At the height of her career in the 1990s, the singer drew crowds in major cities around the country, such as Montreal and Toronto
THE NEW YORK TIMES – MONTREAL – It was Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of excited people were dancing and singing ‘Everything is coming back to me now at a crowded party in honor of Celine Dion🇧🇷 A young man shone in a homemade version of the gold helmet with peacock feathers that Dion wore to the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gaped at a mini-shrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing his hairstyles over the decades. “In an age of overbearing stars, she’s always authentic,” said Simon Venne, a 38-year-old fashion designer. “She is everything to us, our pride, our queen.”
If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province from which Dion is home, was in conflict over Dion’s rise to global stardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, that has been dispelled. She now occupies an elevated space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation unabashedly embraces her: Radio Canada, the national French-speaking broadcaster, watches her life on podcast Celine, she’s the boss!🇧🇷 A documentary series titled “It’s Cool to Like Celine Dion” explored its appeal among millennials. And Celine Dion’s drag competitions are on the rise.
This month, Dion’s emotional announcement that she suffers from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, which forces her to postpone tour dates, was met with extraordinary emotion. Quebec politicians across the spectrum, including Quebec Prime Minister François Legault and the head of a party advocating the province’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans complained on social media.
A title inside Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper referred to her as “Celine, Queen of Quebec”. Dion, the newspaper noted, has achieved the status of an untouchable icon after spending years being criticized by some and ridiculed by others. “It’s like being told your aunt is sick,” Venne said, the feathered fan. “Celine is famous all over the world, but she’s family here.”
The intensity of the reaction here – 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster Titanicwhich helped make it bombastic and exuberant My heart Will Go On — shows how much Celine’s fandom and ideas about QuĂ©bec identity have evolved over time, as the province’s most famous daughter reached maturity.
During a recent visit to Celine Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of street in the working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit that as her music.
“Being stuck at home during the pandemic has made people nostalgic, and everything old and vintage is in,” she said. Gabriele Guenette26-year-old college student and former Uber delivery man, explaining why he and his friends were singing The power of love during karaoke nights. Dion’s message of hope and optimism, she added, has resonated in uncertain times.
Older residents of Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Celine” — our little Celine — and recall her days as a shy teenager singing French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters in the family restaurant. The younger ones—like Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the school where Dion studied—have grown up singing her songs.
In Quebec, a French-speaking province of 8.5 million people that has been plagued by centuries of subjugation and fears of being dominated by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Though many fans have embraced her ardently, she has been dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of routinethe Québec snack of french fries and gravy-soaked cheese curds, usually eaten, with some guilt, at 3 in the morning.
Martin Proulx, producer who hosted the podcast Celine, she’s the boss! recalled how, as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to the album “Let’s Talk About Love” on his Sony Walkman. “Celine wasn’t beautiful when I was in high school. Kids my age listened to hip-hop and hard rock, and it was for moms who watched Oprah,” she recalled.
Yannick NĂ©zet-SĂ©guin, musical director of New York Metropolitan Opera, born in Quebec, said his first memory of Dion was in 1984, when he was 8 years old. Dion, then 16, sang a song about a dove in front of the Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. NĂ©zet-SĂ©guin said he was proud that she too is QuĂ©bĂ©cois and said he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.
“When I think of a diva, I think of personality, of having something artistically recognizable. And there’s no denying Celine’s singing virtuosity,” she said. Dion’s appeal persists in part because her Cinderella story never gets old. As the youngest of 14 children born to an accordion-playing butcher and Charlemagne’s housewife, Dion’s first bed was a drawer.
At age 12, he co-wrote his first song, Ce n’Ă©tait qu’un rĂŞve, with the help of his mother and brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a demo tape to her manager RenĂ© AngĂ©lil, who became her manager and later her husband. Dion underwent a complete transformation, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, get her teeth fixed, get a perm, and take singing and dance lessons. She was born a star.
When AngĂ©lil died in 2016, two days before her 74th birthday, her meticulously choreographed two-day funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags flew at half-staff in Quebec. Wearing a black veil, Dion stood beside her husband’s open casket for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.
Over the next few years, Dion revamped her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic sweatshirt that she wore in Paris in 2016 made the rounds on the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the Met Gala in a champagne Oscar de la Renta bodysuit trimmed with silver sequins.
Her whimsical and self-deprecating appearance at James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow in the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, helped some people who have teased her realizing she had joined in on the joke. Now their fandom seems stronger than ever.
Mario Bennett, 36, who works at a concert hall, began covering every inch of his apartment with Dion memorabilia early in the pandemic. He said that throughout his life his powerful voice was a clear invitation to dream big. Among her prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible doll of Celine, which wears a version of the midnight blue velvet dress the singer wore to the 1998 Oscars.
“It makes me feel like anything is possible,” she said. / TRANSLATION BY RENATO PRELORENTZOU
🇧🇷The best content in your email for free. Choose your favorite Terra newsletter. Click here!
Source: Terra
Earl Johnson is a music writer at Gossipify, known for his in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the industry. A graduate of USC with a degree in Music, he brings years of experience and passion to his writing. He covers the latest releases and trends, always on the lookout for the next big thing in music.
-t4neoveyryoy.jpg "Nattan is excluded in an American and sudden bar with Rafa Kalimann’s “pregnant pants”")
