“The Greatest Love of All” was composed by Michael Masser and lyricist Linda Creed. The song was originally recorded and released by George Benson in 1977. Even though Benson’s version has a folk quality to it, the song topped the R&B charts. The song is in the opening credits to The Greatest a biopic about Muhammad Ali.
Benson’s version
Whitney Houston covered the song in 1985, changing the title to simply “Greatest Love of All”, and also topped the charts in the United States, Canada, Australia and other territories.
She was performing the song before becoming a famous singer; Masser and Clive Davis heard her performing it live at a club in New York and immediately signed het to Arista Records. The song ended up on her debut album.
Lyrically, “Greatest Love of All” is one of the best songs ever written. It is about the current generation’s responsibility to teach the younger generation everything they need to know to be successful and learning to love themselves even when there are challenges. The lyrics suggests that a better place, a more loving world can be easily achieved through self-love, which would eliminate many of the social issues taking place today. The most uplifting part of the lyrics are at the end of the second verse where she describes people finding themselves in lonely places, and they can gain strength to get through it by finding themselves in love.
Whitney Houston is known as “The Voice” and she has two poignant versions of the song. There is the single that released for radio and had a music video. The other are her live performances like the one from the 15th Anniversary of Arista Records performance where her voice displayed tenderness, jazz, powerful and soft notes along with a full orchestra that played a slower version of the song that made it all the more fascinating to listen to.
The original version was also produced by Arista Records. Whitney Houston innovated the song by putting a different spin on it. Her inspiration appeared to take a piece of art and develop it in different ways to provide the same messages with a new sound.
“Greatest Love of All” is a fan-favorite. It belongs to the long list of ballads and songs created and performed by Whitney Houston.