it was pouring down with rain outside.
The night we almost lost it
On that night, we were so close to losing what we had.
Once again we can take the night into tomorrow
We have the chance to continue what we had, to keep going for another day.
Living on feelings
We are surviving based solely on our emotions.
Touching you I feel it all again
Whenever I touch you, I feel as if everything we had is coming back to me.
Didn't we almost have it all
We had something great, but we almost lost it all.
When love was all we had worth giving?
Back then, we had nothing that was worth giving besides our love.
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Falling for you was worth going through all the ups and downs of our relationship.
Loving you makes life worth living
Loving you is the one thing that is making everything in life worthwhile.
The night we held on till the morning
That one unforgettable night when we didn't want to let each other go until the sun came up.
You know you'll never love that way again
We both know that we may never find love like what we had with each other again.
The way you used to touch me felt so fine
I loved the way you touched me, it was so perfect and made me feel amazing.
We kept our hearts together down the line
We always stuck together no matter what obstacles came our way.
A moment in the soul can last forever
There are certain moments that will stay with us forever and will be remembered for the rest of our lives.
Comfort and keep us
Those memories of comfort will always stay with us and be a source of strength no matter how tough life gets.
Help me bring the feeling back again
Let us try to bring back those wonderful feelings once again and try to relive those moments together.
Didn't we have the best of times
We had some amazing times together.
When love was young and new?
Those were the days when our love was new and we were discovering each other for the first time.
Couldn't we reach inside and find
What if we could look deep inside ourselves and somehow find the love that we used to have?
The world of me and you?
The world that we created together, just me and you.
We'll never lose it again
We will do everything in our power to never lose the love that we share again.
'Cause once you know what love is
Once we have experienced real love, we will always recognize any other feelings of true love that come our way.
You never let it end
We will never let go of love, and we will always fight for it no matter what.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: MICHAEL MASSER, WILL JENNINGS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind