BIOGRAPHY:

Celine Marie Claudette Dion is a Canadian singer who became a star in her teens. The performer sings in both her native French and English. Dion is considered the most successful French-speaking musician, and her album D’eux is the world’s best-selling non-English studio recording.

Childhood and youth:

Celine was born in the Canadian province of Quebec, in the town of Charlemagne (now the Montreal area) in a large family. The singer’s parents, Adhémar Dion and Teresa Tangue, had 14 children, of whom the future world star was the youngest.

Interestingly, Celine is distantly related to many North American stars. For example, she has common ancestors with actor Mark Wahlberg, singer Justin Bieber and the queen of pop music Madonna.

Music entered the girl’s life literally from birth. Not only did the family constantly listen to religious gospel songs, but they named Dion after the then fashionable composition Celine from the repertoire of the singer Hugues Ofre.

Celine began performing at the age of five. The first time she performed the song was at the wedding of her older brother Michel, and it was not a funny children’s gift at all, but a full-fledged number.

In the early 70s, Celine’s parents opened a bar in Charlemagne, where their youngest daughter was the main attraction. As a child, the future singer brilliantly imitated popular artists and very soon became a local celebrity, and her mother and father were sure that their child would become a real star in the future. All this also had a downside: due to constant employment in the family business, Dion was very tired, did not get enough sleep, and therefore did mediocre at school and had almost no friends and peers.

When the girl was 12 years old, she wrote her first original composition, Ce n’était qu’un rêve, which, with the help of her brother, ended up with music manager Rene Angelil. The man was so inspired by the voice of the young talent that he mortgaged his house and used all the money to promote the aspiring singer.

Rene promised Celine’s parents that the young star’s career would not affect her education. But at the age of 14, Dion left school without receiving a secondary education: she simply did not have time to study. The girl moved to Montreal, where she lived in the manager’s office, and invited choreographers, makeup artists and a dentist began to make a star out of her. At the age of 16, the young talent performed at the Montreal Olympic Stadium with 65 thousand spectators.

It’s interesting that as a teenager, Celine Dion wanted to imitate the American Michael Jackson, but at the insistence of her manager, she still found her own niche in music. And to conquer English-speaking countries, the girl studied at the Berlitz language school.

By the way, due to the fact that the singer is virtually self-taught, it later turned out that she was using her vocal cords incorrectly. In 1989, there was even a question about ending his career due to a sore throat and loss of voice. During the new tour in support of the new album Incognito, the artist completely lost it. It turned out that she was overloading the ligaments.

Dion was threatened with surgery, but she found another way: she didn’t speak at all for about a month, and then consolidated the achieved result by learning to control her voice. The performer took a sabbatical and learned the art of vocals from William Riley in order to continue to properly load the ligaments.

Music:

Dion’s first professional composition was La voix du bon Dieu, which topped the local charts and turned the young singer into a star in Quebec. A year later, another song, Tellement j’ai d’amour pour toi, sounded not only in Canada, but also in France and Japan. A year later, the artist went on tour with a series of concerts, Les chemins de ma maison tournée.

The singer’s popularity grew. Already in her youth, she received a number of Felix awards, including “Best Performer” and “Discovery of the Year.”

With the hit D’amour ou d’amitié, Celine became the first Canadian to top the French charts. And the victory at Eurovision 1988, where Dion represented Switzerland with the hit song Ne partez pas sans moi, allowed us to say that Central Europe had been conquered. English-speaking countries are next in line.

After completing a course in English, the singer recorded her first English-language album, Unison. The song from this record, Where Does My Heart Beat Now, became a big hit in the United States. They started talking about Dion even more when she, in a duet with Peabo Bryson, performed the lyrical composition Beauty and the Beast, which became the soundtrack to the Walt Disney animated film “Beauty and the Beast.”

The biggest commercial album of the 90s was The Color of My Love. The songs The Power of Love, Think Twice, and later To Love You More were played on radio stations around the world. The next album, Falling into You, gave fans of the Canadian singer new wonderful compositions, and All by Myself and It’s All Coming Back to Me Now entered the category of incorruptible ones.

The collection Let’s Talk About Love, released in 1997, was recorded with the participation of guest stars such as Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti and others. It was this record that included the soundtrack to James Cameron’s Oscar-winning drama Titanic – the ballad My Heart Will Go On , which became Celine’s calling card. This composition brought the singer many awards, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar.

All of Dion’s work, whose style deviates from standard pop music, is permeated with sentimentality and is full of feelings and soulfulness. The main themes of Celine’s songs remained the theme of poverty and awakening spirituality, and after the singer herself had children, the motif of the connection between mother and child was also added to these themes.

Dion published albums in French and English, and with the advent of various Internet services, the singer came to new platforms. So, she runs a channel on YouTube, where both official clips for a number of compositions and simply video messages from the star to fans are posted. The artist is also present on Instagram (the social network is banned in Russia, it belongs to the Meta corporation, which is recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation), on this platform she has a multimillion-dollar audience.

In 2017, Celine began a new concert tour. The artist’s popularity was also reflected in her financial situation: in the same year, Forbes magazine ranked Dion fourth in the ranking of the highest paid singers.

Another bright news of the summer of 2017 was a nude photo shoot for the glossy Vogue magazine, the main character of which was Celine. Fans admitted that such photos even make one forget about the star’s age, although on March 30, 2018, the famous artist celebrated her anniversary – she turned 50 years old.

In 2019, Dion’s 27th studio album, Courage, was released, and the singer went on a world tour of the same name, which started in Quebec. Having taken a break from the tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the artist returned to it in 2021, but then the concert dates were postponed to 2022.

In 2022, the singer intended to continue the Courage World Tour, but already in January she canceled spring concerts in the USA and Canada due to health problems.

In December 2022, the artist addressed fans on her Instagram account with an announcement about the postponement of the planned concerts of the European tour from spring 2023 to 2024, and Celine canceled eight of her summer shows. She admitted that she suffers from a rare neurological disorder that causes spasms, which affects all aspects of daily life. The singer admitted that she sometimes has difficulty walking and cannot fully use her vocal cords.

Personal life:

Celine Dion met her future husband when she was 12 years old and he was already 38. It was the man who made her a global star – manager Rene Angelil. The romantic relationship of the future spouses began, of course, much later – in 1988, and a few years later the engagement was announced.

The singer was afraid that fans would not react well to such a union, but they supported the choice of their favorite, and her personal life did not affect her popularity. Celine and Rene’s wedding took place on December 17, 1994 at Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal. The celebration looked extravagant, and was even broadcast live on Canadian television. The bride’s dress was unanimously considered luxurious, but the headdress went down in the history of wedding fashion as one of the most ridiculous.

For Angélil, this was already the third wedding. Her husband’s firstborn was two months older than Celine. The singer was able to build a good relationship with her stepchildren and really wanted her children.

Dion could not get pregnant for several years and, for the sake of the happiness of motherhood, she underwent two special operations that improved her chances of conceiving. The first son of the Canadian artist was born in 2001 and received the name Rene-Charles Angélil, and nine years later, in October 2010, twin brothers were born within one minute of each other. The parents gave these boys names in honor of famous people – composer Eddie Marne and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

The singer lived happily with her husband until his death in January 2016. René Angélil battled laryngeal cancer for 20 years. He had his first operation to remove the tumor back in 1999. This procedure allowed the man to forget about the disease for a while.

A relapse occurred in 2013. Angélil continued treatment and underwent another operation, but this did not help. The disease confined him to bed. Celine left the stage during this period in order to devote more time to her husband. But in 2015, Rene himself persuaded his wife to resume her musical career and enter into a major contract with a recording studio.

A man died in his home in Las Vegas, surrounded by his loving wife and children. Celine Dion’s mourning was further intensified by the fact that just two days later her brother Daniel died from the same illness. As an epitaph, the singer wrote and performed a new composition, Recovering.

In the summer of 2017, rumors appeared that Dion was again seen in a romantic relationship. The Western press claimed that the singer was unable to start an affair with another man after the death of her beloved husband. And these two news did not contradict each other, because, as sources from the artist’s circle claimed, Celine was dating a woman, her own childhood friend.

In the same year, the media started talking about the singer’s romance with backup dancer Pepe Muñoz, with whom she began collaborating during a tour of France. And in 2019, 50-year-old Celine, accompanied by a 34-year-old gentleman, appeared at Paris Fashion Week. At the same time, the star stated that she and the young Spaniard were connected only by friendship, and finally clarified their relationship by declaring that Pepe is gay.

Celine Dion now:

In July 2023, Celine Dion posted a post on her personal page in which she apologized to fans and announced the complete cancellation of her world tour, which had already been postponed several times. She noted that she considers this decision to be fair to them, because she cannot promise that in the future she will be able to return to the stage.

The singer’s sister explained that the Canadian singer experiences pain every day due to muscle stiffness syndrome. Dion follows the recommendations of specialists, but most of the medications do not bring the expected improvement. Now next to the celebrity are her two sisters, as well as three children.

At the end of the year, Celine’s relative noted with regret that her condition was deteriorating. The singer lost control of her muscles. Despite this, Dion remained optimistic and hoped to return to the stage.

At the beginning of 2024, the singer announced the filming of the documentary film I am: Celine Dion about her rare disease. In the film, Celine wanted to reflect a difficult stage of life, convey her experiences and raise people’s awareness of such a little-known illness. The premiere was planned for June on the Prime Video streaming service.

In February, Celine attended a social event for the first time in a long time. She took the stage at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles to announce one of the winners. A month later, the artist appeared at a hockey match of the Canadian Edmonton Oilers team, for which she supported, and sang several lines from her hits in front of the audience.

Discography:

1981 – La voix du bon Dieu
1990 – Unison
1993 – The Color of My Love
1997 – Let’s Talk About Love
2002 – A New Day Has Come
2007 – D’elles
2007 – Taking Chances
2012 – Sans attendre
2013 — Loved Me Back to Life
2016 — Encore un soir
2019 — Courage

Interesting facts:

• The Canadian singer actively participated in charity events and gave a free performance at the Fields of Abraham in Quebec, joined the concert of tenor Andrea Bocelli in Central Park in New York, etc.
• During her school years, the artist was nicknamed the “Vampire Queen” due to problems with her teeth.
• At the age of five, Celine was hit by a car while running across the road. Dion escaped with a concussion and a phobia that remained for life.
• Celine, along with Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, joined the main cast of the romantic film Love Again (2023). Dion not only recorded the soundtrack for the film, but also worked on it as a co-producer, and Jim Straus became the director and screenwriter.