The new Whitney Houston song

Whitney Houston posted a new song called 'Like I Never Left' on her MySpace page yesterday. It's her first piece of new material in five years, and the first track we've heard from the comeback album she's prepping for November, so all things considered it's a bit of an event.

Right, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Is Whitney's comeback tune a blistering statement of intent that proves The Voice never left her? Will it show Leona Lewis who the Queen of Warbled Heartache really is? Will it make us forget about the "crack is whack" thing for, ooh, at least three-and-a-half minutes? Erm... no.

'Like I Never Left' is a bland, unexciting midtempo duet with Akon, who also wrote and produced the track. Houston sounds decent enough, but it's hard to tell how well her pipes have held up because the song's essentially asking a Lamborghini singer to put in a Toyota Yaris vocal performance. She's stuck in third gear throughout.

Clive Davis, the legendary A&R man who's masterminding Houston's comeback, has said her new album won't be concerned with sounding hip. "We're not going to compromise who she is to fit into today's hip-hop radio market," he explained earlier this year. "The public wants Whitney material."

He's not wrong there - just look at the success of last year's Houston compilation, The Ultimate Collection. Sadly, Akon seems to have taken the "classic Whitney" brief rather too literally, smothering 'Like I Never Left' with dull, dated beats and keyboard sounds that were last heard on 'The Greatest Love Of All'.

Nobody's expecting Whitney to compete with Rihanna and Beyoncé in the booty-shaking stakes - let's be honest, she never had much street cred first time around - but is a vaguely contemporary production too much to ask for? She'll need to do better than this if she wants to compete with Mariah again.

What do you think of 'Like I Never Left'? Is it what you were hoping for from Whitney Houston's comeback? Use the space below to have your say.