"My Name Is Not Susan," Whitney Houston (1991)

Part of Whitney's artistic response to getting booed at at the Soul Train Awards.

Peak: #8 on the R&B chart (#20 on the Hot 100)
Streams: 6.4 million

In “Whatta Man,” the all-time classic by Salt-n-Pepa and En Vogue, Spinderella praises her man by saying, “With him I’m never losin’, and he knows that my name is not Susan.” That’s not a random shout-out to Susan Lucci or Susan Powter: It’s a reference to Whitney Houston’s banging New Jack Swing track “My Name Is Not Susan.”

This was the fourth single from I’m Your Baby Tonight, the album Houston made with superstar producers Babyface and L.A. Reid to recapture her R&B fan base. By the end of the 80s, she was one of the biggest stars in the world, but because she sang so many power ballads and poppy dance songs, some Black listeners felt she had abandoned them. Infamously, she got booed at two consecutive Soul Train Awards, which was widely interpreted as the audience saying she wasn’t “authentic” enough. That rejection was small-minded, but in the great irony of pop music, it also led her to make some excellent songs.