Welcome Home Heroes with Whitney Houston
Welcome Home Heroes with Whitney Houston is the first ever solo televised concert and video by American singer Whitney Houston.
Released on May 14, 1991, through Arista Records, the video contains Whitney's HBO concert special Welcome Home Heroes with Whitney Houston, which was broadcast live from the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia, on March 31, 1991, Easter Sunday, for 3,500 servicemen and women returning from the Gulf War.[1]
It was released in VHS and Laserdisc on May 14, 1991, and later on DVD in 2002. In 2008, the DVD was re-released in the United States and worldwide with the title A Song for You: Live.
Background[edit]
Houston performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the Super Bowl XXV, on January 27, 1991. Her version of the song was so acclaimed that, on February 12, 1991, it was released as a charity single to raise funds for soldiers and families of those involved in the Persian Gulf War.[2] Following her performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the Super Bowl, Houston decided to carry it over into a concert to honor the troops, their families, and military and government dignitaries of the Gulf War.[3]
The concert was originally scheduled as an HBO special, with Whitney singing for the troops on Easter Sunday. But by the time of the scheduled concert, the war was over and it was billed as a "Welcome Home, Heroes" concert, with Whitney performing in a Virginia naval hangar to welcome home military personnel returning from Iraq.[4] About the event Whitney told The Salina Journal: "I was thinking about doing something else for the fellows over there and I was considering going overseas. Then the war ended and this came up."[5]
Notes
Home media[edit]
The concert was released in VHS and Laserdisc on May 14, 1991, and later on DVD in 2002. In 2008, the DVD was re-released in the United States and worldwide with the title A Song for You: Live.
Only the US VHS/LD have the full clips of the concert, originally broadcast live on HBO, including the opening performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as an encore.
Since 1991, all releases for the concert outside the US, titled Live in Concert (official release) or several other names such as A Song for You: Live and Whitney Houston Live (which were issued by a few minor labels), don't include the above-mentioned performances with an 80-minute running time or less, shorter than the original 96-minute edition.