Céline Marie Claudette Dion, CC, OQ, born March 30, 1968), is a Canadian singer. Born to a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec,[4] 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.[5] In 1990, she released the English-language album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.[6]Dion had first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest.[7][8] Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to CBS Records Canada in 1986. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide fame after signing with Epic Records
and releasing several English albums along with additional French
albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music
history.[9][10]
However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a hiatus
from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her
husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer.[10][11]
She returned to the top of pop music in 2002 and signed a three-year
(later extended to almost five years) contract to perform nightly in a
five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.[12][13][14]Dion's music has been influenced by genres ranging from rock and R&B to gospel and classical.
While her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is
renowned for her technically skilled and powerful vocals.[15][16][17] Dion is the best-selling Canadian artist of all time,[18][19] is the second best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan era,[20][21] and is the only female artist to have two singles sell more than a million copies in the UK.[22] In addition, her 1995 album D'eux, is the best-selling French-language album of all time.[23] In 2004, after surpassing 175 million in album sales worldwide, she was presented with the Chopard Diamond Award at the World Music Awards for becoming the best-selling female artist of all time.[24][25] According to Sony Music Entertainment, Dion has sold over 200 million albums worldwide.(26)The youngest of 14 children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay,
both of French-Canadian descent, Celine Dion was raised a Roman
Catholic in a poverty-stricken, but, by her own account, happy home in
Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada.[10][27] 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 [28]).
On the 13th of August 1973, (at the age of five) the young Céline did
her first public appearance at her brother Michel's marriage, and
performed Christine Charbonneau's song [29] Du fil des aiguilles et du coton.[30] Then after 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.[31] 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."[32]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".[5][33] 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.[34] However, American success was yet to come, partly because she was exclusively a Francophone artist.[35] At eighteen, after seeing a Michael Jackson performance, Dion told Angélil that she wanted to be a star like Jackson.[36] Though confident in her talent, Angélil realized that her image needed to be changed in order for her to be marketed worldwide.[27]
Dion receded from the spotlight for a number of months, during which
she underwent dental surgery to improve her appearance, and was sent to
the École Berlitz in 1989 to polish her English.[6]In 1989, during a concert on Incognito Tour, Dion injured her voice. She consulted the otorhinolaryngologist William Gould.[37][38] He gave her an ultimatum: have surgery on her vocal cords, or not utilize them at all for three weeks.[37] Dion chose the latter and underwent a vocal formation with William Riley,[37][38] because, according to Gould and Riley, she "doesn't know singing, she made a bad use of her vocal cords".[37][38]Two years after she had learned English, Dion made her debut into the Anglophone market with Unison (1990), the lead single having originally been recorded by Laura Branigan.[5] She incorporated the help of many established musicians, including Vito Luprano and Canadian producer David Foster.[39] The album was largely influenced by 1980s soft rock music that quickly found a niche within the adult contemporary radio format. Unison also 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".[40] Stephen Erlewine of Allmusic declared it as, "a fine, sophisticated American debut."[41] 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 reach the top-ten 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 AsiaIn 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).[42]
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.[15] "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. Also during this time, Dion released the Francophone album Dion chante Plamondon in 1991. The album consisted mostly of covers, but included 4 new songs, which included "Des mots qui sonnent", "Je danse dans ma tête", "Quelqu'un que j'aime, quelqu'un qui m'aime" and "L'amour existe encore".
It was originally released in Canada and France during the 1991–1992
period, but then got an international release in 1994, the first French
Celine Dion album to do so. "Un garçon pas comme les autres (Ziggy)"
became a smash hit in France, reaching number-two and being certified
gold. In Quebec, the album was certified Gold the day it was released.
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