Celine Dion

Céline Marie Claudette Dion (/seɪlɪn dɪɒn/ (help·info)), OC, OQ (born March 30, 1968) is a Canadian singer, and occasional songwriter and actress.[1][2][3] Born to a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record.[4] In 1990 she released the anglophone album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.[5]
Dion first gained international recognition in the 1980s after she won the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest.[6][7] Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to Sony Records in 1986. With the help of her husband, she achieved worldwide success with several English and French albums, ending the decade as one of the most successful artists in pop music.[8][9] However, in 1999, at the height of her success, Dion announced a temporary retraction from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer.[10][9] She returned to the music scene in 2002 and signed a four-year contract to perform nightly in a five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.[11][12]
Dion's music has been influenced by genres ranging from pop, soul, and rock to gospel and classical, and while her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is renowned for her technically skilled and powerful vocals.[13][14][15] In 2004, after amassing in excess of 175 million in album sales, she was presented with the Chopard Diamond Award from the World Music Awards show for becoming the "Best-selling Female Artist in the World".[16][17] In April 2007 Sony BMG announced that Celine Dion had sold more than 200 million albums worldwide.
Childhood and early beginnings


Dion's performance at the Yamaha World Popular Song Festival won her the gold medal as well as the award for being the top performer.
The youngest of fourteen children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay, Céline Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken but, by her own account, happy home in Charlemagne.[19][9] Music had always been a part of the family (Dion was named after the song "Céline", recorded by French singer Hugues Aufray two years before her birth[20]), 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.[13] 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."[21]
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").[19] Her brother Michel sent the recording to music manager René Angélil, whose name he discovered on the back of a Ginette Reno album.[4] Angélil was moved to tears by Dion's voice, and decided to make her a star.[19] 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").[4] 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".[11][4] 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 by a close margin in Dublin, Ireland.[22] However, American success was yet to come, partly because she was exclusively a Francophone artist.[23]
At eighteen, after seeing a Michael Jackson performance, Dion told Angélil that she wanted to be a star like Jackson.[24] Though confident in her talent, Angélil realized that her image needed to be changed in order for her to be marketed worldwide.[19] Dion receded from the spotlight for a number of months, during which she underwent a physical makeover, and was sent to the École Berlitz School in 1989 to polish her English.[5] This marked the start of her English-language music career.
1990–1992: Career breakthrough
A year after she had learned English, Dion made her debut into the Anglophone market with Unison (1990).[4] She incorporated the help of many established musicians, including Vito Luprano and Canadian producer David Foster.[13] The album was largely influenced by 1980s soft rock music that quickly found a niche within 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".[25] Stephen Erlewine of All Music Guide declared it as, "a fine, sophisticated American debut."[26] 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 made prominent use of the 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 duetted with Peabo Bryson on the title track to Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991).[6] 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.[13] "Beauty and the Beast" was featured on Dion's 1992 self-titled 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.[23] However, while she was experiencing rising success in the U.S., her French fans in Canada criticized her for neglecting them.[27][13] She would later regain her fan base at the Félix Award 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.[28][5] Apart from her commercial success, there were also changes in Dion's personal life, as Angélil, who was twenty-six years her senior, transitioned from manager to lover. However, the relationship was kept a secret as they both feared that the public would find their relations inappropriate.[29]
[edit] 1993–1995: Popularity established
In 1993 Dion announced 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.[13] Eventually, Angélil and Dion married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.
As it was dedicated to her manager, the album's motif focused on love and romance.[30] It became her most successful record up to that point, selling more than 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.[23] 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, eventually became the fourth single by a female artist to sell in excess of one million copies in the U.K.,[31] 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.[32] These included 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.[32] As these albums were in French, the worldwide commercial success was limited. However, Dion's Francophone fans embraced each release,[33] and generally, they achieved more credibility than her Anglophone works.[27]
The mid-1990s was a transitional period for Dion's musical style, as she slowly diverged 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.[34] 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".[35] Resultantly, she earned frequent comparisons to artists such as Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.[36] There were also signs that her work was becoming more clichéd: critically, The Colour of My Love was not consistent with earlier works.[37][30] 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" for the third time. 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.