WHITNEY HOUSTON Comeback album falls short

Whitney Houston used to sound invincible.

Those songs she did as part of “The Bodyguard,” still the best- selling soundtrack in history, may have been about breakups and self-doubt, but they sounded like they came from a woman at the top of the world and at the top of her game. Her booming voice radiated power and elegant confidence, a masterful combination as rare and as stunning as a shooting star.

Obviously, that couldn’t last — she fell back to earth years ago.

The Houston of today — who at age 46 released her first album in seven years Monday, her much-trumpeted “comeback,” “I Look to You” (Arista) — is a shadow of her former self. That’s not a crack about her much-talked-about weight loss or drug abuse. It’s not a veiled jab about her tumultuous divorce from Bobby Brown. It’s, unfortunately, the impression you get from listening to her new album.

“I Look to You” isn’t a bad album — like, say, 2002’s desperate, unfocused “Just Whitney” — but it is neither artistically strong like 1998’s “My Love Is Your Love” nor an outright commercial smash like her early work. It is (gasp!) kind of ordinary.

The title track outlines the problem. Written by R. Kelly, “I Look to You” is the type of pop ballad that should be right in Houston’s wheelhouse, but she kind of fouls it off. Her gifts have always been in phrasing and power, and none of that shows here. Her delivery is pretty but plodding, and though she hits some big notes, they don’t really build to anything or provide any emotional payoff. They are big for big’s sake, seemingly added because that’s what’s expected of her. Instead of inspiration, they deliver an emptiness that doesn’t help the song connect and, as a result, the single didn’t catch on with fans or radio stations, spending only one week at No. 74 before falling off the charts.

The second single, “Million Dollar Bill,” a midtempo dance track with a disco feel written by Alicia Keys and produced by Swizz Beatz, will likely fare better, though it highlights the album’s other problem. Houston is not just another singer. In fact, part of the reason she has been criticized far more intensely through her struggles with drug use and her marital difficulties is because her natural ability is so obvious. When talent is as close as it gets to divine, the public is not patient when it looks like a gift that grand is being squandered.

“Million Dollar Bill” is a good song, but it would have sounded essentially the same coming from any number of singers, from Keri Hilson to Celine Dion. Over the years, Houston has made her songs far more distinctive than this or the equally pleasant Stargate production “Call You Tonight” or her duet with Akon on “Like I Never Left.” The lack of her indelible vocal signature on these songs raises some questions about how strong she really is at the moment.

On “I Look to You,” the glimpses of Houston’s former glory come at unexpected times. Her take on Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” which breezes through the Donny Hathaway version into a club anthem and back again, is a great surprise in the vein of “I’m Every Woman.”

But the song that suggests that Houston’s future will be brighter than her recent past is “Salute,” also written by R. Kelly, which recaptures the street vibe she was cultivating on “My Love Is Your Love” and delivers the kind of verses her fans have been waiting for. She calls herself “a soldier girl” and playfully offers a kiss-off “salute,” as well as quoting LL Cool J’s “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years” line. “Took me all of these years to realize that you don’t belong here,” she sings with a fire that isn’t matched elsewhere on the album. “You say I’ll never do better? Yeah, right. Whatever.”

“Salute” is what Houston sounds like when she’s connected to a song and firing on all cylinders. It’s imaginative and dramatic and, yeah, it has an air of invincibility. It’s also the kind of song that her true “comeback” album will be built around. “I Look to You” isn’t it.