Houston, therefore, wasn’t the first to use the technique: Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin had all used it as well. It can be heard both in R&B singer Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” from the soundtrack of the early 1980s film “Footloose,” and in “Vision of Love” by in Mariah Carey in the 1990s.
Tem que ser muito cínico pra não creditar que a Whitney veio antes da Mariah
Mariah Carey’s Vision of Love was a notable use. But it was Houston who popularised it and stretched the standards by attaching complicated strings of notes to single syllables.