Whitney Houston Almost Snagged Deborah Cox’s Biggest Hit
Whitney Houston had dozens of No. 1 hits throughout her career. The Bodyguard star is one of the most awarded artists of all time, and her catalog proves such. But had Houston taken one more ballad, another No. 1 would have been added to her resume. Instead, her longtime mentor and label head, Clive Davis, gave the record to Deborah Cox. The song became Cox’s biggest single and her signature song.
Montell Jordan wrote “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” with Patti LaBelle in mind
The “This Is How We Do It” singer wasn’t just a singer, he also had great songwriting skills. He co-wrote “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” with a close friend and business partner. The two men wrote the song with Patti LaBelle in mind, even catering the lyrics to LaBelle’s own music and performance style.
“The song was specifically written for Ms. Patti LaBelle, even without her commissioning for the song or her label asking for one, we wrote the record with Patti LaBelle in mind,” Jordan told VLAD TV in an interview. “When it goes to the second verse of that song, she says, ‘This time I swear I’m through / But if only you knew.’ That ‘If only you knew’ was a play on Patti LaBelle’s [song of the same title]…[when she sings] ‘Knowing these tears I’ve cried / this lovely Black butterfly,’ [that was a nod to] when Patti would do the things with her arms.”
Unfortunately, Jordan says LaBelle wasn’t a fan of the song. But he and his writing partner had such faith in the song that they shopped it around to other labels and acts.
Clive Davis wanted the song for Whitney Houston
At some point, the song got into the hands of Davis, who was the head of Arista Records at the time. Davis’ roster was expansive with both legacy and modern artists.
“We went to Clive because Clive was like, ‘Yeah, I can hear Whitney Houston on this record. I can hear Aretha Franklin.’ At that time, Clive had Aretha, he had Faith Evans – through Puff at the time, who had Faith,” Jordan continued. “And so we got all these options, when you say this song can go with Whitney Houston…two years later [after LaBelle turned it down] the song is still sitting around. So when Clive says he’s going to take the record, give it to Whitney…”
But Davis later came back with another proposal. And it was not one that Jordan was sold on.
He was hesitant when Clive Davis mentioned he was giving the song to Deborah Cox instead
Davis wanted to give the song to Cox. She’d had a successful R&B release previously and was prepping her sophomore album. Cox was also signed to Davis. But Jordan didn’t see the vision.
“I’ll be honest with you, when I heard it was going to go to Deborah, I was like, ‘You got Faith you got Whitney, you got all of these [other people]. Come on!’ That was my initial thought because I didn’t know Deborah like that. I didn’t know how timeless, how big her voice was. I knew mostly maybe a dance record or two from her. I didn’t know that she had the capacity,” Jordan admitted.
Once Cox got in the studio, he understood Davis’ decision. The song was released in 1998 as the lead single to her One Wish album. It spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
