Clouds

Chaka Khan recorded Clouds for her 1980 Warner Bros. album Naughty, recorded and mixed at Atlantic Studios in New York. Arif Mardin produced and arranged the album, with Lew Hahn engineering and backing vocals on Clouds by Whitney Houston, Cissy Houston, Luther Vandross, Ullanda McCullough, Gwen Guthrie, Raymond Simpson, Arif Mardin and Hamish Stuart. Clouds was one of the main singles from Naughty and became a major R&B and club record, reaching number 10 on Billboard's R&B chart and number 31 on Billboard's dance chart. Written by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, it continued Khan's link with the songwriting team behind I'm Every Woman. Clouds remains a standout Chaka Khan album track from her early solo Warner Bros. period. Its vocal arrangement, featuring a teenage Whitney Houston among the backing singers, has kept the record prominent among soul, disco and dance collectors.