Whitney Houston’s Iconic Song From The Bodyguard (1992) is More Powerful Than I Realized

Note: Today’s issue contains a few spoilers for The Bodyguard, which is almost 30 years old now, but even so, I had never seen it as of three days ago. So, if you care about preserving any unknown plot details of this film, you have been warned!

I miss the days of “soundtrack movies.” Where the soundtrack reached beyond the orbit of people who saw the movie and became cultural icons on their own. Nobody buys soundtracks anymore*, and nobody makes movies like this anymore, so I think they’re all but extinct.

The Bodyguard is one such example of a soundtrack movie—the most prominent example, in fact. It’s the best-selling movie soundtrack of all time, and “I Will Always Love You” is not only Whitney Houston’s best-selling single ever, it’s the best selling single of any female artist. Ever! Needless to say, it’s a very good song, no matter which version you prefer.

But the fact that The Bodyguard’s pivotal moment hinges on a cover and not an original song is really interesting to me. And I think it adds an extra layer to this (notably quite messy) film that allows it to ultimately succeed.

We first hear the song in the second act, when Whitney Houston’s character (Rachel) convinces Kevin Costner’s character (Frank) to take her out on a date since he won’t let her leave her property without him anyway. And he, being the easygoing West Virginia football player turned presidential bodyguard** that he is, he takes her to a honky tonk bar with a jukebox full of golden-age country music. When a slow song comes on—the aforementioned “I Will Always Love You”—comes on, Rachel asks Frank to dance, and so they do.

“This is kind of a cowboy song, huh?” she says. “I mean, it’s so depressing. Have you listened to the words?” After thinking about it for a moment, Frank concedes. “It is kind of depressing,” he says. “One of those ‘somebody’s always leaving somebody’ songs.”

But they aren’t dancing to Dolly Parton’s original, which was indeed written as a goodbye to her mentor Porter Wagoner when she pursued a solo career. They’re listening to a cover by John Doe, one of the cofounders of X. We don’t actually hear Dolly’s version in this film.***

If you’ve seen The Bodyguard, you know that Whitney Houston’s version doesn’t come until the very end of the film, solidifying the (almost) final moment before continuing into the credits. (I bet a lot of people over the past 30 years have watched The Bodyguard and wondered to themselves “When’s she gonna sing the damn song?” I admit I was curious about it myself on this first watch.)

That final moment is more than just a way to shoehorn the film’s signature song into the script’s climactic scene, though. For one, we have a gender reversal in the vocalist. When Rachel hears the John Doe version as she’s dancing with Frank, I think she’s hearing it from his voice. Just minutes before, she asks him about his previous relationships, which Frank mostly dismisses while also admitting that, whoever she was, she just didn’t love him anymore. She understands that Frank has loved and lost, and that part of him might hang on to his former flame forever.

With that in mind, it’s even more impactful to hear Whitney’s version at the very end. Rachel isn’t just sad that she’s parting ways with the man she loves—she now understands the sadness that he’s been carrying with him for all these years, and will continue to carry from that day forward. There’s even a bit of a Dolly and Porter dynamic between them, I think.****

But there’s another way to view this final note, I think. One that I like even better. You see, the song begins playing as Rachel runs off her plane for one last embrace with Frank, and it continues into the next shot as we see Rachel performing the song, which then transitions to the final shot of Frank playing bodyguard to someone different. I think it’s reasonable, then, to assume this is all in Frank’s head and Rachel never performs it at all. It’s a song that he already loves, but now, instead of “his own” (John Doe’s) voice, he’ll always hear Rachel singing it, because she’ll always be the one that got away.

If you’ve seen The Bodyguard, and you’re someone that overthinks this stuff the way I do, you probably came to one of those two conclusions already. And while I knew the song was coming, in all its power and glory, I wasn’t prepared for how much it would move me. But maybe it’s just because the Oscar nominations dropped this week and I’ve been thinking about how Best Original Song nominees should be required to appear in the actual film.*****

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks. And God bless Dolly Parton.

*My editor John tells me that the Encanto soundtrack is the #1 album in the country right now. I did not know this because I’m not a dork.

**Frank says at one point in the film that he served both Carter and Reagan. Which is interesting to me, even though the studio probably tacked on a couple Carter years to make Costner’s character less polarizing. (Am I overthinking it? Surely not.)

***There should be more R&B covers of country songs. Remember when All-4-One covered John Michael Montgomery twice in the mid-90s? What a time to be alive.

****Dolly Parton says that she and Porter Wagoner never had an actual romance, but she claims there was “passion,” whatever that means. (My editor John tells me that Porter is said to have been abusive, so there’s also that.)

*****I didn’t even really like Don’t Look Up, but Ariana Grande was snubbed. Absolutely snubbed.

The Bodyguard  is now streaming on HBO Max, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.