Table of contents for Celine Dion in Celine Dion

Celine Dion exists in a long line of divas, but there is something truly otherworldly about the way she delivers a seemingly endless cascade of emotion every time she steps to a microphone. She has been capturing hearts and breaking records since she was a teen, first striking gold as a wunderkind in her native Canada and then rocketing to global superstardom with hits such as “The Power of Love,” “All By Myself,” and “My Heart Will Go On,” the musical centerpiece of Titanic, one of the most successful films of all time. Indeed, Dion has been such a consistent force in pop music for so long and was declared a legend so early that it has become easy to take her for granted. But her career has not been…

ON THE STRENGTH OF HER OBVIOUS TALENT and drive to excel, Celine Dion likely would have become a singing superstar no matter what. But without the support and inspiration of manager René Angélil, her life might not have been as sweet. Angélil was born in Montreal in 1942 and grew up loving pop music. He began his career when he was 19 years old as the singer for a group called Les Baronets, which he formed alongside two childhood friends. Throughout the 1960s, the group scored a handful of minor hits in Canada’s French-language market, largely via translations of tracks that had already become big in the English-speaking world, including Francophone versions of several Beatles tunes. Les Baronets called it quits in 1972, at which point Angélil teamed up with…

BY THE TIME TITANIC ARRIVED IN theaters during the 1997 holiday season, Celine Dion was already a massive superstar with two huge hits tied to movies. But nothing could prepare the entertainment world for the sheer magnitude of the success of James Cameron’s romantic historical disaster movie, and Dion was a key ingredient in helping Titanic rule the world. The song spent two weeks atop the Hot 100 and afforded Dion another show-stopping performance at the Oscars—but the journey began with an animated movie called An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. Just as the first An American Tail film had in 1986, its 1991 sequel featured a soundtrack composed by James Horner, who had already scored a handful of Oscar nods for his work on Aliens and Field of Dreams,…

FOR ALL THE SMASH SINGLES AND ICONIC performances, all the videos and awards, all the triumph and tragedy, it’s possible Celine Dion’s biggest legacy lies in the middle of the Nevada desert. Her first residency, A New Day…, which opened at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in 2003, was originally a matter of practicality: She had recently released her comeback album, A New Day Has Come, after taking a nearly two-year sabbatical, but she had a new baby at home and didn’t want to disrupt her life as a parent. Ever since Elvis Presley’s late-career stint at the Las Vegas Hilton, most in the entertainment business perceived Sin City as a place to go once an artist was past the peak of his or her career. Dion was different. Here…

THE TOWN OF CHARLEMAGNE SITS PERCHED ON THE banks of the Rivière des Prairies, only a handful of miles from Montreal. Though it is named after the first Holy Roman Emperor, its eternal claim to fame is as the birthplace of Celine Marie Claudette Dion, who was welcomed by her parents, Adhémar and Thérèse Dion, on March 30, 1968. Celine was the last of Adhémar and Thérèse’s 14 children (her eldest sister, Denise, was born in August 1946, making her Celine’s senior by nearly 22 years). Adhémar was a butcher by trade, but the Dions were deeply entrenched in music: He and his wife also owned a local cabaret bar called Le Vieux Baril (“The Old Barrel”) where their children would often sing on weekends. Celine’s earliest memories are of…

WITH A HANDFUL O F CANADIAN HITS at her back and a new knowledge of English at the ready, Celine Dion stormed into a new decade. Her first English-language album and first proper American release came in April 1990. Titled Unison, it showed off Dion’s incredible vocal range on a handful of well-curated songs and was largely produced by award-winning soft rock legend, and fellow Canadian, David Foster. The single “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” which Dion first performed at Eurovision in 1989, made it all the way to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Dion her first bona fide hit outside of French-speaking Canada. Unison ended up going platinum. Now Dion had a firm foothold in America, one she would use to climb even higher. Dion’s…

CELINE DION WAS ALREADY AN ASCENDING GLOBAL SUPERSTAR by the time Titanic happened, and the worldwide wave of “My Heart Will Go On” only served to keep the ride rolling—all before she turned 30 years old. After beginning her professional singing career when she was just a teenager, she spent the entire decade of the ’90s recording and promoting albums and spending time continent-hopping on sold-out tours. When the decade came to a close, she was ready to take a well-earned break. She and her husband, René Angélil, scheduled an event concert for New Year’s Eve 2000 in Montreal to ring in the new millennium. Then they planned to shelter from the public eye for a while—Celine’s first career pause since she was, literally, a child. Part of the reason…

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IN MOST CIRCUMSTANCES IT TAKES ALOT TO BECOME A proper superstar. The bulk of the greats not only possess musical prowess but also song writing skill, deft fashion sense, sex appeal and a personality with some depth in order to achieve growth and longevity. To stand above, it helps to be superior in something—and in the case of Celine Dion, that special something is her voice. Dion sang from an early age, and her incredible tone, breath control, power and passion were clear even as a teenager. In her youth, she was able to tap into a shocking well of maturity when she sang, despite the fact that her life was not extraordinarily unusual. “I never heard so much feeling and experience in such a young voice,” said songwriter Eddy…

“If You Asked Me To” Dion’s first adult contemporary chart-topper was written by ace song writer Diane Warren and appeared on Dion’s self-titled 1992 album. The song was originally recorded by iconic soul singer Patti LaBelle for the soundtrack to the 1989 James Bond film License To Kill. Dion’s version climbed to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Beauty and the Beast” Three separate songs from Disney’s 1992 cultural phenomenon Beauty and the Beast were nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars. As part of their awards campaign, Disney released a pop version of the title track as a way to get voters to focus on one song. Dion was drafted and paired with Peabo Bryson, and “Beauty and the Beast” took home the statuette on Oscar night.…

IN THE EARLY PART OF 2016, CELINE DION LOST THE most important person in her life—not just the only man she had ever loved but also the steady hand that had guided her career for three decades. Though the road was often tough and demanding, Angélil was always proud of the fact that he watched out both for Dion’s professional and personal well-being. “The challenge for a manager who has been able to take his artist to the top is to keep [her] there,” Angélil once said. “But an even greater challenge is to keep [her] happy.” Dion appreciated everything about her husband, and celebrated his life and memory constantly. She also kept her career on track, as he would have wanted. She released another Francophone album Encore Un Soir…