INTERVIEW: IN PERSON, CELION'S NEW DAY

[Céline's Blues]

Celine's new day

<h3 id="deck">Dion is now relaxed enough to talk about the criticism she's endured, the rumours of suicide threats and anorexia, and what it's like to finally feel beautiful</h3> CHRISSY ILEY

 

Special to The Globe and Mail

 

January 12, 2008

 

LONDON -- Celine Dion has sold 200 million records worldwide, making her the best-selling female singer ever. The mystery is, who exactly buys her music? She doesn't have quite the right shoes to be a fully fledged gay icon, and she certainly doesn't have a teen market. She has an amazing outstretching voice that reaches far into the vast expanses of the world's middle brow.

 

Recently though, she has been reappraised. Who would have thought Celine Dion could ever be cool? It's a bit like a chenille sweater the colour of an eggplant I got from H&M in 1992. It was never cool. It was ubiquitous, bland and not particularly fetching until it grew old. Now it's vintage, quirky, one-off.

 

Dion herself said a few years ago, "I don't try to be cool. That's not me." Yet weirdly maybe she's so uncool she is now cool. She had a five-year residency at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, which is just coming to an end. It gave her more than the $250-million (U.S.) she supposedly made from it. It seemed such a strange thing to do at first, yet it brought her respect. . Prince, Justin Timberlake, Ice-T and Britney Spears have all been to see her show. Superstar music producer Timbaland has said he'd consider teaming up with her.

 

When you call Caesar's Palace they answer with the name of her show. "It's a New Day at Caesar's Palace." And so it became a new day for Celine.

 

We meet under surreal circumstances. She's been mentoring the finalists at X Factor, an American Idol-like British television talent show. It's Saturday night. She's in a big trailer in the studio parking lot, in a state of high excitement. She has long tousled hair, which I suspect is real, and the face that launched a thousand why-the-long-face jokes isn't even that long. Big eyes, sensuous mouth, in the flesh, she's even sexy.

 

You might have imagined Celine Dion to be this ethereal, whimsical thing, but she's surprisingly savvy. Her new album Taking Chances (the single has the same name) is unexpectedly edgy and rockier. It has producers like Linda Perry, best known for her work with Pink, Courtney Love and Gwen Stefani.

 

Twenty years ago, she was this child-puppet-songbird thing. Now she's 39, one year older than Stefani, and weirdly emotional and available. The girl from Charlemagne, Que., still speaks with a French-Canadian accent. Sometimes what she says doesn't make sense, but it sounds very poetic and deep, not bland.

 

"It's me, who I am today," she says about the departure represented by Taking Chances. "I grew. I didn't change. I evolved, which is different."

 

Of course some people really don't like who she is. She has always been hugely criticized about her clothes, her taste, her marriage (anti-Celine feeling even erupted in hospitable Halifax before Christmas, leading to her manager-husband, René Angélil, cancelling a planned concert of hers there next summer after negative press and Internet comment). But she said recently, "For the first time I feel beautiful." I wondered if this was because it was the first time she'd been settled in one place for several years. Or because she was insecure.

 

"Well, actually it was because my life went very fast. You are very busy, you sing in French, you sing in English. ... You don't have time to think who you are. Now I prepare myself more." In a way this doesn't answer the question at all. But I think she means she found time to be who she was and that made her beautiful.

 

"I was holding on too long to my career, to my song, to my vocal, to a note," she says, sending herself up. "That's all they would send me, those songs with eight minutes on one note."

 

She laughs. She has a huge laugh. "In the beginning I needed to prove myself to the industry. Not any more." How many million albums had she sold before she realized she didn't have to prove herself? "This is the first album. Since my son was born I know my job as a mother is much more important. The other stuff is not important at all, it's fun."

 

On the TV we get a close-up of Beverly, one of the X Factor contestants Dion has been coaching. She's crying.

 

"This is great," Dion says. "I told her not to hold her tears." Dion doesn't hold on to her tears at all. "I was criticized many times for that in my career, but people who cry are blessed, so I do not hold on to them. I was crying all the time when I was young."

 

She's proud of her ability to weep. "I cry at everything. When I see passion, like with some of these performers. I love fighters. I cry at everything my son does.

 

"I am much happier though now because I have meaning in my life. Before I was fighting for my place, holding on to my dream. Now I have a son and I am in love with my husband and I am singing because I love my passion of expressing myself through music."

 

You wonder how stressed she must have been before with all that fighting for her place. She did look a lot different then. Her face used to look so strained and tight. She wore trouser suits a lot, dressed much older. Now she's always in lacy things and she likes a bit of corseting. Does she feel more sexy? "Absolutely. More sexy and more grounded."

 

She used to say, "I don't try to be sexy, that's not for me."

 

"But I am not trying," she quips coquettishly. For me, being cool is to feel happy and stable and sure of myself. In the beginning, I think I wasn't involved in my career, I was just trying to do the job."

 

Part of the Vegas residency was about stability for her son René-Charles. "When we moved to Las Vegas my heart of a mother was very fragile. I didn't want to tour the world and bring him backstage one night here, one night there. Now he's 7, I am ready to see the world with him.

 

"We would love another baby but we're not planning anything right now because I am touring for a year, but after that we'd love to try."

 

Before Angélil's treatment for skin cancer [he's been in remission for several years], she had in-vitro fertilization, and frozen embryos await her. So trying may not be as easy-breezy as she puts it.

 

There is no doubt that Angélil's cancer was part of her evolution. Twenty-six years her senior and her manager since she was 12 years old, Angélil may have started off as the Svengali in the relationship, but the dynamic shifted after his cancer, discovered nine years ago. "Yes, I felt I was in charge as well," Dion admits.

 

"You know, we have an extravagant life but we are normal people. Cancer happens to people.

 

"Once it touches you, it's in your life forever and it makes you realize how precious life is and how you have to live every day at its fullest."

 

I tell here that there are things that I read about her that I'm wondering about. One, she is anorexic. Two, she tried to commit suicide.

 

And three, she doesn't dare have a glass of wine in case you become an alcoholic. She is outraged. "Okay. First, I'm not anorexic. It pisses people off that I am thin and I don't make any effort. Second, it was written that I had committed suicide, that I was dead. I had to ring my mother to say I am not dead.

 

"I was freaking out. Imagine, my whole family were freaking out. I don't even know where that came from.

 

"And as for the third thing, it's also not true. I love champagne. Cristal is my favourite. A glass of wine doesn't destroy the voice. Four bottles will.

 

"I have an extraordinary life and people are trying to find something wrong with my life." She's angry now, especially about the anorexia bit.

 

She's in pretty good shape. She has elegant thin arms but no bones sticking out. "I have been thin all my life. Nobody in my family is overweight."

 

She says that now she's ending Vegas she will have more time to relax, but she's a non-stop doer. Thinking is not a natural state for her, although she's recently discovered she likes to read. "I was concerned because I didn't go to school a lot and I was never interested in reading. My mum said, 'Don't worry, you are so busy. You've just had a baby, don't add reading to your list.' Now I read a lot."

 

Recently she's been reading in English too, Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra.

 

"I had an image once about what is a man and what is a woman. The man is a tree. He's big, he's beautiful, moves the leaves, makes the shadow. ... The roots of the tree is the woman. Without the roots, he won't survive. ...But it takes two together to make the tree healthy. The man can take the spotlight, but only with the woman behind him. For me, it's the tree of life."

 

I'm not sure if this is pure Deepak or pure Dion. I suspect the latter. Eccentric? Yes. Strangely submissive for one of the most powerful women in the music industry? Yes. But somehow, endearing.

[tal-sh2]

That was a beautiful article. I so love all what she said especially about the man and the woman.

Is Celine starts to be philosopher ?

[Black Kitten]

ANOTHER CELION??? or you just combine her first and last name?

 

it's weird i always hear someone calling her CELION.

 

CELINE CELINE CELINE

[Céline's Blues]

It's CELION, deal with it! BBC confirmed.

[dlh1]

Old interview, it's in the topic about the album!

[Macaronie]

Yeah it looks familiar.

[Nando Férri]

Old interview, it's in the topic about the album!

Yeah... old news man!

[Davey84]

Yeah seb, I think you yourself posted this interview before! hahaha but it's a great one Edited January 12, 2008 at 05:36 PM by Davey84

[fred]

Soon Sebbaboa will give us a perfect explenasion.

 

/fred

[tativale]

old or not I didn't know about it lol and i love it so thank you for sharing AGAIN!!! hehehehe

[Céline's Blues]

HOW DARE YOU! Everyone will be soon banned from this forum. You won't want to share Mathia's (CSCfan's) fate, believe me! Sainkho is waiting with her "Dream Of Death":

 

http://www.peter-bastian.net/img/portfolio/jazz/sw/Sainkho_Namtchilak.jpg

[fred]

HOW DARE YOU! Everyone will be soon banned from this forum. You won't want to share Mathia's (CSCfan's) fate, believe me! Sainkho is waiting with her "Dream Of Death":

 

http://www.peter-bastian.net/img/portfolio/jazz/sw/Sainkho_Namtchilak.jpg

uhm, hate to brake it to you but Mathias is still here, so that means your banning is quite ineffective and we shouldn't be frightned by your empty treaths. Everybody partaaaay!!! Sebbbaboa can do no harm!!!

 

And oh Sebbaboa, have you called Björk, you better tell her you found her lon lost sister.

 

/fred

Edited January 12, 2008 at 06:21 PM by fred