Whitney Houston: 'The Ultimate Collection'

Five years before Britney veered towards meltdown, another pop superstar began to teeter at the edges of the emotional abyss. Whitney Houston, a performer who'd stayed serene while selling 170 million albums, scoring seven consecutive US number one hits and belting out the lion's share of history's biggest-selling soundtrack CD, suddenly appeared to lose the plot. She got sacked from the Oscars, lost a fairly shocking amount of weight, and then told US talk show host Diane Sawyer that she made "too much money to ever smoke crack". Crack is whack," Houston surmised, in a move that makes the present day Britney seem remarkably lucid and media-savvy.

In the light of her ongoing personal and professional tumult - Houston's been absent from the charts for four years, now - her label can't be faulted for cutting their losses with a new Best Of collection. Sadly, in slimming down Houston's oeuvre to a single disc of hits, The Ultimate Collection omits several of her best songs. The anthemic 'Step By Step', the elegant, jazz-tinged 'I Learned From The Best' and the searing 'Queen Of The Night' are all missing, their places taken by the grandstanding ballads that made Houston a superstar.

Over the years, these have tended to fall into two categories: the love songs that are as sweet and gooey as a Nigella Lawson pudding ('Saving All My Love For You', 'I Have Nothing', 'Run To You'), and the inane self-empowerment anthems that have recently become AmIdol audition staples ('One Moment In Time', 'Greatest Love Of All'). Too often, these saccharine songs are a waste of Houston's rich, powerful, opulent voice: asking her to bellow lines like "Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be" is like employing Stephen Fry to write a 10,000-word guide to capped rate mortgages. Worse still, ballad-mode Houston has a tendency to scorch when she should be simmering: the way she smothers 'I Will Always Love You' with melismatic vocal showboating is cold, crass and, ultimately, the very antithesis of soul.

Houston's floor-fillers have aged a little more gracefully, although their clunky, thudding drum sounds are as unmistakably eighties as Joan Collins' Dynasty wardrobe. Nevertheless, 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)' remains buoyant and unshakable; 'So Emotional' houses one of Houston’s most persuasive vocal performances, and 'How Will I Know' is so steeped in melody that its verse – yes, its verse - became the basis for LMC vs. U2's 2004 chart-topper 'Take Me To The Clouds Above'.

However, Houston only truly justifies her superstar status on two tunes from 1998's My Love Is Your Love collection, a largely successful attempt at reinventing the increasingly old-fashioned diva for a contemporary audience. Playing the wronged woman over Rodney Jerkins' percolating R&B rhythms on 'It's Not Right But It's Okay', she sounds spectacular, while Wyclef Jean's tender, romantic 'My Love Is Your Love' manages to humanise an artist who's often seemed like a robotic octave-conquering machine. If today's hitmakers can pull off the same trick – rumour has it Houston's currently sharing studio space with Ne-Yo, will.i.am and Akon - that dazzling voice could still realise its true potential.