The decline of Whitney Houston's career has run in rough parallel to her marriage to New Edition castoff Bobby Brown — every year, she seems to spend less time on her music. On 1998's My Love Is Your Love, she somehow managed to milk bravado-filled, manic greatness from her firestorm relationship. But Just Whitney lacks any fire whatsoever. Both "Dear John Letter" and "Unashamed" could have been the songs on which Houston bit back with ferocity, but instead she plays it timid. The dance-floor numbers — "Whatchulookinat" and "One of Those Days" — are creaky and unconvincing. Most disappointing is her rendition of the lounge standard "You Light Up My Life." With "I Will Always Love You," Houston showed she could take a classic song and make it all her own; this cover, though, only shows an artist vainly trying to reach for what her future once could have been.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."