Still it's enjoyable and I like the metaphor of the lyrics, but the 'la la la la' moment is a bit silly. I thought Whitney gave a strong vocal and did a great job playing the "leading lady" who is addressing the new lady in her man's (7.5): “Beginning with Beethoven's 'Fur Elise' was daring, and the song couldn't measure up.
However, I think it has aged well and it has grown on me. (You know what none of the remixes of this song have? The Für Elise Something (7): “I want to like this way more than I do with these 2 ladies singing it, but it's kind of just… (7): “The intro is campy gold, but the rest of the song is a little too plodding which undercuts the effectiveness of its soapy (7): “Like Whitney's duets with Aretha, Stevie and Mariah, I was a little disappointed with this pairing as I thought these two powerhouse vocalists should have been given something better. Sorry (6.5): “I go back and forth between finding the Für Elise riff cute and and finding it annoying.” Well, I definitely had to play Für Elise, so this one was DOA for me then and now. It was a US Dance #4 for a (6.5): “In my commentary for Greatest Love Of All, I was trying to remember if I ever had to play that on the piano when I was a kid. (Please see the Pumpin' Dolls remix above. Good elements on their own, but no synergy, no (6.5): “Send. Montell Jordan had already released one platinum album and three gold albums by the time Same Script, Different Cast was released, and had just the year before notched up his third US top 5 hit with Get It On Chocolat (3): “No thank you. Same Script, Different Cast wasn't included on Deborah's next album, The Morning After, which didn't materialise until 2002, but the song is some senses much more a Deborah Cox song than a Whitney Houston one - two of the song's three writers were Shep Crawford and Montell Jordan, who also wrote Nobody's Supposed To Be Here, and Deborah appears on backing vocals (alongside Shep Crawford and the song's third writer, Shae Jones) whereas Whitney doesn't. Same Script, Different Cast was released right after Deborah reached her commercial peak with her platinum-selling sophomore album, One Wish, which spawned two top ten Hot 100 hits that were also #1s on the R&B chart, one of which - Nobody's Supposed To Be Here - broke the record for most weeks at #1 on the US R&B chart by spending fourteen weeks in pole position. (It is arguably Beethoven's best-known composition, but it was not actually published until forty years after his death, making it the ultimate posthumous hit!) 25 in A minor by Ludwig von Beethoven, commonly known as Für Elise. The piano line in the song is taken from the beginning of the Bagatelle No. Like The Boy Is Mine, Whitney and Deborah open the song with a spoken intro (omitted from the radio edit) that indicates that they are arranging to meet for the first time - but rather than the two protagonists dating the same man at once, here Whitney plays the ex-girlfriend of the man in question, trying to warn the new girlfriend (Deborah) that he will do the same thing all over again regardless of who he's dating.
Released just a couple of years after Brandy and Monica took The Boy Is Mine to #1 on the Hot 100, Same Script, Different Cast drew comparisons to it in reviews of the time, mostly pointing out that this was a more 'grown-up' take on the format of two women singing about the same man. As some of you on the forum know, I'm a huge fan of Canadian singer Deborah Cox, and where several of Whitney's collaborations have not really lived up to their potential, this one actually does.