"Taking Chances" album - Official Topic

[tal-sh2]

"A Song For You" played on Israelian radio station!

[CSCfan]

In the goddess' realm

 

Pop divas want to take you higher and higher. And transform themselves too.

 

By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 19, 2007

 

FEMALE pop stars who attain the attributes of goddesses -- emblematic names, signature fragrances, the floating hair of Botticelli's "Venus" -- tend to share a few qualities. They are athletic vocalists, usually with multi-octave ranges, who can hold a note longer than most magicians can stay submerged in water. Their signature songs blend romantic axioms with the more current language of self-help. Their music is frequently dismissed as banal, yet often helps regular folk contemplate profundities, at weddings or funerals, or when a baby is born.

 

These traits link Whitney to Mariah to Shania to Céline to Faith to Beyoncé to Christina to Alicia, although each has her own strengths and quirks. But something subtler also connects them. Musically, they're border jumpers. On the surface, they epitomize pop banality, but they regularly defy their home genres, blithely disregarding musical rules that hem in more admired (and usually male) pop practitioners. Whitney Houston set the template for this role by turning a country hit, Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," into a smash that redefined crossover R&B.

 

The mainstream's pop goddesses also blur lines on the level of identity. Many are biracial. Céline Dion is obviously bilingual. All pop stars are mandated to continually remodel themselves, but few do so as dramatically as Mariah Carey, who fled innocence (and Tommy Mottola) to become hip-hop's super-sexy honey. Christina Aguilera's been a teen sweetie, a sex radical and a retro vamp. Beyoncé, one suspects, hasn't even begun to show us her thousand faces.

 

More trend-focused dance-floor queens -- the ones who follow in Madonna's boot steps -- turn their makeovers into performances. For them, style comes first, and feeling flows from it. The goddesses take us inside the process, their songs chronicling how it feels to change from within. Their music is all about becoming bigger and better, with motivational lyrics, surging semi-operatic melodies and churchy rhythms. They show us how, as Oprah says, to run toward our best.

 

Chat shows, women's magazines and chick lit belong to the same world, where women rule -- and struggle. As theorist Laura Kipnis has pointed out, "Femininity in its current incarnation . . . is built on an underlying sense of female inadequacy." Pop goddesses represent women's constant fight to keep fulfilling their exhaustingly inexhaustible potential.

 

So, it's no shock that the two new goddess offerings commanding the charts have been packaged as transformations. Dion is "Taking Chances" on her eighth studio album; on her third, Alicia Keys is finally, truly presenting herself "As I Am."

 

In reality, neither album deviates much from what these women have previously accomplished. Keys continues to develop her warm, contemplative approach to hip-hop R&B. Dion, celebrating the end of her long Las Vegas run, employs some new producers to go beyond ringing the rafters but remains most convincing at full blast.

 

Experimentation pays off for Keys, not on the rockish outings with John Mayer and Linda Perry that she's been emphasizing in interviews, but on the ones where she turns back toward the themes that have served her best. Her great subject is the unsettling swirl of unresolved romance; although precocious, Keys understands the teen heart, her thoughtfulness and skill the perfect foils for goose bumps and hot blood.

 

Although she shows off her sisterliness on the sing-along "Superwoman" and sobs seriously through the hit "No One," Keys wasn't made for grand pronouncements. As she continues to mature, she would be wise to hang on to that teenage feeling of promise and uncertainty.

 

On the Jack Splash productions "Teenage Love Affair" and "Wreckless Love," Keys revisits the sweet folly of adolescence with the lighter heart of someone who's survived it. "I Need You," which sounds a little like a John Legend outtake, builds to a dense flurry of sounds suggesting connubial bliss. And the breathy "Like You'll Never See Me Again," which has been compared to Prince but actually recalls two other 1980s synth popsters -- Janet Jackson and Berlin -- makes the kind of romantic demands that only young lovers and soap opera characters would consider reasonable.

 

While Keys is still most effective courting life's elusive what-ifs, Dion remains the queen of the declarative statement, and "Taking Chances" rumbles with them. It may have been a risk for Dion, who rarely writes her own material, to work with new pals including former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody and R&B all-pro Ne-Yo, and to let an old one, Aldo Nova, persuade some tentative rocking out. But these collaborators all brought their vision of Céline into the studio with them, and her thespian glory still rules the day.

 

With her tragic sense of phrasing and her perfect command of the vocal throb, Dion is truly pop's operatic heroine, except that unlike Carmen or Butterfly, she never dies. Her emotionalism is huge, yet somehow not daunting; her slightly awkward physical presence adds to her approachability. Singing about passion and survival, Dion connects them to ordinary life. Her performances show how much work it takes to sing well, just as her songs reflect on how much energy it takes to love.

 

To do this, Dion needs songs that demand heavy lifting. Perry comes through for her on "Taking Chances." Collaborating with Keys, hit maker Perry leads the young star away from herself, toward platitudes. But her two songs on "Taking Chances" run on melodrama that feeds Dion's strengths.

 

"My Love" starts as a whisper in a chilly marital bedroom and slowly builds into a cry of moral righteousness; Dion reads it like "Hamlet." Then there's "New Dawn," a full-on gospel number that mentions Jesus but ultimately has room for only one divine source. "I am woman!" Dion clamors. "A mountain I will climb!" Somewhere, Helen Reddy is quietly cursing; Dion has stolen her calm feminist statement and made it into myth.

 

The pop goddess lineage is a flexible one, changing with each new generation.

 

Keys, a hip-hop baby whose musicianship and hipster credibility help her step out of the women's lounge and into the realm of "real" (i.e. male) musicians, goes several steps beyond Dion in updating the goddess for post-feminist high achievers. Unlike Dion, who's made a lifetime commitment, Keys may someday go beyond the drama of self-realization and into uncharted territory.

 

That won't be a loss, because there's always a new goddess in the wings. This week, Jordin Sparks, the latest "American Idol," takes her first official turn in the role. Her debut album, "Jordin Sparks" (in stores Tuesday), is a friendly outing, steered by star production teams such as Bloodshy & Avant and Stargate; it's not the intriguing country-soul-Broadway amalgam her "Idol" performances hinted at, but that's OK -- she's a teen and she sounds right doing teen pop.

 

Deep into the album, though, there's a ballad called "God Loves Ugly" written by Christa Black, with whom Sparks once toured, backing Christian pop star Michael W. Smith. It's the kind of song that will make many cringe and just as many weep. A story of, yes, magical transformation due to the love of a good man (or God or inner self -- or all of those, in no particular order), "God Loves Ugly" builds quietly, like a cloud getting ready to rain. Sparks approaches it with a show-tune lover's sense of distance; she shows a glimmer of self-consciousness amid the tears. Who knows? Maybe Sparks will grow to be a goddess we haven't heard from yet.

[stsheep]

Skies of LA is the most beautiful song in the album for me.

English is not my native language.

Can anybody tell me what does "LA" mean??

LosAngeles?? Is there any other meaning? why LosAngeles?

 

one song in The Colour of my love also named in LA

"i remember LA"

Edited November 19, 2007 at 09:30 AM by stsheep

[nano]

Yeah...L.A. = Los Angeles.

[Davey84]

thanks for the articale Mathias! very objective and good!

[bronzey]

Skies of LA is the most beautiful song in the album for me.

English is not my native language.

Can anybody tell me what does "LA" mean??

LosAngeles?? Is there any other meaning? why LosAngeles?

 

 

According to 'The Dream',

 

Then there is a song I did for Celine Dion called Sky's of L.A., which is about what our future looks like. You know like the sky of L.A., cloudy, full of dirt, etc. I love that song.

 

Source

 

There you go !!!

[stsheep]

Skies of LA is the most beautiful song in the album for me.

English is not my native language.

Can anybody tell me what does "LA" mean??

LosAngeles?? Is there any other meaning? why LosAngeles?

 

 

According to 'The Dream',

 

Then there is a song I did for Celine Dion called Sky's of L.A., which is about what our future looks like. You know like the sky of L.A., cloudy, full of dirt, etc. I love that song.

 

Source

 

There you go !!!

 

 

Thank U a lot!

[Frida]

Celine is featured in one of the most read womens magazine here, one that's mostly filled with 70% royalties, 25% swedish celebs and 5% food/beaty/travel, and now our celiiiiiiiiiine

I don't have the energy to translate the whole thing (and there's nothing new either, they talk about her childhood all the way up to this day, the album and the tour and the producer Pär Åström talks about her). It's all VEEERY very positive, yaay

And the women who reads this won't download it, they'll buy the actual cd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've never seen this one, does anyone know if it's in the gallery somewhere?

[fab]

can u scan the magazine please ???

[lyn]

In the goddess' realm

 

Pop divas want to take you higher and higher. And transform themselves too.

 

By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 19, 2007

 

FEMALE pop stars who attain the attributes of goddesses -- emblematic names, signature fragrances, the floating hair of Botticelli's "Venus" -- tend to share a few qualities. They are athletic vocalists, usually with multi-octave ranges, who can hold a note longer than most magicians can stay submerged in water. Their signature songs blend romantic axioms with the more current language of self-help. Their music is frequently dismissed as banal, yet often helps regular folk contemplate profundities, at weddings or funerals, or when a baby is born.

 

These traits link Whitney to Mariah to Shania to Céline to Faith to Beyoncé to Christina to Alicia, although each has her own strengths and quirks. But something subtler also connects them. Musically, they're border jumpers. On the surface, they epitomize pop banality, but they regularly defy their home genres, blithely disregarding musical rules that hem in more admired (and usually male) pop practitioners. Whitney Houston set the template for this role by turning a country hit, Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," into a smash that redefined crossover R&B.

 

The mainstream's pop goddesses also blur lines on the level of identity. Many are biracial. Céline Dion is obviously bilingual. All pop stars are mandated to continually remodel themselves, but few do so as dramatically as Mariah Carey, who fled innocence (and Tommy Mottola) to become hip-hop's super-sexy honey. Christina Aguilera's been a teen sweetie, a sex radical and a retro vamp. Beyoncé, one suspects, hasn't even begun to show us her thousand faces.

 

More trend-focused dance-floor queens -- the ones who follow in Madonna's boot steps -- turn their makeovers into performances. For them, style comes first, and feeling flows from it. The goddesses take us inside the process, their songs chronicling how it feels to change from within. Their music is all about becoming bigger and better, with motivational lyrics, surging semi-operatic melodies and churchy rhythms. They show us how, as Oprah says, to run toward our best.

 

Chat shows, women's magazines and chick lit belong to the same world, where women rule -- and struggle. As theorist Laura Kipnis has pointed out, "Femininity in its current incarnation . . . is built on an underlying sense of female inadequacy." Pop goddesses represent women's constant fight to keep fulfilling their exhaustingly inexhaustible potential.

 

So, it's no shock that the two new goddess offerings commanding the charts have been packaged as transformations. Dion is "Taking Chances" on her eighth studio album; on her third, Alicia Keys is finally, truly presenting herself "As I Am."

 

In reality, neither album deviates much from what these women have previously accomplished. Keys continues to develop her warm, contemplative approach to hip-hop R&B. Dion, celebrating the end of her long Las Vegas run, employs some new producers to go beyond ringing the rafters but remains most convincing at full blast.

 

Experimentation pays off for Keys, not on the rockish outings with John Mayer and Linda Perry that she's been emphasizing in interviews, but on the ones where she turns back toward the themes that have served her best. Her great subject is the unsettling swirl of unresolved romance; although precocious, Keys understands the teen heart, her thoughtfulness and skill the perfect foils for goose bumps and hot blood.

 

Although she shows off her sisterliness on the sing-along "Superwoman" and sobs seriously through the hit "No One," Keys wasn't made for grand pronouncements. As she continues to mature, she would be wise to hang on to that teenage feeling of promise and uncertainty.

 

On the Jack Splash productions "Teenage Love Affair" and "Wreckless Love," Keys revisits the sweet folly of adolescence with the lighter heart of someone who's survived it. "I Need You," which sounds a little like a John Legend outtake, builds to a dense flurry of sounds suggesting connubial bliss. And the breathy "Like You'll Never See Me Again," which has been compared to Prince but actually recalls two other 1980s synth popsters -- Janet Jackson and Berlin -- makes the kind of romantic demands that only young lovers and soap opera characters would consider reasonable.

 

While Keys is still most effective courting life's elusive what-ifs, Dion remains the queen of the declarative statement, and "Taking Chances" rumbles with them. It may have been a risk for Dion, who rarely writes her own material, to work with new pals including former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody and R&B all-pro Ne-Yo, and to let an old one, Aldo Nova, persuade some tentative rocking out. But these collaborators all brought their vision of Céline into the studio with them, and her thespian glory still rules the day.

 

With her tragic sense of phrasing and her perfect command of the vocal throb, Dion is truly pop's operatic heroine, except that unlike Carmen or Butterfly, she never dies. Her emotionalism is huge, yet somehow not daunting; her slightly awkward physical presence adds to her approachability. Singing about passion and survival, Dion connects them to ordinary life. Her performances show how much work it takes to sing well, just as her songs reflect on how much energy it takes to love.

 

To do this, Dion needs songs that demand heavy lifting. Perry comes through for her on "Taking Chances." Collaborating with Keys, hit maker Perry leads the young star away from herself, toward platitudes. But her two songs on "Taking Chances" run on melodrama that feeds Dion's strengths.

 

"My Love" starts as a whisper in a chilly marital bedroom and slowly builds into a cry of moral righteousness; Dion reads it like "Hamlet." Then there's "New Dawn," a full-on gospel number that mentions Jesus but ultimately has room for only one divine source. "I am woman!" Dion clamors. "A mountain I will climb!" Somewhere, Helen Reddy is quietly cursing; Dion has stolen her calm feminist statement and made it into myth.

 

The pop goddess lineage is a flexible one, changing with each new generation.

 

Keys, a hip-hop baby whose musicianship and hipster credibility help her step out of the women's lounge and into the realm of "real" (i.e. male) musicians, goes several steps beyond Dion in updating the goddess for post-feminist high achievers. Unlike Dion, who's made a lifetime commitment, Keys may someday go beyond the drama of self-realization and into uncharted territory.

 

That won't be a loss, because there's always a new goddess in the wings. This week, Jordin Sparks, the latest "American Idol," takes her first official turn in the role. Her debut album, "Jordin Sparks" (in stores Tuesday), is a friendly outing, steered by star production teams such as Bloodshy & Avant and Stargate; it's not the intriguing country-soul-Broadway amalgam her "Idol" performances hinted at, but that's OK -- she's a teen and she sounds right doing teen pop.

 

Deep into the album, though, there's a ballad called "God Loves Ugly" written by Christa Black, with whom Sparks once toured, backing Christian pop star Michael W. Smith. It's the kind of song that will make many cringe and just as many weep. A story of, yes, magical transformation due to the love of a good man (or God or inner self -- or all of those, in no particular order), "God Loves Ugly" builds quietly, like a cloud getting ready to rain. Sparks approaches it with a show-tune lover's sense of distance; she shows a glimmer of self-consciousness amid the tears. Who knows? Maybe Sparks will grow to be a goddess we haven't heard from yet.

 

 

Mm excellent article. Very insightful. Thank you!

[nano]

Thanks Frida!!

[Frida]

can u scan the magazine please ???

 

 

I'm sorry but no, my scanner doesn't work...

[Fran]

At last the promo in Spain has started! Before the Comedian Serie most wachted here (more than 5 million people) the actors from the serie make an add watching the DVD on TV and talking about Céline and the new album at the end the handsome boy said that he keeps the album because she want to start taking chances with Céline... (bit stupid). Anyway! very good promotion! Edited November 19, 2007 at 09:01 PM by Fran

[Ronny83]

and the producer Pär Åström talks about her

OMG! Please, can you translate only the Peer part? Please. Please. Please.

[Nando Férri]

I LUUUUUUUURRRRRVE Peer!

[miracle_girl]

Seeing the tour promo from amazon just made me really emotional!!

 

My parents got me tickets to see her today

and when i watched the promo i felt sooo exited!!!

i cant believe im acctually going to be in the same place as celine!!

and watching her sing

 

its been an amazing year

amazing album

amazing tour

cant wait till MAY!!!

[mebe]

Today I bought tickets for the show in Boston.

When we purchase them on ticketmaster, they ask you if u want to download a copy of the album on iTunes.

But the thing is that they said there were 21 songs! But I couldn't see the tracklisting.

There must be Map To My Heart and The Reason I Go On but what are the 3 other songs???

[nano]

wow..I just heard "TC" ad on Radio Nova. I freaked out..it's so rare to hear Celine ads on Finnish radio/tv stations.

The radio spot is the same that's rolling on TV (well, only the audio is the same..lol)

...I still haven't been able to cap the ads.

[Frida]

and the producer Pär Åström talks about her

OMG! Please, can you translate only the Peer part? Please. Please. Please.

 

".... one of them is Pär Åström, who has written seven songs and produced ten for Céline in just a few years.

- The first time was for the album "A new day hs come", to which I and Anders Bagge wrote 'Sorry for love'. It was going to be recorded in Montreal and we flew over to produce it. Céline was very relaxed and cool, and she has also a lot of humour. Her husband René Angelil is also very nice (says: sympathetic) - and is very fond of food. () The first thing René asked Pär was if he had tasted a special hamburger with chili, a specialty in Montreal. When Pär said he hadn't, René immediately ordered 30 hamburgers from his favourite place, everyone in the studio simply HAD to try his favourite burger!

Pär has met Céline and her husband many times since then, for example when they lived in Jupiter/West Palm Beach, Florida, close to Jesper Parnevik's home.

- Céline is great! A professional who actually trusts the producer, something not everyone does. I get to keep working until I'm satisfied, and tell her how to sing - even though she's the best singer in the world!

 

 

Then there is the whole story about the tape they sent to René, the ESC, the love story + wedding and blah blah blah

 

 

- The last time I saw Céline in Las Vegas was this summer and she was actually better than ever. More beautiful, more athletic than I've ever seen her and she has never sung so good. And what an energy! She was like a Formula 1 car filled with rocket fuel!"

Edited November 20, 2007 at 01:50 PM by Frida

[nano]

lool..I'm glad I actually understood everything..

 

but thanks for the translation, Frida.

[Frida]

 

Pär Åström and his girlfriend Sofia Källgren

[Frida]

lool..I'm glad I actually understood everything..

 

but thanks for the translation, Frida.

 

 

oh my god, could you read that small text?

[Nando Férri]

Oh!!! Sweet Peer!!! What lovely things to say! You go boy.

[nano]

lool..I'm glad I actually understood everything..

 

but thanks for the translation, Frida.

 

 

oh my god, could you read that small text?

lol..no!

But I read the article in the library..they had the magazine there.

[Frida]

lool..I'm glad I actually understood everything..

 

but thanks for the translation, Frida.

 

 

oh my god, could you read that small text?

lol..no!

But I read the article in the library..they had the magazine there.

 

aaah, okay

[celinefanonline]

can i say something here... is it only me or what Peer does look a little like Stevo.......

[pepillo90]

can i say something here... is it only me or what Peer does look a little like Stevo.......

 

 

Yeaaah

[mebe]

What are the 21 songs on Taking Chances mentioned on Ticketmaster when you buy tickets for her show???????

[mirage]

According to Nielsen SoundScan, Céline's new album: "Taking Chances", makes its debut at #3 of this week's best-selling album chart in the U.S.A. selling 214,000 copies. "One Heart" (2003) and "A New Day Has Come" (2002), at their U.S. week-debuts, sold respectively 432,000 and 527,000 copies.

 

one heart sold more? whahha...

 

so much for their promo!!! more then she did with LTAL...

uhuh...wrong shows runeé!!!!

[changepas39]

Well I finally got enough nerve to do it tonight and i'd have to say i am happy. I took the japanese booklet and the us standard edition case and cut and got a taking chances jewel case!!!

 

 

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f131/cha...-22-07_0252.jpg

 

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f131/cha...-22-07_0253.jpg

 

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f131/cha...-22-07_0254.jpg

Edited November 22, 2007 at 08:15 AM by changepas39