Houston Soars on Charts With ‘Love’

Holiday shoppers last week bought 443,000 copies of Whitney Houston’s single, “I Will Always Love You,” and 575,000 copies of her “Bodyguard” soundtrack album, which means the singer-actress will keep a firm grip on the No. 1 position of both the nation’s pop single and album sales charts when Billboard magazine hits the newsstands Saturday. The sales make Houston’s single the highest weekly seller since Billboard switched to a computerized sales tabulation system in 1991.

Sales of “The Bodyguard” album nearly tripled the closest competitor’s--Amy Grant’s “Home for Christmas”--in a week when almost 18 million albums were sold by U.S. retailers.