You Give Good Love - Background

Background

When songwriter/producer Kashif accepted Arista president Clive Davis' invitation to see a New York club performance by a young singer named Whitney Houston that he'd just signed to the label, he was disappointed. Her act was a lounge act and didn't appeal to Kashif. Davis continued to court Kashif sending him a videotape of Houston's performance on The Merv Griffin Show. LaLa, a writer signed to Kashif's music publishing company, sent him a demo of a ballad she had written titled "You Give Good Love." She'd sent it to her idol Roberta Flack first but she was rebuffed by her assistant with an angry "don't call us, we'll call you" retort. When Kashif heard the song, a light bulb came out in his mind that flashed "hit! hit!" Then he called Gerry Griffith, an Arista A&R man, and said that "I think I have a song for you." So Griffith and Houston drove to the New Jersey studio where Kashif was working to check it out. Griffith recalled that there was a demo of the song but LaLa wanted to sing it live with her piano playing. After LaLa finished the song, Griffith said "that's the song – that's what I've been looking for." It was the kind of tune that had the emotion that she could get into and sing her heart out. The release of "You Give Good Love" was designed to give Houston a noticeable position and standing within the black music charts over there. Clive Davis later explained the thinking behind releasing the song as the debut single from the album:

"We wanted to establish her in the black marketplace first, otherwise you can fall between cracks, where Top 40 won't play you and R&B won't consider you their own. We felt that 'You Give Good Love' would be, at the very least, a major black hit, though we didn't think that it would cross over as strongly as it did. When it did cross over with such velocity that gave us great encouragement."