Your Baby Tonight" and "It's Not Right But It's Okay". New duets with George Michael and Enrique Iglesias complete a couple of hours of diva-style fun." Steve Jones form USA Today rated the album four stars out of four, commenting that "Whitney: The Greatest Hits [...] puts its subject in context by smartly arranging the material so it's easy to follow Whitney Houston's 15 year progression from ingenue to mature singer. [...] The set does its job well." Billboard called it "quite [a] stellar collection", adding that "timing couldn't be better for this [...] career retrospective." In contrast, according to NME "[t]he timing couldn't be worse. Issuing a double CD of Whitney Houston's finest moments was intended to shore up her rapidly eroding soul diva supremacy against the rising tide of clued-up, modern successors to her throne – Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Kelis." It rated the collection, however, five stars out of five. LA Weekly reviewed the collection negatively, stating that "it's damn near unlistenable. The first of the two discs is the Cool Down side, i.e., the ballads. One track slides too smoothly into the next, with Whitney's voice — so strong, so assured, so boring — anchoring saccharine production and even sappier songwriting. [...] The 'Throw Down' disc is filled with astonishingly bad dance remixes of old hits[.]" According to Ebony, "Whitney: The Greatest Hits reminds listeners of the enormous talent this artist demonstrated on "You Give Good Love", how she has grown, and the fact she has a long career". Sonia Murray from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution graded the album a B+, commenting that "What makes Whitney Houston's first collection of hits great is her. [...] On the first CD there's her masterfully manipulated big pop confections ("I Will Always Love You"), the occasional, really soulful R&B tunes ("Saving All My Love for You") and new radio-ready duets with Whitney-in-training Deborah Cox and Latin smolderer Enrique Iglesias. The second CD of dance remixes is an appropriate nod to an artist who has held sway over so many genres. But without a gospel single from "The Preacher's Wife" soundtrack --- some of her most emotive work --- this isn't Whitney at her best." AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt that the greatest hits album "The Essential Whitney Houston plays much like the bigger package Whitney: The Greatest Hits; even if it has a handful of songs not