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ARTISTRY & IMAGE
Celine Dion grew up listening to the music of Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Carole King, Anne Murray, Barbra Streisand and the Bee Gees, all of whom she would eventually collaborate with. During her younger years, which she spent performing in her parents' piano bar along with her other siblings, she also performed many songs by Ginette Reno and other popular Québécois artists. She has also expressed appreciation for Édith Piaf, Sir Elton John, Cher, Tina Turner and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, as well as many soul singers of the 1960s, 70's and 80's, including Roberta Flack, Etta James and Patti Labelle, whose songs she would later rerecord. Her English-language material has been influenced by numerous genres, including pop, rock,gospel, R&B and soul, and her lyrics focus on themes of poverty, world hunger, and spirituality, with an overemphasis on love and romance. After the birth of her child, her work also began to emphasize maternal bond and brotherly love. Describing her voice, The New York Times writes "Ms. Dion...is a belter with a high, thin, slightly nasal, nearly vibratoless soprano and a good-sized arsenal of technical skills. She can deliver tricky melismas, produce expressive vocal catches and sustain long notes without the tiniest wavering of pitch. And as her hit duets...have shown, she is a reliable harmony voice". (From Stephen Holden, The New York Times). Celine has faced considerable criticism from many critics, who state that her music often retreats behind pop and soul conventions, and is marked by excessive sentimentality. According to Keith Harris of Rolling Stone magazine, "Dion´s sentimentality is bombastic and defiant rather than demure and retiring.... she stands at the end of the chain of drastic devolution that goes Aretha-Whitney-Mariah. Far from being an aberration, Dion actually stands as a symbol of a certain kind of pop sensibility—bigger is better, too much is never enough, and the riper the emotion the more true". Dion´s francophone releases, by contrast, tend to be deeper and more varied than her English releases, and consequently have achieved more credibility. Dion is often regarded as one of pop music's most influential voices and she possesses a five-octave vocal range. In a countdown of the "22 Greatest Voices in Music" by Blender Magazine and MTV, she placed ninth (sixth for a female), and she was also placed fourth in Cove magazine´s list of "The 100 Outstanding Pop Vocalists". Upon her debut, many critics had welcomed her restrained vocal inflections, and she was praised for her technical virtuosity and intensity. As Charles Alexander of Time writes, "Her voice glides effortlessly from deep whispers to dead-on high notes, a sweet siren that combines force with grace." As her music progressed, however, Dion's vocal performances came to resemble more closely those of her contemporaries, especially Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, and she was heavily criticized for oversinging and for lacking the emotional intensity that once was a part of her earlier work. One critic noted that the emotion "seems to have been trained right out of her lovely voice", leaving her with more voice than heart. "My heart will go on" (1998), One of Dion´s biggest hits, and one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, "My heart will go on" has received equal degrees of praise and disapproval from critics and fans alike. Many critics have stated that Dion´s involvement in the production aspect of her music is fundamentally lacking, which results in her work being overproduced and impersonal. However, coming from a family in which all of her siblings were musicians, she learned to play instruments like the guitar, and practiced with a Fender Stratocaster during the recording sessions of her album, "Falling into You". Also, she helped to compose many of her earlier French songs, and had always tried to involve herself with the production and recording of her albums. On her first English album, which she recorded before she had a firm command of the English language, she expressed disapproval of the record, which could have been avoided if she had assumed more creative input. By the time she released her second English album "Celine Dion", she had assumed more control of the production and recording process, hoping to dispel earlier criticisms. She stated, "On the second album I said, 'Well, I have the choice to be afraid one more time and not be 100% happy, or not be afraid and be part of this album'. This is my album". She would continue to involve herself in the production of subsequent releases, helping to write a few of her songs on "Let´s Talk About Love" (1997) and "These Are Special Times" (1998). Celine is often the subject of media ridicule and parody, and is frequently impersonated on shows like "MADtv", "Saturday Night Live", "South Park", "Royal Canadian Air Farce" and "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" for her strong accent and on-stage movements. However, Celine has stated that she is unaffected by the comments, and is flattered that people take the time to impersonate her. She even invited Ana Gasteyer, who parodied her on SNL, to appear on stage during one of her performances. While she is rarely politically outspoken, in 2005 following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Dion appeared on "Larry King Live" and tearfully criticized the U.S. government´s slow response in aiding the victims of the hurricane: "There´s people still there waiting to be rescued. To me that is not acceptable. How can it be so easy to send planes in another country to kill everybody in a second and destroy lives. We need to serve our country". After her interview, she stated, "When I do interviews with Larry King or the big TV shows like that, they put you on the spot, which is very difficult. I do have an opinion, but I´m a singer. I'm not a politician".
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