Take Me Higher

Take Me Higher is the twenty-first studio album by American singer Diana Ross, released on September 5, 1995, by Motown Records. Ross' first regular studio release in four years, following The Force Behind the Power (1991) and the holiday album A Very Special Season (1994), the album features work from urban producers such as G Syier Hawkins Brown, Narada Michael Walden, Mike Mani, Louis Biancaniello, Jon-John and the Babyface protégés, The Boom Brothers. The album peaked at number 10 on the UK Albums Chart and entered the top forty in Austria and Scotland as well as on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Take Me Higher yielded several singles, including the UK hits "Take Me Higher", "Gone" and Ross' dance cover of Gloria Gaynor's disco anthem "I Will Survive" (1978). Photographer Ruven Afanador shot the album cover and the fashion forward video shoot which Ross used for promotional purposes. He also shot the video compilation for the single, "Don't Stop". Critical reception In a retrospective review for AllMusic, editor William Ruhlmann wrote that "combining the work of four separate producers who mostly tried to fit Ross into contemporary dance trends, the album did feature a club hit in the title song, while the ballad "Gone" made the Top 40 in the UK. But Ross herself seemed to have spent more time posing for the many fashion shots in the booklet than singing the pedestrian songs." Vibe critic Elysa Gardner found that Take Me Higher was "mired in excess. There are too many collaborators, too much synthetic production and heavy-handed sentiment [...] the only palpable vision is a firm eye on the middle of the road."