Whitney Houston "I Will Always Love You"

Though I didn’t mention it in the previous post, I suppose a large part of my distaste for requests has everything to do with my 6 years of hosting Request Radio.

Night after night I was asked to play songs that I simply didn’t like.  Pop tunes in the era of N’Sync and Britney Spears and “Mmmm Bop” and “Wannabe” over and over again.

Worse, was that there was always a dedication that went with it.  And often they were just inappropriate.

Now, the bulk of the audience was high school age, so there was just something wrong about being asked to say and play:

“From Matt to Andrea, this song is for you,” and then play Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You.”

Or have a 6th grader ask another kid out by requesting “Nightmare On My Street.”

The one that really drove me nuts was when someone---sometimes a kid and sometimes an adult---would request Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and send out a dedication to their boyfriend or girlfriend saying “I love you so much!”

It was annoying, because “I Will Always Love You” is perhaps one of the greatest break-up songs of all time.  It’s about leaving someone, giving them up and letting them go.

And people kept using it to “say how they really feel” about someone. 

Irony!!!

Worse, if I’d try to explain this to the requester (“You know this is a break-up song, right?”) I’d just come off like I was some kind of prick.  So I gave up offering my helpful, and correct, advice, and just resigned myself to this truth: 

Requests are stupid.


Hear the song on Youtube.