Céline being cool again

[DaddysGirl21A]

Feels like they waking up again.

Now the official word is out about the documentary, feels like there is time to post stuff on Instagram again.

 

Though it also feels a bit late to post that she is global ambassador for the month January like 2 days before February.

 

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-F721B met Tapatalk

 

I agree, they should have posted that on January 1st!

[scielle]

Fun article worth a read: Awkward Céline Dion Moments Caught On Camera

 

"Céline Dion belongs to that rare class of artists who don't let their eminence weigh down on them. With countless laurels and recognitions to her name, she is revered as one of the world's bestselling musical artists of all time. In other words, she is one of the world's most important treasures. It isn't just her music that gives her this distinction though; Dion's unassuming character plays a big part. Those with even a remote knowledge of her legacy will be able to identify the unique genre of quirkiness her public image is associated with. It leads to Dion routinely finding herself in awkward situations — and, more often than not, it is Dion herself who manufactures those clumsy consequences for herself.

 

She is unafraid to break into high-pitched rhythms in the middle of interviews, thoroughly confounding reporters. She is shockingly carefree with her expressions. Good, bad, ugly — she lets her emotions flow. And most importantly, despite it all, she just doesn't embarrass easily. Dion is the queen of confident self-possession if there ever was one. Owing to a rare neurological disorder she is facing, Dion has all but retreated from the public eye over the past three years. It's why her recent surprise appearance at the 2024 Grammys drew such a seismic response; fans couldn't get enough of seeing Dion take the stage once again. To honor the musical genius in all her bold, bizarre glory, here are the most awkward Céline Dion moments caught on camera. "

 

Followed by a write up of the moments we know & love. Written from a good place and worth a read.

[kaye2023]

Fun article worth a read: Awkward Céline Dion Moments Caught On Camera

[. . . ]

Followed by a write up of the moments we know & love. Written from a good place and worth a read.

 

Thanks for sharing this! Fun read. That LK interview will never not make me laugh, not because of her passionate outburst, but because of LK's absurd request for a song as she had tears streaming down her face lol LK I think was a genuine fan? (and Céline, kind as always, indulged) but talk about totally tone deaf timing lol

 

She also found herself in an awkward position at a meet-and-greet in Las Vegas, where she was made part of a fan's marriage proposal that didn't go as smoothly as planned. According to Cosmopolitan, the woman didn't immediately say yes when her boyfriend popped the question, prompting Dion to go behind the curtains out of second-hand embarrassment.

 

lol I only saw the pics. So that's why she was behind the curtains. I thought she was joking to give them privacy.

 

I love that Céline can be glam and poised one moment, and goofy as hell the next. And not take her fame so seriously.

[kaye2023]

Just wanted to add... many lists have been made about Céline, from fashion to funny awkward moments to career highlights. I am annoyed one incident never makes it to any list that foreshadowed what kind of life and career she's destined to have—dramatic and with humor into superstardom: her Eurovision nail-biter of a score reporting, when it pretty much looked like she lost, only to dramatically win by ONE point lmao Talent! Suspense! Tears! Victory! Dramaaa!

[scielle]

Nobody can resist a IACBTMN singalong (sadly, no video) -

[scielle]

Crunch, a gym chain, has teamed up with Titanique for Celine-themed bike rides. (I imagine this is like the Soulcycle themed rides.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4Y0bEaOr5z/?igsh=MTk1NXlqMTA1aHQxMw==

[Critiaslux]

Crunch, a gym chain, has teamed up with Titanique for Celine-themed bike rides. (I imagine this is like the Soulcycle themed rides.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4Y0bEaOr5z/?igsh=MTk1NXlqMTA1aHQxMw==

 

Looking forward for the videos of those bike themed rides 😅

[scielle]

Wow, almost brought a tear to my eye:

[scielle]

Does this qualify as “cool”? 😉

[scielle]

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[scielle]

Note the shirt: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7EnheCsVMe/?igsh=MXNxeThjaGY4YmJ3ZQ==

[scielle]

Some Eyes on Me dancers: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7oGXdcv9f7/?igsh=MXV4bjFzeDdiMnIyMg==

[ewh12]

Spotted today:

 

Honda Civic with two 35-40yr olds, one male, one female, with the car windows down in the 25°C hot weather driving on College & Bathurst street in Toronto while blasting "Its All Coming Back To Me Now" with no worries, or cares. just having fun and occasionally singing like there's no tomorrow.

 

Either they were celebrating the first day of Pride or it's just the continuing Célineassaince in full force!

[CourageProject]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6yOwCmoYxP/?igsh=MXg4eG1mOWhhNGZzaw==

 

Now this is why it's Celinaissance

[scielle]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6yOwCmoYxP/?igsh=MXg4eG1mOWhhNGZzaw==

 

Now this is why it's Celinaissance

 

Another one: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7vE8XUOq04/?igsh=MWw0aHg1OTB4aW1uNQ==

[jpatdeleon09]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6yOwCmoYxP/?igsh=MXg4eG1mOWhhNGZzaw==

 

Now this is why it's Celinaissance

 

This is so amazing! 🤩

[PuraVida]

I heard Celine playing at the grocery store last week. If I remember it was "A New Day Has Come" Edited June 9, 2024 at 12:34 PM by PuraVida

[ryba]

I heard BYLM and TTWII on German radio recently and could not believe it

[Céline RO]

I heard BYLM and TTWII on German radio recently and could not believe it

 

I mean, it depends what kind of station. Here in Romania, they play Céline all the time on AC stations, which are more mainstream than niche with some of the highest figures.

[scielle]

Excellent article in the Irish Independent. Posting the entire thing here because it’s behind a paywall.

 

https://www.independ...1554935715.html

 

From kitsch to cool: How singer Céline Dion survived the critics to retake her spot in the limelight

 

With her over-the-top ballads and garish outfits, music artist Céline Dion has been ridiculed for decades as being too naff. Now, ahead of a new documentary about her recent health struggles, we explore how she has suddenly become an icon.

 

Meadhbh McGrath

 

At this year’s Grammys ceremony, it wasn’t Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish who stole the show, but Céline Dion. Taking the main stage to present the final award of the night, it marked the French-Canadian singer’s first public appearance since being diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome — a rare neurological disease that causes muscle spasms in the lower back, legs and abdomen — in 2022.

 

Artists of all genres unanimously took to their feet in rapturous applause — an outpouring of support that might have once seemed unlikely to anyone who remembers the widespread Céline-bashing that accompanied her launch into the mainstream, belting out My Heart Will Go On for the Titanic soundtrack. Of course, much of it comes down to sympathy over her recent illness, which forced her to cancel a world tour and which she will open up about in the forthcoming documentary I Am: Céline Dion, streaming on Amazon Prime Video from June 25.

 

Yet there’s more to it. In his acclaimed 2007 book Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, Canadian music critic Carl Wilson catalogued the vast array of media attacks on Dion, from newspaper columnists to talk-show hosts to Saturday Night Live sketches. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called her voice “just furniture polish”, Q magazine named her one of the worst singers of all time, and My Heart Will Go On topped numerous polls of the most irritating songs ever.

 

In 2002, British critic Simon Frith — a self-professed fan of Dion — described her as “probably the most loathed superstar I can remember, at least by everyone I know, not just critics but even my mother-in-law”, adding: “I doubt if she will ever be redeemed, Abba-style, and what seems to concern everyone is that she is just naff.”

 

FM104 presenter Thomas Crosse, aka Crossy, recalls his childhood friends poking fun at him for his early love of Dion. “My very first tape was Falling into You in 1996. I was nine years of age and I would have known every single song — everyone had that one album that they listened to over and over and over again, and as a kid that was mine,” he recalls. “And you know, she wasn’t cool. It was very much like ‘What are you doing listening to her? Your mam would listen to her!’ She was mega-famous, but there was always that sort of naffness about her.”

 

While fans embraced the “naffness” — the exorbitant emotions; the vocal pyrotechnics; the uncomplicated lyrics; the effusive performances in which she thumps her chest and falls to her knees — critics scoffed, dismissing her work as hackneyed and histrionic.

 

David Metzer, a music historian and author of The Ballad in American Popular Music: From Elvis to Beyoncé, notes that cultural gatekeepers have often attacked what they see as unabashed emotionalism in popular songs.

 

“Over the years, you’ll have a singer or a style that is questioned by people as being emotionally excessive, cloying, sentimental, however you want to put it. But what always happens is that the detractors are the ones who fade away over time and the songs that they have questioned, they remain,” he explains, pointing to the criticism levelled at Barry Manilow — who is credited with inventing the power ballad — in the 1970s. “People are still listening to Barry Manilow today. Céline got that criticism in the 1990s into the early 2000s, but people are still listening to Céline today. It’s the attitude that they ran into that’s faded.”

 

He describes that attitude as “elitism born again”, in the form of the so-called “indie culture” that emerged in the 1990s, illustrated most potently in the outraged response to Dion beating singer-songwriter Elliott Smith at the 1998 Oscars. “Céline really became a target of that elitism,” Metzer says, adding that such an attitude has become more difficult to hold onto now our musical tastes have grown so varied.

 

“To restrict yourself based on this idea of taste, I think, becomes harder and harder in an age of increased pluralism in music and the variety of music that we have at our disposal,” he observes. “I think people realise that it takes a lot of effort to do that and ultimately, the one person who is impoverished by that is the person who insists on separating themselves.”

 

It hasn’t been eroded entirely. Last year, there was uproar when Dion was omitted from Rolling Stone’s list of the 200 greatest singers of all time, with ardent fans gathering outside the magazine’s office to protest her exclusion.

 

“I really had a hard time figuring out how she wasn’t in the top 200, because her voice has so many amazing qualities to it — the power of the voice, which everyone points out, but it has all these different colours, and it’s a voice that really has this strong emotional resonance to it,” Metzer says. “It’s very hard to find singers who can bring all those things to a song. The thing that gets lost about Céline is she is adventurous, too. She has this other side to her music, which no one really talks about: the whole French side. You don’t get so much of the power ballad stuff, she had a whole different style that she would explore with the French recordings. But she doesn’t get credit for the fact that she could sing so well in French and English, and have this whole French audience which we lose complete track of in the Anglo world — how many singers can do that?”

 

Dion is best known for her power ballads, which Metzer describes as “an emotional adrenaline rush”, promising four minutes of big-hearted music. As Crossy puts it: “Every single emotion you ever want is in her power ballad. You could meet a man, love a man, fall out of love with him, fall in love with him again, break up with him again — it’s everything you want. You can literally pour a glass of wine, sit in the dark on your own and whatever you’re feeling, it’s Céline Dion.”

 

On top of that, she didn’t hide her own feelings, tearing up on stage right along with her fans. “People like the emotional honesty that she brought to it. It’s like, ‘I sing these so-called sappy songs, but you know what, I love them. And I know people love them too, and they’re the people that I want to sing for,’” Metzer explains. “It was that honesty about the material that she was singing that attracted a lot of people.”

 

Victoria Lodge, a Dublin drag queen who has been impersonating Dion since 2018, insists that the singer is not only aware people see her as cheesy and over-the-top, but she’s in on the joke. “She was never like ‘Take me seriously!’ She always leaned into the silly elements of these power ballads,” Lodge says.

 

Brendan O’Loughlin, 98FM Big Breakfast presenter, agrees. “I think that’s probably Céline’s secret sauce. Céline is in on how ridiculous she is, she gets it,” he explains. “And oh my god, she oozes personality. Me and my friends went to see her in London pre-pandemic, and in the best way possible, she’s mental. She spoke absolute gibberish for half the time. I think that’s really her appeal. The gays adore her, because she can belt out a power ballad and be highly, highly entertaining at the same time.”

 

Outside of her concerts, the internet granted audiences greater access to Dion’s personality than they ever had in the 1990s and noughties through viral clips and interviews like her appearance on Carpool Karaoke, her Paris couture week video or her recent French Vogue cover story.

 

“People can see that side of her that doesn’t really come across in her music,” Lodge observes. “She’s quirky, she’s eccentric and she’s a lot more fun than these ballads make her out to be. She comes across unrestrained.

 

“She kind of feels like a woman who hasn’t been media trained whatsoever — she’s not saying anything scandalous, but at the same time, she’s not just giving the lines she’s been fed or smiling politely and getting through the interview. She doesn’t feel like an overly produced media persona, she’s just being Céline Dion.”

 

Now 56, many fans note that Dion long seemed far older than her years, holding her own alongside legends like Luciano Pavarotti and Barbra Streisand despite being decades younger.

 

“I had always thought of her as much older than she actually was, she came across that way I think,” says Vicki Notaro, a pop culture critic and author. “Céline has a really odd story when you think about it, in that she met her husband René [Angélil] when she was 12, and was 20 when they got together. Nowadays, that information would be on TikTok before she even had a song out.

 

“She’s been through a lot — one of 14 children in a family that didn’t have much money, bullying at school, fertility issues and miscarriages, and then becoming a widow in her forties. Now that she’s suffering her own health problems, I think it’s remarkable that she’s still appearing on the cover of French Vogue, still working. I think she’s amazing.”

 

The death of Dion’s husband in 2016, followed by the loss of her older brother Daniel two days later, marked a turning point for the singer. Through her children — fans of former Disney star and fashion icon Zendaya — she discovered the “image architect” Law Roach, whom she enlisted to dress her for Paris couture week. Pictures of Dion stepping out in an oversized Vetements hoodie bearing the faces of a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet above the sinking Titanic instantly went viral, heralding a major style transformation.

 

“It could have been such a cliché, but she made it look so cool. It just reinforced how iconic she is,” says stylist Aoife O’Doherty. It wasn’t Dion’s first standout fashion moment — O’Doherty identifies her backwards tuxedo at the 1999 Oscars as “one of the most polarising and still talked about red carpet moments” — yet it was a radical departure from the demure, ladylike gowns and “madame look” she cultivated during her Vegas residency.

 

“I remember her storming Paris and Milan fashion weeks in outlandish trendy get-ups and feeling really proud of always being a fan of hers,” Notaro adds. “She was finally cool!”

 

What made Dion’s looks all the more striking was how much fun she was clearly having, whether in head-to-toe turquoise, leather dungarees with bedazzled sunglasses, or the 22-pound fringed gown and towering feathered headpiece she wore to the 2019 Met Gala. “She doesn’t let the clothes wear her, she wears the clothes, because she’s a performer and she brings that to every look,” O’Doherty observes. “She’s not afraid of the clothes, she’s not afraid of hats, she’s not afraid of going big with it. She just has no fear, and you can see that in all the outfits and how experimental she is. She’ll take the risks. I don’t think that she’s trying really hard to be young either, I just think she’s someone who can really wear the clothes and she’s confident. Confidence is everything.”

 

While Dion’s wardrobe may have changed, Lodge argues the singer has remained wholly herself — the rest of the world is just catching up on what her fans knew all along. “It’s not actually anything Céline has done, because Céline is honestly still just being Céline. She’s really not doing anything different to what she was doing 20 to 30 years ago, but the way we consider her has changed.

 

“It’s often those female artists that are enjoyed predominantly by women and gays that are deemed as cheesy — it’s Céline, it’s Cher, it’s Kylie Minogue, it’s Bette Midler. I think we are a bit more conscious of those biases within the media, and those biases are being levelled out a bit because we have more diverse people making media. Whereas 20 to 30 years ago, most of the commentators were men who just weren’t getting it. Now, we don’t deem somebody with a strong female or queer fan base to be less legitimate than somebody with a strong male fan base.”

 

Watching the trailer for her documentary and seeing her speak about how hard she’s working to reconnect with her fans, it seems impossible that anyone would sneer at her. “Today, our icons are few and far between,” says Crossy. “[Artists] don’t work as hard. They don’t want to sing live or they need this or that, but the fact that Céline was like ‘I would crawl to get back to the stage’ — that is such a good work ethic, and it shows how much she misses that. I hope to God she performs again, and I’ll be there to see her.”

[Chantemoi]

Thanks for sharing that!

Everybody buckle up for Célinaissance Pt. 2!!

[lyn]

Excellent article in the Irish Independent. Posting the entire thing here because it’s behind a paywall.

 

https://www.independ...1554935715.html

 

Oh what a fantastic article thank you!

 

“You can literally pour a glass of wine, sit in the dark on your own and whatever you’re feeling, it’s Céline Dion.”

 

Why I’m gonna have me one of those Céline Dions right now.

[stevo]

Thank you so much for sharing that- it made me tear up a bit!

 

“… the rest of the world is just catching up on what her fans knew all along. “It’s not actually anything Céline has done, because Céline is honestly still just being Céline. She’s really not doing anything different to what she was doing 20 to 30 years ago, but the way we consider her has changed.”

[Állex Sodi]

 

“It’s often those female artists that are enjoyed predominantly by women and gays that are deemed as cheesy — it’s Céline, it’s Cher, it’s Kylie Minogue, it’s Bette Midler. I think we are a bit more conscious of those biases within the media, and those biases are being levelled out a bit because we have more diverse people making media. Whereas 20 to 30 years ago, most of the commentators were men who just weren’t getting it. Now, we don’t deem somebody with a strong female or queer fan base to be less legitimate than somebody with a strong male fan base.”

 

 

I have never thought about this from this perspective and reading it feels so obvious. That is going to be in my mind for a while. Patriarchy is really in the core of everything, isn’t?

 

[rfkavanagh]

This is by far my favorite quote, because it's so perfectly true.

 

Brendan O’Loughlin, 98FM Big Breakfast presenter, agrees. “I think that’s probably Céline’s secret sauce. Céline is in on how ridiculous she is, she gets it,” he explains. “And oh my god, she oozes personality. Me and my friends went to see her in London pre-pandemic, and in the best way possible, she’s mental. She spoke absolute gibberish for half the time. I think that’s really her appeal. The gays adore her, because she can belt out a power ballad and be highly, highly entertaining at the same time.”

[PuraVida]

That article has echoes of other articles written during the Celinaissance pt. 1 -- and reminded me of comments of singers like Charlotte Cardin who are huge Celine fans.

 

It's interesting though because I feel like Celine is categorised as "cheesy" way more than Whitney and Mariah were. But even apart from "cheesiness", there were words like "bombastic" and "saccharine" leveled at her like she was just showing off her voice and belting loudly without true feeling. But those words were very rarely thrown at Whitney and Mariah from what I understand.

[rfkavanagh]

That article has echoes of other articles written during the Celinaissance pt. 1 -- and reminded me of comments of singers like Charlotte Cardin who are huge Celine fans.

 

It's interesting though because I feel like Celine is categorised as "cheesy" way more than Whitney and Mariah were. But even apart from "cheesiness", there were words like "bombastic" and "saccharine" leveled at her like she was just showing off her voice and belting loudly without true feeling. But those words were very rarely thrown at Whitney and Mariah from what I understand.

 

Whitney (and to a slightly lesser extent, Mariah) also had a soul/R&B component that helped protect her from the accusations of pure schmaltzy pablum thrown at Céline, and Mariah was more involved in the writing of her material (even though she had plenty of power ballads herself, at least in the earlier part of her career). Céline didn't really have anything to dilute the "crazy French-Canadian white lady who belts out ballads" image (and I'd warrant that the "cheesy" accusation - or more appropriately, quétaine - comes in great part from her French-Canadian mannerisms, accent, etc.). Every attempt they made to sell her as a dancier, trendier artist failed miserably (e.g., LCMM, Misled, etc.) - ironically, that schmaltzy pablum was the only thing the broader audience wanted to hear her sing!

 

Poor Whitney got plenty of abuse hurled her way around the time of her second album, though - she was accused of selling out, making "white people music" and deserting her heritage. She was booed at the Soul Train Awards and called "Whitey Houston" - that all led to a concerted effort to make her third album more R&B-sounding.

 

Whitney and Mariah's material also evolved quite a lot more over their careers than Céline's - as much as we know she played with lots of different genres and was capable of doing so quite successfully, her mainstream English-language albums/singles never really varied that much beyond a few stylistic nods to the latest trends. Just look at how they kept on trotting out standard tracks like Stand By Your Side instead of Reveal or even Naked (just to take One Heart as an example).

Edited June 14, 2024 at 11:54 PM by rfkavanagh

[scielle]

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[Chantemoi]

2024 Pride was very special for me personally because of 1) how much Céline’s doc was buzzing on the lips of people I talked to, and 2) the huge outpouring of sympathy for & interest in her. When Amazon announced the release date, I suspected she might get a spike in popularity with the gays but this surpassed my wildest dreams.

 

Though I was hoping to hear SMHOF being played at the Chicago Pride Parade, I didn’t stay long enough to hear it. I’m sure it was though. However last night at a dance club, the DJ played a MHWGO remix and the entire room was singing along at the top of their lungs. It was an incredible moment as a fan, because at no point during the last decade have I heard her music in a gay club without me literally bribing the DJs to spin a song like IDAN or I’m Alive — and even then they seem to hesitate out of fear the dance floor will become deserted.

 

Another great highlight was when some new acquaintances invited me over to their apartment, warning that I’d be subjected to them “blasting Céline Dion for hours” and I was absolutely delighted to walk in to exactly that! Video after video played, and we danced and sang along to every word of every song.

 

What’s so remarkable is that I don’t think any of this would’ve happened one year ago.

Céline may not being topping charts in the U.S., but this doc has got to be her biggest moment since her heyday — and perhaps this moment tops even that, because very few people have the audacity to insult her or her music right now. It’s pure, unadulterated love!

 

Did anyone else hear her music this year at Pride??

 

Edited July 2, 2024 at 02:20 AM by Chantemoi

[scielle]

 

I don’t know about Pride specifically, but I did hear the doc randomly mentioned “at the water cooler” at work and I generally get the sense that a lot of people who aren’t necessarily fans are watching it, or at least expressing desire to do so. It has definitely reached beyond her core fan base, partiality because of the morbid curiosity factor (after the crisis scene made the rounds), but also I think because of the unanimously positive critical response.

And from what I’m seeing on social media, 95%+ of the commentary is very positive and supportive, and more importantly I’ve now seen countless comments along the lines of “not a fan of her music but am now a fan of her/ have newfound respect/ etc”.

Honestly, what more can you ask for from a project like this? It’s broadened her fan base and I think far more people are going to be receptive to what she does next. After seeing this, nobody can dismiss her as being a one-dimensional singing machine. I think a lot of people realized there’s more depth there than they gave her credit for. And that, I think, can genuinely set the stage for exciting things to come.