"D'Elles": Press Reviews - Official Topic

[Céline's Blues]

Here for Shon and co, a wonderfully written press review in English from RFImusic:

 

Céline Dion Explores Her Inner Woman

New album: D’Elles

 

Paris

 

29/05/2007 -

With nine female writers honing its lyrics and six male producers crafting its melodies to perfection, all Céline Dion had to do on her new album, D’Elles, was turn up and provide the vocals. The power-ballad diva from Quebec did so in true Dion-style, alternating between the elegant, the sentimental and the vocally overpowering. Whether you’re a fan or not, Céline Dion’s new output seems to be impossible to ignore!

 

There’s no doubt about it, the new Céline Dion album is a pure marketing gem. Flip the CD lid and out tumbles a glossy ad vaunting the joys of the star’s new perfume, swiftly followed by a leaflet with instructions on how to download Céline’s official ringtones on your mobile. Commercial directors must be rubbing their hands in glee. Ms. Dion’s new “100% French” album has been eagerly awaited by millions worldwide and Internet websites have been buzzing for months, whetting enthusiasm and expectation. How could it be otherwise when “La Diva Québécoise” has reached out from the glamorous Las Vegas palace, where she has been performing sell-out concerts for the past four years, and proved she has not forgotten her humble fanbase.

 

Céline Dion reportedly started thinking about her “100% French” album D’Elles around a year ago, motivated by a desire to "sing songs by women about women." Delving ever deeper into her feminine side, La Dion selected nine female novelists from France and Quebec, some of them major stars, others lesser-known authors. The nine Chosen Ones are Francoise Dorin, Nina Bouraoui, Lise Payette, Nathalie Nechtschein, Jovette-Alice Bernier, Janette Bertrand, Marie Laberge, Christine Orban and Denise Bombardier. Oh and that’s not including a guest contribution from the late French romantic novelist George Sand who, having died in 1876, obviously couldn’t personally approve her appearance on the album.

 

Céline’s all-female pantheon has penned an album that revolves around love, men, relationship issues, children, motherhood and strong women. Themes close to the singer’s own heart which she delivers in her signature vocal acrobatic style, crooning softly and sensuously on songs such as Je cherche l’ombre and Berceuse before rising to a thundering crescendo on A cause and Si j’étais quelqu’un. Interestingly enough, while the lyrics for Céline’s new album were penned by women, the music was exclusively placed in male hands. Arrangements come courtesy of Jacques Veneruso, Gildas Arzel, Erick Benzi and David Gategno (renowned for his work with the likes of Tina Arena, Natasha Saint-Pier and Chimène Badi), the majority of whom are long-term associates of the album’s producer Jean-Jacques Goldman.

 

Musically speaking, one of the most flamboyant tracks on D’Elles is the appropriately-named La Diva, which by way of an intro features an extract from Puccini’s La Bohême (performed by Maria Callas) and full accompaniment from the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The vibrant tempo of Femme comme chacune also helps lift the general tone of the album which errs on the side of woolly, limp and even lacklustre at times.

 

Even the most committed Dion addicts have levelled a few criticisms at D’Elles, complaining that the arrangers have overdosed on strings and synthetic tones. But a recent post on the website run by French record store Fnac should reassure La Dion and co. "This album is simply sublime! The dream team of Veneruso, Benzi, Arzel and Gategno with Goldman at the controls has to be congratulated. D'Elles... is an absolute delight for the Mind and the Soul... " Looks as if after her nine-year absence from France, Quebec’s best-known diva will have no trouble packing out Paris’s Bercy Stadium for the eight dates announced in May 2008. And French fans take note, tickets are already selling like proverbial hotcakes!

Edited June 1, 2007 at 11:14 AM by Céline's Blues

[Céline's Blues]

Another fabulous article from CBC:

 

 

The real Céline

Céline Dion’s new French album shows her personal side

By Patricia Bailey

May 29, 2007

 

 

http://origin.www.cbc.ca/arts/images/arts_celine_392.jpg

Singer Celine Dion. (Ralph Orlowski/Associated Press)

 

When Céline Dion returns to her birthplace, she often repeats the same comment in interviews, one that warms the hearts of her Quebec fans. The international pop diva, worth an estimated $250 million US, says she likes coming home to Quebec because she can go to a dépanneur (convenience store) and no one will bother her. It’s unlikely that Dion, who is currently performing five nights a week to sold-out crowds at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, slips down to the corner shop for a beer like the rest of us. But if she did, fans here would probably not swarm her.

 

In Quebec, Dion’s status, in fact her very identity, is startlingly different from what it is elsewhere in the world. Here, she is Céline, avec accent, the country girl from a large Quebec family who made it big. And nothing illustrates this better than last week’s release of D’elles, billed as a “concept album” honouring womanhood.

 

In la belle province, the launch of Dion’s first French-language album in four years has been akin to a family reunion. The release was preceded by Céline Dion D’elles, a two-hour TV special broadcast featuring Dion and the doyennes of the Quebec literary and media scene, all of whom contributed songs to the album: TV writer, journalist and popular educator Janette Bertrand; journalist, feminist and former Parti Quebecois minister Lise Payette; journalist and novelist Denise Bombardier; and writer Marie Laberge, one of Quebec’s best-known playwrights. They are enthusiastically playing the role of Dion’s clucking matantes, an affectionate Quebec term for a maternal, usually bosomy, auntie figure.

 

Images of Dion and her adoring collaborators hugging each other and crying seemed to be everywhere this past week. The central message of the emotionally fraught buzz is this: Céline may live in Las Vegas, and she may have released more albums in English than French, but she is first and foremost a member of la famille Québécoise. While some of the new songs were composed by well-known writers from France (including Nina Bouraoui, Christine Orban and Françoise Dorin), Dion and her astute manager/husband, René Angelil, also picked four of the most respected and accomplished female figures in Quebec to contribute. Their choices are a Quebec publicist’s dream.

 

Eighty-two-year-old Janette Bertrand, essentially the grandmother at this family party, penned the album’s lullaby, Berceuse, as a tribute to Céline’s relationship with her son, René Charles. Bertrand is an institution; at the height of her TV career, Janette, who still has a massive following, was Quebec’s Oprah. Lise Payette is the creator of Les dames de coeur (Women of the Heart). The popular téléroman about four women on the cusp of 50 had a major impact on Quebec society in the 1980s. While many men who grew up watching TV in the '80s complain that the popular soap’s feminist agenda psychologically castrated them, the show inspired women across the province to found “les dames de coeur” supper clubs.

 

Payette seems to represent Dion’s wise, compassionate aunt at the D’elles reunion. On Payette's TV program Tête-à-tête in 1992, the 24-year-old Dion, then a rising star, broke down in tears over her treatment by the Quebec media. (In trying to revamp her image for the English market, Dion was the butt of many public jokes; after she capped her teeth, many took to calling her “Canine Dion.”) Payette wrote what I believe is the new collection’s best song: Je cherche l’ombre (I seek the shadows), a moving ballad about the pain of being a woman in the spotlight.

 

Marie Laberge appears to have a less maternal relationship to the pop diva than the other contributors. Laberge’s song, Le temps qui compte (Time that counts), explores how time moves too quickly for a star such as Dion, “who isn’t even 40 years old and who has already had a 25-year career,” as Laberge told one reporter.

 

Controversial public intellectual Denise Bombardier contributed La Diva, a song inspired by the tragic life of Greek opera singer Maria Callas. Dion describes Bombardier as a “courageous woman who defends what she cares about”; Dion commissioned the song after reading a Mother’s Day column Bombardier wrote in Montreal’s French-language daily Le Devoir. In it, the journalist attempted to describe the tender, frustrating and sometimes violent emotions mothers experience. It was a meeting with Dion backstage in Las Vegas that led Bombardier to pick Callas as her subject. “She appeared very fragile and reminded me of Callas. I told her that,” Bombardier has said. Dion told Bombardier that Callas has always fascinated her.

 

The two-hour television special offered fascinating insight into the Céline avec accent. Nestled comfortably on a couch with Bertrand, Payette, Bombardier, Laberge and host Julie Snyder, Dion worked hard to project an image of an average Quebecois working girl who longs to spend more time with her family. She revealed what her ideal day would involve when the relentless Las Vegas schedule finishes up: putting a few things in her crock pot, taking her son to school and sharing her homemade meal with her husband at the end of the day. The girls didn’t confine their talk to things culinary; they also discussed the pros and cons of breast-feeding, a working mother’s guilt and Dion’s relationship with René. (Céline says she’s the boss.) The rake-thin diva also addressed body image in a gushy and bizarre soliloquy about her admiration for her mother’s corpulent figure.

 

“Those folds of fat represent love to me. I know you don’t always like how you look, Mom. But I think you’re beautiful,” she told “Maman Dion,” as she’s referred to in Quebec. As is usually the case when Céline makes a Quebec appearance, the elder Dion was sitting in the studio audience.

 

It’s not just Dion who wants people to think she’s une vraie Québecoise; entertainment journalists here add their own chapters to this surreal narrative. At a press conference for D’elles in downtown Montreal, a bemused Payette quipped, “When I entered the room, I had the impression that someone was going to announce a cure for cancer. All we did was write some songs.” In a preview of the TV special, La Presse journalist Louise Cousineau noted, “Celine doesn’t just sing for us in this show. Because we are family, she allows us into her private life.” Cousineau’s piece was part of the newspaper’s “Céline weekend,” which included an article comparing Dion’s French and English albums. Its conclusion: while Dion is heavily influenced by American singers such as Barbra Streisand, she’s also a product of the musical tradition established by renowned Quebec chanteuse and nationalist Pauline Julien. As a result, the journalist wrote, the pop diva’s “soul is saved.”

 

The La Presse expert panel also decided — quelle surprise — that Dion’s French albums were better. And on that point, they may be right. The most impressive thing about Dion’s sugary, overly produced English ballads is the range of her voice (five octaves). En français, Dion simply has more soul. On D'Eux (1996) the best-selling French-language album of all time, she explored the dilemma of a small-town girl trying to make it big. On 1 fille et 4 types (2003), she collaborated with some well-established singer-songwriters from France — Jacques Veneruso, Erick Benzi and guitarist Gildas Arzel — which gave her work more credibility in Europe.

 

D’elles reunites the singer with legendary Paris producer Jean-Jacques Goldman. Although it is likely a contrived attempt to redefine herself as a highbrow diva, the CD also expresses the genuine connection Dion has with her Quebec fans, specifically, and la Francophonie in general. Céline is indeed very different from Celine. She’s not quite the small-town Quebecer everyone wants her to be, but en français, she’s not the frighteningly automaton-like Celine sans accent.

 

Dion’s gruelling Las Vegas gig ends Dec. 15. Perhaps she’ll use the time to fulfill her crock-pot fantasy, which so amused her adoring matantes. Or not. René’s got a world tour planned for 2008.

 

D’elles is in stores now.

 

Patricia Bailey is a Montreal-based writer and broadcaster.

Edited June 1, 2007 at 11:11 AM by Céline's Blues

[Céline's Blues]

Another short review from the Edmonton Sun:

 

CELINE DION

D'elles

 

Pop

 

Sun Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5

 

She's baaaaack! And she's not alone. For this francophone concept album celebrating women, Celine sings lyrics penned by female authors from France and Quebec. Pity most of them are set to the freeze-dried pop-rock and bombastic orchestral ballads that Celine relies on to compete with her titanic vocals. If Dion could learn subtlety, that would be something to celebrate.

 

Download: A cause, La paradis

[Céline's Blues]

Yet another review rather positive one from the Edmonton JOURNAL:

 

The Edmonton Journal

Published: Saturday, May 26, 2007

 

CD: D'ELLES

Artist: Celine Dion

Label: Sony BMG

 

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

 

Review: I'll be honest. The first time I listened to Celine Dion's new French-language disc, I hated it. It's just so showy, so over-the-top, so melodramatic. Hell, it's a Celine Dion concept album. Could it get much worse? But then, on the third listen, I suddenly started to get it. The mishmash of parts started making sense. And, most strikingly, I was absolutely stunned by the second-last track, On s'est aime a cause. It gives me the same shivers I get when I listen to recent Dion classics like That's the Way It Is. Most odd, there are clear elements of Jann Arden in it and other tracks, sometimes in the instrumentation, and occasionally in the vocals. It's strange, but very much welcome. Still, many of the usual things that make Dion grating for many folks are very present -- namely that bombastic voice of hers that she repeatedly uses in precisely the wrong spots. Si j'etais quelqu'un, an otherwise great track, is spoiled by such an outburst. The disc certainly isn't magnifique, but it is, at the very least, pas mal. But it'll take you at least a few listens to get there.

 

IAIN ILICH

 

 

****

 

 

Now a rather disastrous and spiteful one from the Globe and Mail, he truly hates her:

 

POP

ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN

 

May 29, 2007

D'elles

Celine Dion

Sony BMG

 

0 out of 5

 

The Globe and Mail

 

Celine Dion solicited lyrics from 10 francophone women for this disc, including George Sand and former PQ minister Lise Payette. You don't have to wonder what Sand, lover of Chopin, would have made of the hideously bland ditty attached to one of her letters. Dion's musical collaborators have embraced every MOR cliché without fear, in 13 boring tunes arranged so anonymously you won't believe that five producers were involved. The most egregious track is La Diva, in which Dion and Quebec journalist Denise Bombardier engineer an inter-pares duet with Maria Callas, the "shadow in the desert" Dion claims to see when she looks away from the lights of Vegas. I may vomit.

 

Here what they said on the page, "we review Céline's D'elles":

 

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/285/sectionr490dr4.jpg

 

LOL!

Edited June 1, 2007 at 11:40 AM by Céline's Blues

[Davey84]

Another fabulous article from CBC:

 

 

The real Céline

Céline Dion’s new French album shows her personal side

By Patricia Bailey

May 29, 2007

Céline is indeed very different from Celine. She’s not quite the small-town Quebecer everyone wants her to be, but en français, she’s not the frighteningly automaton-like Celine sans accent.

wow a really good review! And I like this part... it's really true in a way... but as long as sony doesn't make her french work more approachable then there's nothing Céline can do about it!

 

Yet another review rather positive one from the Edmonton JOURNAL:

 

The Edmonton Journal

Published: Saturday, May 26, 2007

 

CD: D'ELLES

Artist: Celine Dion

Label: Sony BMG

 

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

Si j'etais quelqu'un, an otherwise great track, is spoiled by such an outburst.

 

But it'll take you at least a few listens to get there.

 

 

I also agree on this bit! I don't think the outburst is nessesary in SJEQU but they forgot Céline usually listens to the producers how to sing it...

 

And I admit D'elles had to grow on me... It didn't blew me away the first time I heard it...

 

funny he considers TTWII as a classic!

[Love,]

Los Angeles Times

 

http://www.calendarlive.com/music/reviews/...l=cl-music-util

POP ALBUM REVIEW

Celine Dion

"D'Elles"(Columbia)

2 Stars

 

Dion assures us all is swell

 

ON her last French-language album, 2003's folky "1 Fille & 4 Types," Céline Dion did what all superstar singers feel they must once in a while, stripping her big-ballad pop-rock of its Las Vegas glitz and emphasizing her Everydiva roots. Evidently convinced that her humanity has been secured, Dion returns to her usual mode on "D'Elles," where, as on her English-language CDs, no tune is complete without a sweeping string arrangement or a generous helping of synthesizer cheese.

 

As fun as it was to hear Dion do the jeans-and-T-shirt thing, it's good to have her back in a sparkly evening gown: With its careful quaver and skyscraping swoops, Dion's singing is much more attuned to melodramatic material such as "Le Temps Qui Compte" than to the down-home ruminations of "1 Fille"; this 18-wheeled voice requires a garage, not a carport.

 

Although critics complain about Dion's weakness for meaningless bombast, bombast is in fact the only meaning Dion has to offer. Like recent work by Madonna or Barbra Streisand, this music is about power. In every song, Dion allows the arena-schmaltz atmospherics to threaten her center-stage dominance. Then, just in time, she beats back the violins with a trademark shriek.

 

— Mikael Wood

 

*

 

Albums are rated on a scale of four stars (excellent), three stars (good), two stars (fair) and one star (poor). Albums reviewed have been released, unless otherwise indicated.

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[Tal]

reviews like that INFURIATE me!!

 

firstly how can he say whats schmaltz and not schmaltz if he doesnt even know what the hell she's singing about! then, he pokes fun at her attempt to strip down, when he's probably one of the a****** critics who's been giving her shi!t for the last 10 years for being too bombastic and wishing that she scale it down a bit. then this douchebag says that she returns to the melodrama with LTQC which is complete and utter bullshit, because the song sounds like a song from 1F4T...maybe because it was composed and produced by one of the producers of her 'jeans and tshirt album'. la diva...yes, that one is very dramatic and over the top. but saying LTQC is melodramatic tells me he listening to 3 seconds of each song before writing his review.

[brasilero]

Robert Everett-Green

 

Print Edition

 

D'elles Celine Dion Sony BMG 0

 

Celine Dion solicited lyrics from 10 francophone women for this disc, including George Sand and former PQ minister Lise Payette. You don't have to wonder what Sand, lover of Chopin, would have made of the hideously bland ditty attached to one of her letters. Dion's musical collaborators have embraced every MOR cliche without fear, in 13 boring tunes arranged so anonymously you won't believe that five producers were involved. The most egregious track is La Diva, in which Dion and Quebec journalist Denise Bombardier engineer an inter-pares duet with Maria Callas, the ''shadow in the desert'' Dion claims to see when she looks away from the lights of Vegas. I may vomit.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Pag...orce_login=true

[Mozinha]

OMG, after this one Celine is so going to crawl into bed, cry her eyes out, fall into depression and never see the day again. These people are so meeeeeeeean!!!

[CelineTheBest5]

OMG, after this one Celine is so going to crawl into bed, cry her eyes out, fall into depression and never see the day again. These people are so meeeeeeeean!!!

I think that´s why she canceled all her concert in Vegas

 

Edited June 12, 2007 at 05:04 AM by CelineTheBest5

[Mozinha]

OMG, Bruna, Celine is making you vomit too? Jesus, how powerful she is, she touches everyone's feelings, even the feeling sick of the stomach... Maybe there were too many people vomiting in the concerts. Everything is explained now! Edited June 12, 2007 at 05:05 AM by Mozinha

[blue.grave]

Who cares what they say about D'Elles I love it. And this is enough for me.

[Mozinha]

We have to laugh at this kind of idiots!

[Love,]

Why does this unintelligent review get its own thread?

 

This ought to be merged with the other press reviews, especially since it's ignorable.

[changepas39]

that burns me up!!!

[Koolan]

 

thread merged

[brasilero]

that burns me up!!!

yea me too. but its so far off the wall i had to laugh at that review. when i heard d'elles i can't imagine how anyone in there right mind could say every single song is bad lol. that's just ridiculous i had to laugh D'elles is one of the most perfect album i've ever heard

as long as it's Celine some dumbass critics will bash it no matter what

[Davey84]

FINALLY there's a decent Dutch review! It's from the Media Markt Magazine (free at Media markt duh ) and it's well written! You won't understand the dutch review, so I translated it... errors may occur I put the highlights in italics...

 

Céline Dion

D'elles

 

Coffeetablefeministicpop

 

How lucky we are in Europe, because the new cd from Céline Dion is not available in the US. She’ll probably had the feeling that she served the American public long enough with her longrunning show in Las Vegas. Right she is, because it’s about time that we got some attention in Europe from a woman who has to thank her career because of her French-language entry to the Eurovision Songcontest.

 

So Dions new album is completely in French and has as concept theme the power of the woman. That’s the reason why the singer from Canadian roots let all the songs on D’elles write by women from France and Quebec, like François Dorin and Janet Bertrand. We don’t know them, but the songs sound absolutely gorgeous. The single Et s’il n’en restait Qu’une (JSCL) already is a bit hit.

 

Strange is the fact that for the production Dion took Jean-Jacques Goldman under her wings. That harms the ‘strong women’ concept. It appears that in 2008 some European concerts are finally coming. But till December of this year Dion’s still perfoming in Vegas and we have to do it with D’elles as a sop.

 

now if only people will read it! and media mark stocks the album... cos I haven't seen it that much!

[Davey84]

seba you're right... nobody reads this thread!

[VinnyT.]

Women of song

 

GAETAN L. CHARLEBOIS

Freelance

 

Sunday, July 22, 2007

 

Answers, score cards and more fascinating facts for last week's annual Chaud Show Quiz. (TPA means total points available):

 

1. (TPA: 80) We were, of course, referring to our national songstress CEline Dion (10 points) and her disc D'Elles (10 points). Critics compared it - generally favourably - to her previous sortie: D'Eux (10 points). D'Elles has a number of translations, but if you're close to Of - or from - Those Women, you get it. A little more prickly is D'Eux, which translates as Of - or from - Them (20 points). In the US, D'Eux was called - what else? - The French Album (30 points).

 

2. (TPA: 100) The woman here is cultural and political gadabout Lise Payette (10 points), whose song on CEline's disc is called, oddly, Je cherche l'ombre (I'm Looking for the Shadow). She has always been there - on radio, hosting TV talk shows (Appelez-moi Lise) and, more recently, as a columnist for Journal de MontrEal (10 points). One wondered if she'd derailed when she was writing the ber-cute Super mamies (20 points) early this century because we remember more the blood and guts ex-PQ minister who, just before the 1980 referendum, gave a sovereignist speech calling women to arms. However, in the speech she invoked the name of a character from first grade readers, Yvette (20 points), who was always the perfect little girl - an ideal housewife-to-be. Many stay-at-home QuEbEcoises took this badly, and a huge rally of so-called Yvettes was held in the Forum. Some would argue that the Yes side lost the referendum that night (40 points).

 

3. (TPA: 40) The woman in question here is the strangely sexy, but terribly mouthy, Louise Bombardier (10 points). (In passing, her song for CEline is called, appropriately, La Diva.) The hot-button issue that nearly sank her career here (if not in France, where she often appears on TV) is gay marriage - she's agin it (10 points). The newspaper she writes for - one of the most influential papers in the country with a circulation of about 50,000 - is Le Devoir (20 points).

 

4. (TPA: 80) The first woman is Janette Bertrand (10 points), who wrote and starred in the very popular but often very controversial Quelle famille! from 1969-'74 (20 points). She was a groundbreaker like her co-lyricist on CEline's album, George Sand (10 points), who is not George Elliot (10 points). Sand was involved not only with Chopin and Franz Liszt (30 points), but also the playwright Alfred de Musset, whose plays are archetypal - and witty - critiques of his age. The hint for Liszt, by the way, was Richard Wagner, married to Liszt's daughter Cosima.

 

If you scored:

 

1-60: We suspect you have never heard what the French language sounds like.

 

61-120: You know what French sounds like, but think the capital of Quebec is Montreal.

 

121-180: You check French tElE from time to time, and can converse fairly well about CEline (though probably not about Pierre Lapointe).

 

181-240: You can impress an anglo with your knowledge of Quebec pop culture, even some anglos who know something about Quebec pop culture.

 

240-300: You impress us and could probably write a culture column for Journal de MontrEal. (Talk about backhanded praise in both cases.)

 

gaetancharlebois@sympatico.ca

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007

[CSCfan]

Weird review lol! Thanks

[Céline's Blues]

Interesting indeed! Thanks, hottino!