|
|
Céline Marie Claudette Dion Angélil,
OC, OQ, (born March 30, 1968) is a Canadian Grammy and
Juno award winning pop singer and occasional songwriter.
Born to a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne,
Quebec, Dion became a young star in francophone Canada
after her manager and current husband, René Angélil,
mortgaged his home to finance her first record. She
later gained recognition in parts of Europe and Asia
after she won both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song
Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest.
In 1990 Dion made her English language debut with the
anglophone album Unison, published by Epic Records.
During the 1990s, under the guidance of her husband, she
achieved worldwide fame and success with several English
and French records, and ended the decade as one of the
most successful artists in pop music. After releasing
over twenty-five albums during the 1980s and 1990s, Dion
announced in 1999 that she was taking a break from
entertainment in order to start a family and to focus on
her husband/manager, who had been diagnosed with throat
cancer. She returned to the music scene in 2002 with a
more mature, exclusively adult contemporary, sound, but
her album sales suffered a decline, and she signed a
lucrative four-year contract to perform nightly in a
five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars
Palace, Las Vegas.
Dion's music has been influenced by various genres,
which range from pop and rock to gospel and classical,
and while her releases have often been given mixed
critical reception, she is renowned for her technically
skilled and powerful vocals. In 2004, after accumulating
record sales in excess of 175 million, she was presented
with the Chopard Diamond Award from the World Music
Awards show for becoming the Best-selling Female Artist
in the World.
Childhood and early beginnings: The youngest of
fourteen children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse
Tanguay, Celine Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a
poverty-stricken— but happy— home in Charlemagne, a
small town about 30 miles northeast of Montreal. Music
had always been a part of the family, as she grew up
singing with her siblings in her parents' small piano
bar called 'Le Vieux Baril.' From an early age, Dion had
dreamed of being a performer. In a 1994 interview with
People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family
and my home, but I don't regret having lost my
adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a
singer."
At age twelve Dion collaborated with her mother and her
brother Jacques to compose her first song, "Ce N'Était
Qu'un Rêve" ("It Was Only a Dream"). Her
brother Michel sent the recording to music manager René
Angélil, whose name he discovered on the back of a
Ginette Reno album. Angélil was brought to tears by
Dion's voice and decided to make her a star. He
mortgaged his home to fund her first record, "La
Voix du Bon Dieu" (a play on words "The Voice
of God/The Road to God," 1981), which became a
local number-one record and made Dion an instant star in
Quebec. Her popularity spread to other parts of the
world when she competed in the 1982 Yamaha World Popular
Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan, and won the musician's
award for "Top Performer" as well as the gold
medal for "Best Song" with "Tellement
J'Ai d'Amour Pour Toi" ("I Have So Much Love
for You"). By 1983 in addition to becoming the
first Canadian artist to receive a gold record in France
for the single "D'Amour Ou d'Amitié"
("Of Love or of Friendship"), Dion had also
won several Félix awards, including "Best Female
performer" and "Discovery of the year."
Further success in Europe, Asia, and Australia came when
Dion represented Switzerland in the 1988 Eurovision Song
Contest with the song "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi"
("Don't Go Without Me") and won the contest in
Dublin, Ireland. However, American success was yet to
come, partly because she was exclusively a Francophone
artist.
At eighteen, after seeing a Michael Jackson performance,
Dion told Angélil that she wanted to be a star like
Jackson. Though confident in her talent, Angelil
realized that her image needed to be changed in order
for her to be marketed worldwide. Dion withdrew from the
spotlight for a number of months, during which she
underwent a physical makeover. Finally, Dion was sent to
the École Berlitz School in 1989 to polish her English
and interviewing skills. This marked the start of her
Anglophone career.
1990–1992: Career breakthrough: year after she
had learned English, Dion made her debut into the
Anglophone market with Unison (1990). She incorporated
the help of many established musicians, including Vito
Luprano and Canadian producer David Foster. The album
was largely influenced by 1980s soft rock music that was
suited for the adult contemporary radio format. Unison
hit the right notes with critics: Jim Faber of
Entertainment Weekly wrote that Dion's vocals were
"tastefully unadorned," and that she never
attempted to "bring off styles that are beyond
her."Stephen Erlewine of All Music Guide declared
it as "a fine, sophisticated American debut."
Singles from the album included "(If There Was) Any
Other Way," "The Last to Know,"
"Unison," and "Where Does My Heart Beat
Now," a mid-tempo soft-rock ballad which featured
an electric guitar. The latter became her first single
to chart on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, peaking at
number four. The album established Dion as a rising
singer in the United States, and across Continental
Europe and Asia. In 1991, Dion was also a soloist in
"Voices That Care," a tribute to American
troops fighting in Operation Desert Storm.
Dion's real international breakthrough came when she
paired with Peabo Bryson to record the title track to
Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991). The
song captured a musical style that Dion would utilize in
the future: sweeping, classically influenced ballads
with soft instrumentation. Both a critical and
commercial hit, the song became her second U.S. top ten
single, and won the Academy Award for Best Song, and the
Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group
with Vocal. "Beauty and the Beast" was
featured on Dion's 1992 eponymous album, which, like her
debut, had a strong rock influence combined with
elements of soul and classical music. Owing to the
success of the lead-off single and her collaboration
with Foster and Diane Warren, the album was as well
received as Unison. Other singles that achieved moderate
success included "If You Asked Me To" (a cover
of Patti LaBelle's song from the 1989 movie Licence to
Kill) which peaked at number four on the U.S. Billboard
Hot 100, the gospel-tinged "Love Can Move
Mountains," and "Nothing Broken but My
Heart." As with Dion's earlier releases, the album
had an overtone of love.
By 1992 Unison, Céline Dion and media appearances had
propelled Dion to superstardom in North America. She had
achieved one of her main objectives: wedging her way
into the Anglophone market and achieving fame. However,
while she was experiencing rising success in the U.S.,
her French fans in Canada criticized her for neglecting
them. She tried to reconnect with her French fans at the
Felix Awards show, where, after winning "English
Artist of the Year," she openly refused to accept
the award. She asserted that she was — and would
always be— a French, not an English, artist. Apart
from her commercial success, there were also changes in
Dion's personal life, as Angélil, who was twenty-six
years her senior, transited from manager to lover.
However, the relationship was kept a secret as they both
feared that the public would find their relations
inappropriate.
1993–1995: Popularity established: In 1993,
Dion publicly indicated her feelings for her manager by
declaring him "The colour of [her] love" in
the dedication section of her third Anglophone album The
Colour of My Love. However, instead of criticizing their
relationship as Dion had feared, fans embraced the
couple. Eventually, Angélil and Dion married in an
extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994.
As it was dedicated to her manager, the album's motif
focused on love and romance. It became her most
successful record up to that point, selling over six
million copies in the U.S., two million in Canada, and
peaking at number-one in many countries. The album also
spawned Dion's first U.S., Canadian and Australian
number-one single "The Power of Love" (a
remake of Jennifer Rush's 1985 hit), which would become
her signature hit until she reached new career heights
in the late 1990s. Subsequent singles, such as
"When I Fall in Love," a duet with Clive
Griffin, and "Misled" failed to reach the
upper tier of the pop charts in the U.S., but were
moderately successful in Canada. The Colour of My Love
also became Dion's first bona fide hit in Europe, and in
particular the United Kingdom. Both the album and the
single "Think Twice" simultaneously occupied
the top of the British charts for five consecutive
weeks. "Think Twice," which remained at number
one for seven weeks, went on to become the fourth single
by a female artist to sell in excess of one million
copies in the U.K., while the album was eventually
certified five-times platinum for two-million copies
sold.
Dion kept to her French roots and continued to release
many Francophone recordings between each English record:
Dion Chante Plamondon (1991); À l'Olympia (1994), a
live album that was recorded during one of Dion's
concerts at the Olympia Theatre in Paris; and D'eux
(1995 — also known as The French Album in the United
States), which would go on to become the best-selling
French album of all time. As these albums were in
French, the worldwide commercial success was limited.
However, Dion's Francophone fans embraced each release,
and generally, they achieved more credibility than her
Anglophone works.
The mid-1990s was a transitional period for Dion's
musical style, as she slowly moved away from strong rock
influences and transitioned into a more pop and soul
style (though the electric guitar remained a central
part of her music). Her songs began with more delicate
melodies that used softer instrumentations, and built up
to strong climaxes, over which her vocals could be
displayed. This new sound received mixed reviews from
critics, with Arion Berger of Entertainment Weekly
accusing her of preferring vocal acrobatics over
dynamics and embarking on a trend of uninspiring,
"crowd-pleasing ballads." Resultantly, she
earned frequent comparisons to artists such as Whitney
Houston and Mariah Carey. There were also signs that her
work was becoming more clichéd: critically, The Colour
of My Love was not consistent with earlier works.
However, while critical praise declined, Dion's releases
performed increasingly well on the international charts,
and in 1996 she won the World Music Award for
"World’s Best-selling Canadian Female Recording
Artist of the Year" — a title she had earned
twice before. By the mid-1990s, she had established
herself as one of the best-selling artists in the world,
among female performers such as Carey and Houston.
1996–1999: Worldwide commercial success:
Falling into You (1996), Dion's fourth Anglophone album,
presented the singer at the height of her popularity,
and showed a further progression of her music. In an
attempt to reach a wider audience, the album combined
many elements, such as ornate orchestral frills, African
chanting, and outlandish musical effects. Additionally,
instruments like the violin, Spanish guitar, trombone,
the cavaquinho, and saxophone created a new sound. The
singles encompassed a variety of musical styles.
The title track and "River Deep,
Mountain High" (a Tina Turner cover) made prominent
use of percussion instruments; "It's All Coming
Back to Me Now" (a remake of Jim Steinman's song)
and a remake of Eric Carmen's "All by Myself"
kept their soft-rock atmosphere, but were combined with
the classical sound of the piano; and the number-one
single "Because You Loved Me," which was
written by Diane Warren, was a maudlin ballad that
served as the theme to the 1996 film Up Close &
Personal. Falling into You garnered career-best reviews
for Dion. While Dan Leroy wrote that it was not very
different from her previous work, and Stephen Holden of
The New York Times and Natalie Nichols of Los Angeles
Times wrote that the album was formulaic,other critics
such as Chuck Eddy, Erlewine and Daniel Durchholz
lavished the album as "compelling,"
"passionate," "stylish,"
"elegant," and "remarkably
well-crafted." Falling Into You became Dion's most
critically and commercially successful album: it topped
the charts in many countries and became one of the
best-selling albums of all time. It also won Grammy
Awards for Best Pop Album, and the academy's highest
honor Album of the Year. Dion's status on the world
stage was further solidified when she was asked to
perform "The Power of the Dream" at the
opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. In
March 1996 Dion launched the Falling into You Tour in
support of her new album, giving concerts around the
world for over a year.
Dion followed Falling into You with Let's Talk About
Love (1997), which was publicized as its sequel. The
recording process took place in London, New York City,
and Los Angeles, and featured a host of special guests,
such as Barbra Streisand on "Tell Him"; the
Bee Gees on "Immortality"; and world-renowned
tenor Luciano Pavarotti on "I Hate You Then I Love
You." Other musicians included Carole King, Sir
George Martin, and Jamaican singer Diana King, who added
a reggae tinge to "Treat Her Like a Lady." As
the name suggests, the album had the same theme as
Dion's preceding albums—"love." However,
emphasis was also placed on "brotherly love"
with "Where Is the Love" and "Let's Talk
About Love." The most successful single from the
album became the classically influenced ballad "My
Heart Will Go On," which was composed by James
Horner, and produced by Horner and Walter Afanasieff.
Serving as the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film
Titanic, the song topped the charts in many countries
across the world, and has become Dion's signature song.
In support of her album, Dion embarked on the Let's Talk
About Love Tour between 1998 and 1999, which received
mixed reviews.
Dion ended the 1990s with two more successful albums—
the Christmas album, These Are Special Times (1998), and
the compilation album All the Way... A Decade of Song
(1999). On These Are Special Times, Dion had a hand in
writing some of the material. The album was her most
classically influenced yet, with orchestral arrangements
found on virtually every track. "I'm Your
Angel," a duet with R. Kelly, became Dion's fourth
and final U.S. number one single, and another hit single
across the world. All the Way... A Decade of Song drew
together her most successful hits coupled with seven new
songs, including the leadoff single "That's the Way
It Is," a cover of Roberta Flack's "The First
Time Ever I Saw Your Face," and "All the
Way," a duet with Frank Sinatra.
By the end of the 1990s Celine Dion had sold over 100
million albums worldwide, and had won a slew of industry
awards. Her status as one of the biggest divas of
contemporary music was further solidified when she was
asked to perform on VH1's Divas Live special in 1998,
with superstars Aretha Franklin, Gloria Estefan, Shania
Twain, and Mariah Carey. That year she also received two
of the highest honors from her home country:
"Officer of the Order of Canada for Outstanding
Contribution to the World of Contemporary Music"
and "Officer of the National Order of Quebec."
A year later she was inducted into the Canadian
Broadcast Hall of Fame, and was honoured with a star on
Canada's Walk of Fame. She also won the Grammy awards
for "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance" and
the most coveted "Record of the Year" for
"My Heart Will Go On" (the song won four
awards, but two were presented to the songwriters).
Compared to her debut, both the quality and sound of
Dion's music had also changed significantly. The
soft-rock influences on her earlier releases were no
longer prominent; they were replaced by more soul/adult
contemporary styles. However, the theme of
"love" remained in all her releases, and this
led to many critics dismissing her work as banal. In a
scathing review of Let's Talk About Love, Rob O'Connor
wrote:
“ What never ceases to amaze me is how the trite-est,
most cliché-ridden music often takes an assembly-line
of lauded music industry professionals to perfect...
Sinking ships are what I imagine as this tune ["My
Heart Will Go On"] plows onward of four-plus
minutes, and this album feels as if were never to end.
Is it no wonder why I have such fears of going to the
dentist?”
Dion was also criticized for some of her remakes and
duets. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
and "All the Way" were described as disastrous
and "creepy" by Allison Stewart of The Chicago
Tribune and Erlwine of All Music Guide. Even though she
was still praised for her vocal abilities (Elysa Gardner
of L.A Times called her voice a "technical
marvel,") the much favored vocal restraint heard on
her early releases had also waned, and Steve Dollar, in
reviewing These Are Special Times wrote that Dion was a
"vocal Olympian for whom there ain't no
mountain—or scale—high enough."
2000–2002: Career break: After releasing and
promoting thirteen albums during the 1990s, Dion felt
that she needed to settle down, and announced on her
final album, All the Way... A Decade of Song, that she
had experienced many things and needed to take a step
back and enjoy life. Angélil's diagnosis with throat
cancer also prompted her retire temporarily.[30] While
on break, Dion was unable to escape the spotlight. In
2000, the National Enquirer published a false story
about the singer. Brandishing a picture of Dion and her
husband, the magazine misquoted Dion, printing the
headline, "Céline — 'I'm Pregnant With
Twins!'" Dion later sued the magazine for over
twenty million dollars. The editors of the Enquirer
printed an apology and a full retraction to Dion in the
next issue, and donated money to the American Cancer
Society in honor of Dion and her husband. A year after
the incident, after undergoing fertility treatments,
Dion gave birth to a son, René-Charles Dion Angélil,
on January 25, 2001
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Dion returned
to the music scene and in a televised performance sang
"God Bless America" at the benefit concert
America: A Tribute to Heroes. Chuck Taylor of Billboard
wrote that "the performance... brings to mind what
has made her one of the celebrated vocalists of our
time: the ability to render emotion that shakes the
soul. Affecting, meaningful, and filled with grace, this
is a musical reflection to share with all of us still
searching for ways to cope."
2002–2003: Return to music: Dion's aptly titled
A New Day Has Come, released in March 2002, ended her
two-year break from the music industry. The theme of the
album was "new beginnings," and even though it
did not incorporate many genres, a few dance-pop tunes
("I'm Alive" and "Sorry for Love")
could be found among a throng of adult contemporary
tracks. Shania Twain and Chantal Kreviazuk also appeared
on the album and sang backing vocals. The album
established a more mature side of Dion with the songs
"A New Day Has Come," "Nature Boy"
and "Goodbye's (The Saddest Word)." This
change was as a result of her new-found maternal
responsibilities, because, in her own words,
"becoming a mother makes you a grown-up." A
New Day Has Come restarted her commercial success as it
topped the charts in most countries. The album featured
the title track, "A New Day Has Come," and a
cover of Etta James's "At Last." A CBS
television concert helped to promote the album, during
which Dion performed with Destiny's Child and Brian
McKnight. While the album achieved success, critical
comments suggested that it was "forgettable"
and the lyrics were "lifeless." Both Rob
Sheffield of Rolling Stone magazine, and Ken Tucker of
Entertainment Weekly, stated that Dion's music had not
matured during her break, and classed her music as trite
and mediocre.Sal Cinquemani of Slant magazine called the
album "a lengthy collection of drippy, gooey pop
fluffer-nutter."
Drawing inspiration from personal experiences, Dion
released One Heart (2003), an album that encapsulated
her appreciation for the joys of life. The album largely
consisted of dance music — a deviation from the
soaring, melodramatic ballads, for which she had once
been given mixed reception. Although it achieved
moderate success, One Heart hinted at Dions' inability
to overcome the creative wall that she had hit, and
words such as "predictable" and
"banal" appeared even in the most lenient
reviews. A cover of Roy Orbison's "I Drove All
Night," released to launch her new advertising
campaign with Chrysler, incorporated dance-pop and rock
and roll and was called reminiscent of Cher's 1980s
work. However, it was dismissed as Dion trying to please
her sponsors.
By the mid 2000s Dion's music had changed to the point
where her releases possessed maternal overtones. Miracle
(2004), a multimedia project conceived by Dion and
photographer Anne Geddes, had a theme centering on
babies and motherhood. The album was saturated with
lullabies and other songs of maternal love and
inspiration, the two most popular being covers of Louis
Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and John
Lennon's "Beautiful Boy." The reviews for
Miracle were generally weak: while Charles Taylor of
Billboard magazine wrote that the single "Beautiful
Boy" was "an unexpected gem" and called
Dion "a timeless, enormously versatile
artist," Chuck Arnold of People Magazine labeled
the album as excessively sentimental, while Nancy Miller
of Entertainment Weekly opined that "the whole
earth-mama act is just opportunism."
The Francophone album 1 Fille & 4 Types (1 Girl
& 4 Guys, 2003), fared better than her first two
comebacks, and showed Dion trying to distance herself
from the "diva" image. She recruited
Jean-Jacques Goldman, Gildas Arzel, Eric Benzi, and
Jacques Veneruso, with whom she had previously worked on
two of her best selling French albums S'il Suffisait
d'Aimer and D'eux. Labeled "the album of
pleasure" by Dion herself, the cover showed Dion in
a simple and relaxed manner, contrary to the
choreographed poses usually found on her album covers.
The album achieved relative critical success: reviewer
Stephen Erlwine of "All Music Guide" wrote
that Dion was "getting back to pop basics and
performing at a level unheard in a while."
Though her albums were relatively successful, signs of a
decline began to appear in the poorer critical reception
of The Collector's Series Volume One (2000), A New Day
Has Come (2002), and One Heart (2003). The mass appeal
of Dion's later works had declined due to the nature of
the themes. Her songs received less airplay as radio
became less embracing of balladeers like Dion, Carey and
Houston, and now focused on more up-tempo,
R&B/Hip-hop songs. However, by 2005 Dion had
accumulated sales of over 175 million records, and
received the Chopard Diamond World Music award for
becoming the best-selling female artist in the world.
2003–present: A New Day... Live in Las Vegas:
In early 2002 Dion had announced a three-year, 600-show
contract to appear five nights a week in an
entertainment extravaganza, A New Day..., at Caesars
Palace, Las Vegas. This move was seen as "one of
the smartest business decisions in years by any major
recording artist" given the relatively poor
performance of her current releases.She conceived the
idea for the show after seeing O by Dragone early in her
break from recording, and began on March 25, 2003, in a
4000-seat arena designed for her show. The show, put
together by Franco Dragone, is a combination of dance,
music, and visual effects. It includes Dion performing
her biggest hits against an array of dancers and special
effects.
Reviewer Mike Weatherford felt that, at first, Dion was
not as relaxed as she should be, and at times, it was
hard to find the singer among the excessive stage
ornamentations and dancers. However, he noted that the
show has become more enjoyable, due to Dion's improved
stage-presence and simpler costumes.The show has also
been well-received by audiences, despite the complaints
of expensive tickets; the show has sold out almost every
night since its 2003 opening. According to Pollstar,
Dion had sold 322,000 tickets and grossed US$43.9
million in the first half of 2005, and by July 2005, she
had sold out 315 out of 384 shows. By the end of 2005,
Dion grossed over US$76 million, placing sixth on
Billboard's Money Makers list for 2005. A New Day... was
the 6th biggest selling tour in America in 2006. Because
of the show's success, Dion's contract was extended into
2007 for an undisclosed sum. On January 5, 2007 it was
announced that the show would be ending in December
2007, with tickets for the period after October 2007
going on sale from March 1.
In 2005, Dion released her first comprehensive greatest
hits album in French, On Ne Change Pas, which features
three new songs, including a duet with Il Divo called
"I Believe in You". In February 2007, Dion
made her latest contribution to a tribute album, the
song "I Knew I Loved You" (based on a theme
from Once Upon a Time in America), the centerpiece track
on the CD We All Love Ennio Morricone. She went on to
perform this song at the 2007 Academy Awards to honor
Ennio Morricone.
Dion's next French language album D'Elles, released on
May 21, 2007, shot to the top of the Canadian album
charts, selling 72,000 copies in its first week, making
it the biggest debut of the year, according to data
compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. It marked her tenth No. 1
album in the SoundScan era, and her eighth to debut at
the top position. In Canada, the album has been
certified 2x platinum and within first week has already
shipped half a million units worldwide. D'Elles reached
also No. 1 in France and Belgium. The first single
"Et S'il N'en Restait Qu'une (Je Serais Celle-là)"
debuted at the top of the French singles chart a month
earlier. Dion is also working on a new English album to
be released in October 2007. |
Snoron Celebrities and Models Wallpapers 
