Céline Dion

Her Heart Will Go On...^[1]

Céline Dion is one of the most popular Canandian singers of all time. Born in 1968 in Quebec, the Canadian province whose majority of populace speak French. Thus, she spent her early years speaking and singing French. Met her future husband, music manager René Angélil in 1981, who has been her manager for most of her career. Started singing English in 1990, but she sings in both French and English. She married René in 1994, had three sons and had been living happily despite their age difference. René Angélil died in January 2016.

Gained full mainstream attention (as well as a major Hatedom) when she sang "My Heart Will Go On" for the film Titanic.

Discography:

French-language studio albums

• La voix du bon Dieu (1981)
• Céline Dion chante Noël (1981)
• Tellement j'ai d'amour... (1982)
• Les chemins de ma maison (1983)
• Chants et contes de Noël (1983)
• Mélanie (1984)
• C'est pour toi (1985)
• Incognito (1987)
• Dion chante Plamondon (1991)
• D'eux (1995)
• S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998)
• 1 fille & 4 types (2003)
• D'elles (2007)
• Sans attendre (2012)
• Encore un soir (2016)

English-language studio albums

• Unison (1990)
• Celine Dion (1992)
• The Colour of My Love (1993)
• Falling into You (1996)
• Let's Talk About Love (1997)
• These Are Special Times (1998)
• A New Day Has Come (2002)
• One Heart (2003)
• Miracle (2004)
• Taking Chances (2007)
• Loved Me Back to Life (2013)

Céline Dion provides examples of the following tropes:

• Absolute Cleavage: In her video Then You Look at Me, she wore a low-cut cat-suit.
• Bilingual Bonus: Some of her French songs have their lyrics re-written in English, although usually only the titles are translated verbatim (for example, Je sais pas became I don't know). On the other hand, some of her French songs are translated covers from English songs (for example, her A Quatre pas D'ici is based on an English song The Land of Make Believe by Bucks Fizz). And then she also adapted some of her English songs to even more languages, such as Spanish (All by Myself to Sola Otra Vez) and Japanese (a Japanese version of Be The Man).
• Cover Version: So many of her songs are covers.
  • Covered Up: Some of her covers become this trope, such as The Power of Love (from Jennifer Rush), It's All Coming Back to Me Now (from Pandora's Box), All By Myself (from Eric Carmen), and If You Asked Me To (from Patti La Belle).
  • Translated Cover Version: Combined with Bilingual Bonus above, this happens sometimes.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Some of her videos, notably the older ones, are shot this way, such as All by Myself, Je Sais Pas and Water from the Moon.
• Fairytale Wedding Dress
• Her Heart Will Go On: Trope Namer
• Incredibly Long Note: One of the most famous is the last chorus of "My Heart Will Go On".
• Keep the Reward: In 1990, she won "Best English Speaking Artist" in Felix Award, a Quebec-only music award in short. She rejected the award because she felt she has always been a French artist, not English. This reportedly caused the award name to be changed into "Quebec Artist Achieving Most Success in A Language Other Than French".
• Massive-Numbered Siblings: She is the youngest of fourteen children.
• May-December Romance: René Angélil is 26 years older than she is. They first met when she was 12 and their relationship (officially) began 7 years later. It was another 7 years before they were actually married.
  • Aggravated by the use of Lolita as a song title on one of her vinyl LP's, pressed when she was 19.
• Me's A Crowd: She split into copies of herself in her video Et s'il n'en restait qu'une (je serais celle-là) (which translates into And If There Was Only One Woman Left (I Would Be That One))
• Named After Somebody Famous: Sort of. Céline herself is named after the song Céline by Hugues Aufray. Then when she gave birth to her first son, she made a rather self-referential case of this by naming her son René Charles Dion Angélil (well, she is famous). Then when her next twin sons came, she named them Eddy and Nelson, after songwriter Eddy Marnay and Nelson Mandela, respectively.
• Pimped-Out Dress: A couple in her videos.
• Power Ballad: Most of her discography in the 1990s. She became more or less the most prominent power ballad performing after the reigning king of the genre (Michael Bolton) declined in popularity at the end of the decade.
• Pretty in Mink: Wore a white mink jacket over her wedding dress.
  • Wore a white fox wrap (and probably nothing else other than Jewelry) for a magazine shoot; See the page picture.
• Self-Deprecation: She's really good at taking a joke. When SNL was doing their parodies of her in the wake of the success of Titanic, she found it absolutely hilarious and even invited Ana Gasteyer to do her impression of her at one of her concerts.
• Shower Scene: In some videos, but she's never the one showering.
• Singing Against Type: She is so well known for singing ballads (well, one ballad in particular) that it's a strange, but welcome, change when she does something up-tempo. "That's the Way it Is" and "I'm Alive" from the Stuart Little soundtrack were both good examples.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: she sings in French with only the barest Québecois accent. When she speaks however, her accent's so thick, a common joke is to say that even the people of Québec have trouble understanding what she says.
• OOC Is Serious Business: In 2005, she broke down in tears and harshly criticized George W. Bush following the aftermath Hurricane Katrina while on Larry King. Considering she grew up in poverty much like many of the victims of Katrina, can you blame her? She normally stays out of politics, especially about other countries since she’s from Canada, but Katrina and Iraq War really pushed her over the edge.
• What Could Have Been: She was originally going to sing “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” before Aerosmith was given the task.

1. ↑ Since 2016, this quip has taken a whole new meaning.