Céline Dion

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Her Heart Will Go On...

Céline Dion is one of the most popular Canadian singers of all time. Born in 1968 in Quebec, the Canadian province whose majority of populace speak French. Thus, she spent her early years speaking and singing only French. Met her future husband, music manager René Angélil in 1981, who would manage her career for the next 35 years. Made her first foreign-language recording in 1983 (in German) and her first English recording in 1985, then learned English as a second language in the late 1980s (she grew up in a monolingual French-speaking town and no one else in her family speaks English), but has continued to record in French as well and has maintained successful careers in both of Canada's official languages, as well as recording in other languages such as Spanish, Italian and Japanese. She married René in 1994, had three sons and was a happily married woman despite the eyebrow-raising age difference. René Angélil died in January 2016 after a long battle with cancer.

Gained full mainstream attention (as well as a major Hatedom) for her power ballads, particularly "My Heart Will Go On" from the film Titanic. Ironically, even she didn't like that song when she first heard it. She's also done some acting, mostly on television, although she played herself in the 2023 feature film Love Again.

Sadly, also in 2023, she announced to her fans that she was battling a rare autoimmune neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome, the symptoms of which she had first noticed during her Taking Chances tour 15 years earlier. The disease causes intensely painful muscle spasms that render her temporarily unable to sing or even to speak. Nevertheless, she has remained determined to get back in performing shape, and in 2024 began to return slowly to live performances, beginning with the Summer Olympics in Paris, where she sang Edith Piaf's "Hymne a l'amour." That year, she detailed her struggle with the disorder in a documentary titled I Am Celine Dion, which released in June 2024 on Amazon Prime.

Discography:

French-language studio albums

• La voix du bon Dieu (1981)
• Céline Dion chante Noël (1981)
• Tellement j'ai d'amour... (1982)
• Les chemins de ma maison (1983)
• Chants et contes de Noël (1983)
• Mélanie (1984)
• C'est pour toi (1985)
• Incognito (1987)
• Dion chante Plamondon (1991)
• D'eux (1995)
• S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998)
• 1 fille & 4 types (2003)
• D'elles (2007)
• Sans attendre (2012)
• Encore un soir (2016)

English-language studio albums

• Unison (1990)
• Celine Dion (1992)
• The Colour of My Love (1993)
• Falling into You (1996)
• Let's Talk About Love (1997)
• These Are Special Times (1998)
• A New Day Has Come (2002)
• One Heart (2003)
• Miracle (2004)
• Taking Chances (2007)
• Loved Me Back to Life (2013)
• Courage (2019)

Céline Dion provides examples of the following tropes:

• Absolute Cleavage: In her video Then You Look at Me, she wore a low-cut cat-suit.
• All Just a Dream: It's in the title of the first song she ever recorded, Ce n'était qu'un rêve, which literally means "Nothing but a Dream." The song itself is about visiting an enchanted fairyland in a dream and a feeling of happiness that continues even after the dream is over.
• Bilingual Bonus: Some of her French songs have their lyrics re-written in English, although usually only the titles are translated verbatim (for example, Je sais pas became I don't know, and Vole became Fly). On the other hand, some of her French songs are translated covers from English songs (for example, her A Quatre pas D'ici is based on an English song The Land of Make Believe by Bucks Fizz, and Ne me plaignez pas was previously done by Sheena Easton as Please Don't Sympathise). Have a Heart is another example, although in that case she recorded the French translation (Partout je te vois) first. And then she also adapted some of her English songs to even more languages, such as Spanish (All by Myself to Sola Otra Vez) and Japanese (a Japanese version of Be The Man).
• Breakthrough Hit: Depends on the country. Audiences in Quebec have known and loved her since her first single, Ce n'était qu'un rêve, in 1981. In English-speaking Canada, her first hit single was "(If There Was) Any Other Way" (1990), but her first #1 was "If You Asked Me To" (1992). In the U.S., her first single, "Where Does My Heart Beat Now," was a Top 10 hit, but it was "Beauty and the Beast" that truly cemented her as a rising star, though arguably not until "Because You Loved Me" and Falling Into You could she truly be considered in the same league commercially as Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. In the UK, that moment came sooner with The Colour of My Love, which launched "Think Twice," one of the biggest selling singles of all time there.
• Cover Version: So many of her songs are covers.
  • Covered Up: Some of her covers become this trope, such as The Power of Love (from Jennifer Rush), It's All Coming Back to Me Now (from Pandora's Box), All By Myself (from Eric Carmen), Unison (from Junior), I Drove All Night (from Roy Orbison and previously a hit for Cyndi Lauper), and If You Asked Me To (from Patti La Belle).
  • Translated Cover Version: Combined with Bilingual Bonus above, this happens sometimes.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Some of her videos, notably the older ones, are shot this way, such as All by Myself, Je Sais Pas and Water from the Moon.
• Fairytale Wedding Dress
• Her Heart Will Go On: Trope Namer
• Incredibly Long Note: One of the most famous is the last chorus of "My Heart Will Go On". Another is in the final chorus of "All by Myself." And as her early French hit "D'amour ou d'amitie" proves, she's been a master of this trope since she was a kid.
• It Runs in the Family: As Dion loves to point out, everyone in her immediate family either sings or plays an instrument - her first single was even co-written by her own mother, and members of her family have accompanied her in the recording studio. She's also passed her love of music on to her son Rene-Charles, who is pursuing a rap career.
• Keep the Reward: In 1990, she won the Felix (the Quebec music industry's equivalent of the Junos or Grammys) Award for "Best Anglophone Artist" after her debut English-language disc, Unison, became a success. She rejected the award - on live television no less - because she felt she has always been a French artist, not English. This reportedly caused the award name to be changed into "Quebec Artist Achieving Most Success in A Language Other Than French".
  • That Came Out Wrong: This incident also resulted in a minor controversy when Dion, in her rejection speech, said that although she was proud of Unison, she was not an Anglophone and was proud to be Quebecoise. Some took this as a slap in the face to her Anglophone and Allophone (those with neither English nor French as their native tongue) fans and as an insinuation that only French speakers were "true" Quebecers; on the other hand, some Quebec separatists and nationalists praised her remarks for the same reason (for the record, Dion is not a separatist). Through Angelil (who actually called the award an insult and insinuated that Dion was being trolled because she chose to learn and record in English), she issued an apology and clarified that was not what she meant to say. Most fans now chalk it up to just an unfortunate choice of words, and it had no long-term negative effect on her career.
• Let's Duet: "Beauty and the Beast" (with Peabo Bryson) and "When I Fall in Love" (with Clive Griffin) are the most notable examples, but Dion's long list of duet partners includes notables like Stevie Wonder, Barbra Streisand, Ne-Yo, Dan Hill, Andrea Bocelli, Paul Anka, Billy Newton-Davis ("Can't Live With You (Can't Live Without You)," which was Dion's first English-language chart record in Canada), and even Luciano Pavarotti. She's also performed live with Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Carole King and Shania Twain and worked on record with Michael Jackson and Prince, though she didn't specifically duet with them.
• Massive-Numbered Siblings: She is the youngest of fourteen children.
• May-December Romance: René Angélil was 26 years her senior. They first met when she was 12 and their relationship (officially) began 7 years later. It was another 7 years before they were actually married.
  • Aggravated by the use of Lolita (subtitled Trop jeune pour aimer ("Too Young for Love")) as a song title on her album Incognito, released when she was 19.
• Me's A Crowd: She split into copies of herself in her video Et s'il n'en restait qu'une (je serais celle-là) (which translates into And If There Was Only One Woman Left (I Would Be That One))
• Named After Somebody Famous: Sort of. Céline herself is named after the song Céline by Hugues Aufray. Then when she gave birth to her first son, she made a rather self-referential case of this by naming her son René Charles Dion Angélil (well, she is famous). Then when her next twin sons came, she named them Eddy and Nelson, after songwriter Eddy Marnay and Nelson Mandela, respectively.
• Pimped-Out Dress: A couple in her videos.
• Power Ballad: Most of her discography in the 1990s. She became more or less the most prominent power ballad performing after the reigning king of the genre (Michael Bolton) declined in popularity at the end of the decade. Ironically, the first time she toured the U.S. in 1992, it was as Bolton's opening act.
• Pretty in Mink: Wore a white mink jacket over her wedding dress.
  • Wore a white fox wrap (and probably nothing else other than Jewelry) for a magazine shoot; See the page picture.
• Precision F-Strike: The song Perfect Goodbye (on 2019's Courage) featured perhaps the first known instance of Dion uttering an expletive in a song lyric (in English anyway): "This sh*t is perfect/Each second worth it."
• The Rival: Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey were Dion's biggest rivals for chart supremacy during the 1990s especially (although Carey lost some of her pop following late in the decade), with the three together often being referred to as "The Vocal Trinity." For her part, Dion is a fan of both, and it appears she and Mariah are on friendly terms.
• Self-Deprecation: She's really good at taking a joke. When SNL was doing their parodies of her in the wake of the success of Titanic, she found it absolutely hilarious and even invited Ana Gasteyer to do her impression of her at one of her concerts.
• The Show Must Go On: Following her husband's death, Dion recorded a cover of the Queen song of that title, which took on a new meaning in light of her new life situation. Also, she went ahead with a scheduled concert in Miami the night after her mother's death, performing a rendition of "Over the Rainbow" as the show closer rather than her usual "Imagine," as a tribute to her mother.
• Shower Scene: In some videos, but she's never the one showering.
• Singing Against Type: She is so well known for singing ballads (well, one ballad in particular) that it's a strange, but welcome, change when she does something up-tempo. "That's the Way it Is" and "I'm Alive" from the Stuart Little soundtrack were both good examples, as are "Love Can Move Mountains," "Misled," and her covers of "I Drove All Night" and "Unison." Ballads on her more recent English albums, Loved Me Back to Life and Courage, have been more understated (though it's since been revealed that could have been because of the limitations that stiff-person syndrome put on her voice), less orchestrated, and with more electronica and EDM flourishes, due to working with the likes of Adele, Sia, and Lauv. Meanwhile, her French albums, often as praised by critics as her English albums have been savaged, have also often featured more stylistic variety, often delving into rock and even folk/country territory.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: she sings in French with only the barest Québecois accent. When she speaks however, her accent's so thick, a common joke is to say that even the people of Québec have trouble understanding what she says.
• Surprisingly Good English: Which hers is, considering no one else in her family (aside from her sons and her late husband) speaks English and she herself spoke only French until her late teens; she performed and recorded in English and other languages occasionally, but didn't understand the lyrics. She only became fluent after an intensive Berlitz crash course, but thanks to her hard work, she didn't need an interpreter when she went on the Anglophone interview circuit. She still has a pronounced French-Canadian accent when speaking English (less obvious, though still noticeable, when she sings), but when she learned English, she learned it with American pronunciation; thus, you won't hear her say "aboot."
• OOC Is Serious Business: In 2005, she broke down in tears and harshly criticized George W. Bush following the aftermath Hurricane Katrina while on Larry King. Considering she grew up in poverty much like many of the victims of Katrina, can you blame her? She normally stays out of politics, especially about other countries since she’s from Canada, but Katrina and Iraq War really pushed her over the edge.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Dion always loved her mother's trademark specialty dessert, a five-layered chocolate cake with chocolate fondant between the layers and optional ice cream on the side. The cake, now known as the Céline, is on the menu at Nickels, a Montreal-area restaurant chain Dion and Angelil co-founded in the early '90s (so named because Dion says five is her lucky number).
• What Could Have Been: She was originally going to sing “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” before Aerosmith was given the task. Also, she and Michael Bolton were initially considered to record "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, but the job went to Dion's "Beauty and the Beast" duet partner Peabo Bryson and R&B diva Regina Belle.
  • Dion's first English language album was originally planned as a track by track remake of her previous French album Incognito, down to having her sing in English over the same instrumental tracks. After her live performances in English built up positive buzz, CBS was convinced to increase the budget so that Unison would be a fully original work, and in the end it shared only one song in common with Incognito (which Dion re-recorded from scratch).