“Paris, je suis prêt!” ran the message projected on to the Eiffel Tower on Monday night as Celine Dion announced a five-week concert season at the 40,000-capacity Paris La Défense Arena. You’d expect nothing less than a monumental backdrop from an artist whose steely-spined, skyscraping hits always hit the high notes.
But news that 58-year-old Dion has the stamina for such shows has surprised fans. In 2022, she revealed she had been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome (SPS). The rare neurological condition (characterised by fluctuating muscle rigidity and a heightened sensitivity to noise, touch and emotional distress, which can trigger spasms) was feared to have ended her performing career.
But the 14th child of a French-Canadian butcher (who grew up sharing a bed with several sisters) also told French Vogue that she was training “like an athlete” to ensure the incurable condition didn’t dominate her life. Her return to the stage reflects the against-the-odds narratives of so many of her songs.
This is, after all, the woman whose Titanic theme song, My Heart Will Go On, told us that love could survive class divisions, icebergs and even death. In 2016, she belted out The Show Must Go On following the death of her husband and manager, René Angélil, and returned in 2019 with the fan favourite, Courage, which began with the confession: “I’d be lying if I said I was fine.”
While Dion’s detractors might roll their eyes over the sentimental bombast of her survivor’s anthems when she was in her 1990s pomp, it would take a heart of stone not to cheer her on now. Vive la Revolu-Dion!
10. I’m Alive (2002)
A surprisingly upbeat, danceable number from the Queen of Power Ballads, this breezy bopper sees Dion celebrating a return to the music industry after a three-year sabbatical following the birth of her twins. It’s also one of the few Dion hits popular with Gen Z after it became popular for backing TikTok videos in 2024.
9. The Prayer (1999)
Dion is regularly drafted in to add the kind of emotional wallop to films that no actor could get away with, and that is the case with this Golden Globe-winning song from the 1998 musical fantasy film, Quest for Camelot. It finds the singer adding a tough backbone to the Labrador-eyed Italian tenor of Andrea Bocelli.
Although the song has been a slow burner, it’s become increasingly popular at weddings and funerals over the past decade.
8. Tell Him (1997)
This silky, schmaltzy duet with Barbra Streisand finds the two singers’ voices weaving gorgeously together over a melody so pretty it’s almost scented. The video is an equally sisterly confection, showing the two divas relishing each other’s parts, wafting their manicured hands about, before uniting with cool assurance.
7. Because You Loved Me (1996)
The theme song from Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer’s movie, Up Close and Personal, was written by 17-time Oscar-nominated songwriter, Diane Warren, about her supportive dad. It was Dion’s second number one (after The Power of Love), and in a break from the urgency she often projects, it’s nice to hear her luxuriating in the orchestral arrangement and seeming to enjoy her own talent.
6. Beauty & The Beast (1991)
Dion was largely unknown outside her native Canada before the release of this Disney duet with Peabo Bryson. Here, she sprinkled some fairytale magic on to the recording she made as a radio-friendly version of the part sung by Angela Lansbury in the film. It was the first of many Disney songs to receive a commercial pop makeover, and made Dion a household name.
5. Pour Que Tu M’Aimes Encore (1995)
One of the few French-language songs to make the British charts, it’s lovely to hear Dion singing in her first language. “Je me changerai en or/Pour que tu m’aimes encore” (“I would turn myself into gold to make you love me again”), she pleads.
There’s a sweetness and girlish breathiness in the delivery of the romantic yearning that alchemises a rather basic, click-track melody into something more precious.
4. Think Twice (1994)
The first single to top the UK charts in CD sales alone, this song did far better in Europe than in the US. Written by Andy Hill and Pete Sinfield (the duo behind Bucks Fizz’s Making Your Mind Up), Dion slightly gargles her way through a woman’s desperate plea to a departing lover. But that makes the emotion more arresting as she buttonholes us with the arrestingly direct: “This is serious.”
3. It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (1996)
Described as an “erotic motorcycle” of a track by its composer Jim Steinman (best known for his work with Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler), this strange tale of “the flesh and the fantasies” of obsessive desire is a perfect fit for Dion’s straight-faced theatrics. She blows through the gothic landscape of the song like a wind on the moor, caressing every syllable and blasting down your defences. “It was dead long ago, but it’s all coming back...”
2. The Power of Love (1994)
Originally co-written and recorded by Jennifer Rush in 1984 (with her version chosen by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson for the first dance at their wedding), Celine Dion’s version (her first US chart topper) exemplified the steely clarity and determination that drew struggling fans to her.
Although many music critics (mostly from privileged backgrounds) once sneered that Dion’s bombast was “unsubtle”, “humourless” and “uncool”, in 2007 US critic, Carl Wilson, published a book about her (Let’s Talk About Love) in which he unpicked the snobbery surrounding the working-class French Canadian singer’s work. He found her music appealed most to those from disadvantaged backgrounds and particularly survivors of domestic violence. For such fans, a song like this can make “The feeling that I can’t go on” feel, temporarily, “light years away”.
1. My Heart Will Go On (1997)
Although the Oscar-winning theme from Titanic is the perfect vehicle for Dion’s vocals, she hated the song (with music by James Horner) on first hearing, and “wanted to choke” her husband and manager (René Angélil) when he promised she would record a demo.
In 2017, she told Billboard that when she arrived at the studio in New York, she was suffering from menstrual cramps: “I was mad! I don’t feel good. I have belly pains!” She self-medicated by drinking black coffee with sugar, “which I never have on my studio days because it speeds up my vibrato”. The lights were dimmed, and Dion recorded the whole song in one take, looking up to see the team around her in tears.
The demo verses had captured all the tender exhilaration of young love (dropping to a glass fogging whisper) before swelling to a mighty crash of a chorus. James Cameron initially resisted (“Would you put a pop song at the end of Schindler’s List?”). But as his spending was threatening to sink the studio, he bowed to pressure from above.
The song topped the charts in 25 countries and won five Grammy Awards. Listening to it makes you feel the way every good power ballad should: like you’re on the prow of a ship with 50,000 horsepower behind you, an infinite horizon ahead and nothing but pure emotion holding you up.