The Bodyguard Soundtrack Celebrates 30 Years

The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album is a soundtrack album from the film of the same name, released on November 17, 1992. The Bodyguard was praised by music critics for Houston’s vocal performance and its production. The album was a massive global success, hitting number one in eighteen countries and going top ten in dozens of other countries. Five years ago, Legacy Recordings and the Whitney Houston Estate released ” I Wish You Love: More From The Bodyguard” which included a collection of never-before-released live recordings from Houston’s historic The Bodyguard Tour (1993–1995), alternate versions of the audio recordings from The Bodyguard film, and an alternate version of a remix of “I’m Every Woman”. The movie was released 8 days later, November 25th.

Whitney Houston and Clive Davis are the co-executive producers of the album. Whitney wanted to do another song but Kevin Costner convinced her to put her spin on Dolly Parton’s ” I Will Always Love You” and that choice the soundtrack an instant hit with its release on November 3rd.

The first six songs on the Soundtrack are all sung by Whitney Houston namely “I Have Nothing”, “I’m Every Woman”, “Run To You”, “Queen of the Night”, and “Jesus Loves Me”. It was later shared that Whitney was pregnant during the making of the “I Will Always Love You” video but was very apparent by the release of the “I’m Every Woman” video which had cameos by label mates  TLC, Valerie Simpson and Martha Wash who co-wrote the song, her mother Cissy Houston and the original vocalist Chaka Khan.

The Bodyguard debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart and the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart selling 144,500 copies in its first week. In its second week, the album topped both of the charts, with sales of 292,000 units. While the album stayed the summit on the charts, it broke the record for the most one-week sales twice. In its fifth week, it sold 831,000 copies, breaking the old sales record of 770,000 set by Guns N Roses. The following week,  making it the first album to sell over 1 million copies in one week since tracking began. The soundtrack stayed at number one for 20 non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, and spent eight consecutive weeks atop the Top R&B Albums chart, remaining on the charts for a total of 141 weeks and 122 weeks, respectively. The album held the record for the most weeks at number one, and the record for the most non-consecutive chart-topping weeks on the Billboard 200 chart in the Nielsen SoundScan era until 2012 when it was overtaken by Adele’s 21. 

The Bodyguard soundtrack was also ranked #1 in the 1993 Billboard year-end charts, on the Top Billboard 200 Album and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Album. When the soundtrack to The Bodyguard was credited as a Whitney Houston album in Billboard‘s archives, she became the only artist with three albums to remain on top of the Billboard 200 chart for over ten weeks, which is why 30 years later we still celebrate this amazing feat. Whitney and The Bodyguard will forever be in our hearts.