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| Birth Name(s) : Celine Marie Claudette Dion |
Date of Birth: May 30, 1968 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Rene Angelil |
| Profession:
Musician |
Official Site
Go to the Celine Dion Official Homepage |
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Full Celine Dion Biography
French-Canadian Celine Dion is the youngest of 14 brothers and sisters from a small rural town. She started at age 5 on her route to conquer the world of music and has more than succeeded. Awards, soundtracks, record-breaking album sales, sold-out concerts and benefits all give credit to the talented singer married to her manager.
Hit singles from Celine include the massive chart-breaker "My Heart Will Go On" from the "Titanic" (1997) soundtrack. |
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Additional Celine Dion Biography
Céline Marie Claudette Dion OC, OQ, (born March 30, 1968) is a Canadian singer and occasional songwriter and actress. Born to a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne, Québec, Dion became a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and would-be husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. 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.
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 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 language. This marked the start of her Anglophone music career. According to an episode of VH-1's Behind The Music, she learned English in just three months.
"Beauty and the Beast" was largely influenced by classical music, which became a key feature of Dion's later work.
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Dion kept to her French roots and continued to release many Francophone recordings between each English record. 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. 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.
Falling into You contained outlandish musical effects, as epitomized by the single "I Don't Know."
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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."
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 on December 15, 2007, with tickets for the period after October 2007 having gone on sale from March 1. The A New Day... DVD will be released on 11 December 2007.
Dion has faced considerable criticism from many critics, who state that her music often retreats behind pop and soul conventions, and marked by excessive sentimentality. According to Keith Harris of Rolling Stone magazine, " sentimentality is bombastic and defiant rather than demure and retiring.... stands at the end of the chain of drastic devolution that goes Aretha-Whitney-Mariah. Far from being an aberration, Dion actually stands as a symbol of a certain kind of pop sensibility — bigger is better, too much is never enough, and the riper the emotion the more true." Dion's francophone releases, by contrast, tend to be deeper and more varied than her English releases, and consequently have achieved more credibility.
Despite her success, Dion is often the subject of media ridicule and parody. She is frequently impersonated on shows like MADtv, Saturday Night Live and South Park for her strong accent, as well as her conservative nature and on-stage movements. She is also heavily mocked in her home country of Canada on popular shows Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. However, Dion has stated that she is unaffected by the comments, and has even stated that she is flattered that people take the time to impersonate her. She even invited Ana Gasteyer, who parodied her on SNL, to appear on stage during one of her performances. |
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Celine Dion Quote(s)
| I guess it all depends on your nature. Some people can't stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it, I'm a regular talking machine. It's all or nothing for me. |
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