BOSTON -- Brock Holt debated between two walk-up songs, both by Whitney Houston: "I Will Always Love You" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."

He chose "I Will Always Love You" and it blared over the Fenway Park speakers for the first time with one out in the eighth inning here today.

"It worked. It worked. It got us going," Holt said.

Holt flied out, but a two-out, six-run rally then ensued. The Red Sox turned a 7-2 deficit into an 8-7 victory over the Rays. Boston posted its eighth straight victory.

"I heard him say something about it (as his warm-up song) but I didn't really know he was going to stick with it," Mitch Moreland said. "So that was great."

Moreland was on deck when Whitney blared throughout Fenway.

"I know what the reaction was in the stadium," Moreland said. "So that really set the tone to get the inning going right there. It was pretty cool."

Holt said he thinks he even saw Rays reliever Matt Andriese laugh.

"I think that's kind of what got us going in that inning with Whitney," Holt joked. "No, I wanted something that kind of everybody could relate to and so why not Whitney? I was a little nervous there for it to play in the situation that we were in.

"I think they might have turned the volume up because I felt like it was a lot louder than everybody else's walk-up song. ... But the crowd seemed to love it. So I don't know if I'm going to have to keep that or what because it's kind of obnoxious. But it was pretty cool in that moment."

This marked the first time Holt's walk-up music played this season. His only other plate appearance during Boston's opening home series came when he led off the bottom of the eighth inning Saturday. So "Sweet Caroline" led into his first Fenway at-bat of 2018.

He entered today's game during the seventh inning when Xander Bogaerts limped off the field with a left ankle injury.

"I got on a Whitney Houston kick this offseason, just listening to some of her stuff," Holt said.

During the offseason, he also watched "The Bodyguard," the 1992 film starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner.

"I had to watch that because I kept talking about Whitney Houston," Holt said. "My wife said, 'You've got to watch 'The Bodyguard.' So I watched it."