(July 8, 2022) It was a revelation a few years ago when I heard my teenage daughter, who wasn’t born until a decade after the release of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” singing it around the house with aplomb. That song, written by George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam (aka Boy Meets Girl) and produced by Narada Michael Walden, had managed to bridge generations in a way that few of Houston’s countless hits had accomplished.
Now it is 2022, three years after the surprise Kygo remix of Houston’s “Higher Love” became a chart smash, and mixmaster David Solomon has put his imprint on “I Wanna Dance,” giving it a decidedly EDM feel in a new remix that was released today. One fundamental difference between “Higher Love” and this new remix may be that Houston’s original “Higher Love” was largely a hidden vault cut before the Kygo’s bright mix, and so there was little comparison of original to remix. But Solomon is in trickier territory, altering what was a picture perfect, now iconic Walden production, and using relatively by-the-books EDM tricks to turn it into something…err…different.
The mix may find fans among electronic music-heads who either don’t know the original, or find it dated. But for our money, while the Solomon mix is fine, it’s main impact will be to make us flip over to the 1987 original release and enjoy it all over again.
By Chris Rizik
Whitney Houston – “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”
(David Solomon Remix)
