Front Burner - Front Burner Presents Céline: Understood, Episode 1

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Céline Dion is having a moment. It’s not her first. And millions of fans are hoping it won’t be her last. While Céline’s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely. This is the first episode of the four-part series from Understood, the anthology podcast that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. Hosted by Thomas Leblanc. Listen to episode 2 here.Follow Understood here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Jamie. So we've got a bit of a change of pace for you today. For the last little while, some of us here have been working on a different podcast feed called Understood. You should follow it.

It's really great. It's like a deep dive miniseries feed. You might have heard our seasons on Pornhub, Narendra Modi, Sam Bateman Freed, and FTX. Well, we've got a brand new season about a true icon, Celine Dion. It's more than just a bio though. It looks at a wild range of factors, business, culture, raw talent, of course, politics, that all combine to create Celine. So we have episode one of that for you today. If you like it, episode two is already out. So you can go over to the Understood feed, follow it,

and listen to that episode right away. We have also got links in our show notes. Okay, that's it. Have a great weekend. It was close to midnight in Paris. Oh, wow. People are coming down the stairs. And millions of people like me around the world were glued to the Olympic opening ceremonies on TV. That was a beautiful number. This is a party. It was a spectacle,

but colored smoke and dancers swinging from scaffolding around Notre Dame Cathedral. Oh, I think she's... Oh, Céline is coming. I think Céline is coming. Oh, no. Okay. I'd been watching for hours. They're zooming in on the logo. Is Celine there? Wondering if the rumors were true. Well, Celine performed. That's what everybody's asking. In 2022, Celine had been diagnosed with a rare neurological condition.

And there were doubts about whether she could ever sing again. Oh, Celine will be at the Louvre? And they're getting to Concorde? Where is this? They're giving us the whole damn tour. Or maybe she'll sing at the Arc de Triomphe, though.

Then, through heavy drops of rain, the cameras panned to the Eiffel Tower. Holy shit. Céline Dion. Wow. At first, she seemed so small. This tiny figure up on the glistening deck of the Tour Eiffel. But she looked so confident in her white beaded gown and sounded so strong.

This is incredible. It was surprisingly emotional. It had been years since we'd seen her like this. Her illness had kept her from the stage. And her absence felt like such a huge loss. This is a star whose career has spanned more than 40 years. In French and English, and reaches nearly every corner of the globe. My very first time in the Philippines.

And it feels amazing! And yet, as a culture writer, I'm always struck by just how unlikely, how singular her path to superstardom really was. I'm Thomas Leblanc, and this season of Understood, I want to piece together the cultural, political, and economic circumstances that helped manufacture Celine Dion, the pop icon. I love to sing. No kidding. It was not by accident that things just sort of fell into place.

As ubiquitous as Celine's glamorous success and popularity was, was this backlash and contempt for her. You're going to be Americanized. You're going to be anguished. I'm always going to stay a Francophone Quebecer all my life. Could it happen again? Could Celine Dion happen again? Celine Dion happen again. But to understand all that, we'll have to go back to the beginning, because it all started very far away from the sparkling lights of Paris. This is Celine Understood, Episode 1, Conquering Quebec. I believe we are actually on Boulevard Célenzion. I believe we are.

I believe we are on Boulevard Célenzion in Chalemagne. It's a hot Thursday morning in June. I'm driving around the town of Chalemagne, Quebec, with my producer, Christelle Duhaime. On Céline Dion Boulevard, you can see a Dollarama, the famous Quebec chicken rotisserie, Saint-Hubert. That's Quebec culture. Chalemagne is about 30 minutes outside of Montreal. It's really cute, like older houses. Yeah, nice little porches.

It's where C, like older houses. Yeah, nice little porches. It's where Celine grew up. She has talked about and sang about walking on the side of the street in Chalamagne when she was a kid. So we could actually, we're on Saint-Denis here. I'm going to show you, Crystal. This is not Graceland. Growing up in Montreal in the 90s, Celine was just always around.

I never knew a world without her. It all started when I was six years old. That year, for Christmas, my grandmother gave me a tape player. It came with two cassettes. One was of Celine's French album, Dion Chante Plamondon, and the other one was Unison, her first album in English. So in my family's living room,

I'd dance to her pop tracks in English. And then I'd sway along to her tender French ballads like Ziggy, Un Garçon Pas Comme Les Autres, A Boy Not Like The Others. To me, as a Francophone kid, there was nothing weird about this. I loved English Céline as much as I loved French Céline. Why do you say sometimes Céline and sometimes Céline? I think in English I just pronounce it the American way, Céline. So there's Céline and Céline, but in French we would say a hard D, Dian,'s Celine and Céline. But in French, we would say a hard D.

Dion. Dion. Céline Dion. Céline Dion. Now, all these years with her in my life, I consider myself something of a Celine scholar. This is where Celine's family home was located. Oh, in the Fils Saint-Jean. Yeah, that would be it. That would be the building where she went to school. Crossing Danielle Street, she has a brother named Danielle.

Can you imagine? This is your elementary school and Celine Dion came here. And you can really tell they don't have extra budget, even if Celine came here. The fence is broken. These people have probably nothing to do with Celine Dion and we're right by their window. Is it kind of creepy that we're just sitting in the car? It's absolutely creepy. Looking around Xalamang, a pole fitness gym, a tattoo shop,

a Chinese restaurant called... I wonder if Celine, this bilingual superstar, really came to her identity so easily. After all, she comes from a place that's so idiosyncratic. Somehow Quebec is the place that gave birth to Leonard Cohen and Cirque du Soleil. The cross street of the school is Trudeau and obviously Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister when Celine was young. There are so many layers here, so many tensions. Colonial histories, the grip of the Catholic Church, clashes between French and English, a powerful independence movement.

And if you look hard enough, you can see how all these layers shape Celine. Shall we go to Starbucks? What does Starbucks have to do with Celine? shape Celine. Shall we go to Starbucks? What does Starbucks have to do with Celine? In a way, you can't escape Starbucks in the same way that you cannot escape Celine Dion. So... This is Céline singing with her family in a Radio-Canada segment from 1983. She would have been about 15. When Céline came to the world, I was my doll. Ghislaine Dion is one of Céline's big sisters.

She goes by Gigi for short. She says when Céline was born, she was like Gigi's poupée, her doll. Before Céline came along, there was Denise, Clément, then Claudette, Liette, Michel, Louise, Jacques, Daniel, Gigi, Linda, Manon, and twins, Paul and Pauline. and twins, Paul and Pauline. At the head of this family, there was Adhemar, the patriarch, and Thérèse, her mamandion. It wasn't uncommon in the 40s, 50s, and 60s for French-Canadian families to have a dozen or so kids.

My own dad was one of 11. Back then, the Catholic Church ran pretty much everything in Quebec, from education to health care. And priests mandated, or at least heavily encouraged people to have large families. Still, after 13 kids, Maman Dion felt she'd had enough. At one point, she even went to her priest to ask if she might be permitted to stop having children, essentially to go on birth control. But the priest said no. It would go against God's will. Knowing now who Celine would become, it's hard to imagine that she was an accident. But when she was born in 1968, she was just one more mouth to

feed in the Dion home. You know, I mean, in the traditionalist French-Canadian narrative of who French Canadians are, all in quotes, right? There's a sense of them being né pour un petit pain, right? Born for something very small, for the small role, for the little bread, that they're not going to go very far. And that's fine. This is Erin Hurley. She's a professor at McGill University in Montreal. And she spent a lot of time thinking about the phenomenon of Céline Dion and how her story fits within Quebec's larger history. This was part of the Catholic narrative. Just stay in your home with your many children,

and that is enough. Just stay where you are, and God will take care of you. Gigi says her family was poor, but the kids were fed, and their mom kept them dressed by sewing clothes for them. At times, kids were four to a room. The house was so packed that as a baby, Céline slept in the drawer of a dresser. The Dionnes didn't have much money, but they did, of course, have music. They all play instruments, and they routinely sang and made music together as a family.

Their dad played the accordion. One of the brothers would dance a jig, or la claquette. And so it's no wonder that the youngest of this large family turns to music at a very young age. In the 70s, the musical traditions in the Dion home carry over into a little piano bar that their dad buys. Le vieux barrier. What are you looking for? Le vieux barrier. Or the old barrel. Like this is the equivalent of the bar where the Beatles started. This is the birthplace. It's at Le Vieux

Barry that Céline, at the age of eight or nine, first starts to sing publicly. She's standing on the tables singing to the customers. People start calling up Maman Dion to find out when La Petite Céline will be singing next. So, in this very musical, traditional, large Quebec family, she is nonetheless identified as the one who's going places musically, as the one with a particularly special gift. This is the first song Céline ever recorded. Ce n'était qu'un rêve.

The lyrics are by Maman Dion and the music by Céline and her brother Jacques. She's around 12 here, but she doesn't sound like it. Celine sings about an enchanted garden with angels smiling down from heaven. The chorus goes, it was only a dream. It was only a dream. But so beautiful that it was real.

It's crazy. To me, I goosebumps every time. It's wild to me. This song is wild. It's one of the wildest moments of her life. Really? Yeah. It's like a premonition of everything.

So they write this song and they bring it to René Angeline, who's a producer in Montreal. René was kind of a big deal. He'd been the manager of two major Quebec music stars. The demo cassette gets them an invite to René's office. The demo cassette gets them an invite to René's office. And he hands her a pencil in the meeting and says, pretend this is your microphone and sing something for me.

And she does, she belts it out, and he signs her on the spot. So that's where the commercial musical story begins, is in René's office. René, who's 39 at the time, starts dedicating all of his energy to 12-year-old Céline Dion. Super. C'est exactement ça. He has big plans for her. Plans that could only work in Quebec. In the 60s, when Celine was born, a societal shift had started taking place in Quebec. It was called La Révolution Tranquille, or the Quiet Revolution, because it wasn't a big, loud, or the Quiet Revolution, because it wasn't a big, loud, American-style revolution. It was more gradual and, well, quiet. Quebecers wanted to shrug off the Catholic Church. Like, for example, they didn't want priests sticking their nose into women's reproductive choices.

And La Révolution Tranquille was also about standing up for French culture. While English is the majority language of Canada, French is very firmly the majority language in Quebec. This may seem obvious now, but back then it wasn't so simple. There's a long history of the imposition of English as a public language, especially in Quebec, on French-speaking people. Erin Hurley again, the prof from Miguel. Because the language of class power, of economic power, was English.

So the power of English led to the need for a quiet revolution that Frenchifies, that was in France, right? That Frenchifies Quebec and anchors the right of speaking French to allow people to fully thrive in their mother tongue of French. And this collective project of Frenchifying meant creating cultural infrastructures. And so what this means is that Quebec at the provincial level invests heavily in culture. So for example, radio stations, TV stations, and movies, and musical production, again in French, on Radio-Canada, for example, right, on TVA,

on various television stations. So it's a space in which there are mechanisms for generating and then disseminating Québécois French-language voices. And this space grows into an extensive network of local Québécois talent and bolsters a small but thriving celebrity scene. The Quebec star system, or végétariat, as we say in French. The Quebec star system.

And it's this niche cultural setting that nurtures Céline's emergence. There are some really early moments in which we see how Céline Dion's career trajectory is really supported by these French- French language infrastructures. She comes out with her first album, La Voix du Bon Dieu, the voice of the good Lord, right? It starts to play on the radio. And then at the age of 13, on June 19th, 1981,

Céline makes her first television appearance. 19th, 1981, Céline makes her first television appearance. She goes on Michel Jasmin's TV show. It's a talk show. It's a major cultural event. Everyone watches the Michel Jasmin show. Et elle a une voix magnifique.

A vous d'en juger. Céline Dion. Let's play. Tell me you'll go. magnifique. À vous d'en juger. Céline Dion. That's Sonia Benizra. outfits that, you know, it wasn't haute couture, let's just say. And she wasn't cool. That's Sonia Benizra. Sonia is a music journalist and talk show host. Renée Angélil once called her the Oprah of Quebec. You know, nobody really wants to be famous during those adolescent years, you know, when you're 13 and everything. If I show you pictures of me, it's like they're scary. I mean, you're changing, your face is changing, the features are sort of like weird. She has long frizzy hair in the 80s, right? Like everyone else did. She has some crisscrossed teeth. There's some awkwardness,

especially in those early moments when she's learning the trade. There are lots of points of familiarity or resemblance between a young Céline Dion and everyone's cousin, right? Or everyone's younger sister. She gets adopted, almost, by Quebec society as, well, as I say, as a kind of cousin or a little sister who's enormously talented. She had a certain innocence and joy in singing, kind of lovely, almost naivete about the goodness in people and the joy in song and what music can do and how it connects us to something bigger. The Michelle Jasmin appearance is a total hit.

It reaches a whole new public, and really solidifies the fact that she is becoming a Quebec star. becoming a Quebec star. Soon, Renée's got her touring the province, singing at amusement parks. She's on TV, on the radio. She sings the national anthem at an expo's baseball game. She drops out of high school to focus on singing full-time.

My dream is to be an international star. There was negative press about her looks, but also about her ambition. Not just ambition, it's the dream. I mean, this is a girl dreaming, not sure that it's going to happen, but daring to say it out loud. But somehow that just didn't, it was, she's like Teflon. All of those comments sort of just almost pushed her further. She puts out seven albums within four years. She's getting awards at home and in France, where at the age of 15, she's the first Canadian to get a gold record. When did she sing for the Pope? What year was that?

1984. Okay, so 1984 when Celine gets to sing for the Pope? What year was that? Okay, so 1984, when Céline gets to sing for the Pope, I think the entire world somehow hears her name, and she awakens everybody here in Quebec. I mean, obviously, there are those that have already seen her on Michel Jasmin a few years ago, and you knew that this was an extraordinary talent, but as soon as the Pope comes into it, then all the English press starts to cover it as well.

This is part of her sort of juvenile period, right? The tweens and teens, in which she is almost exclusively clothed in white. There is this sense of innocence and purity, which has to do with gender and Catholicism. And so she then becomes this kind of tribute to the Pope. Céline is singing Une Colombe. A colombe is a dove. And as Céline sings, the field at Montreal's Olympic Stadium fills with hundreds of dancers all in white

It awakened my interest in this girl as well who performed without looking nervous with such assurance that it was really quite mind-boggling I mean, everybody commented on the majestic performance of this young girl who came out of nowhere I mean, I don't care if you're religious or not the majestic performance of this young girl who came out of nowhere. I mean, I don't care if you're religious or not. The Pope is so symbolic.

It's a big deal. It symbolizes something bigger than us. The performance for the Pope anoints Celine as the bright light in the Quebec star system. And Celine's dreams just keep getting bigger. Celine is taking a crash course in English with a private tutor because she wants to record in English. What language does he speak at home?

At home, Mr. Duval speaks French. She's already mastered several key phrases. Hello, how are you? Nice to meet you. With the help of Renée, she's about to cross over onto an even larger stage outside Quebec's borders. Don't be angry. I'm sorry, sir, my manager is not here now. But first, she'll need a makeover.

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and she was completely changed because they had kept her out of the spotlight for a couple of years because they really wanted to work the image and bring her back as a young, sexy singer. Sonia Benesra. She's talking about the late 80s when she worked as a VJ at Musique Plus. It's where Sonia first met 19-year-old Céline. And she walked in with, I believe it was a mini skirt with her new little short haircut and the perfect teeth smile. Gone are the virginal white dresses. And she's gotten dental surgery to correct the snaggled teeth that earned her the nickname Canine Dion.

surgery to correct the snaggled teeth that earned her the nickname Canine Dion. Céline's makeover lined up with the release of her album Incognito in 87. Out of this record came her dance pop single Lolita. It was a different musical style for Céline, a bit more like what Madonna was doing at the time. The song is about a teenage crush on an older man. Something we'll later learn Celine is all too familiar with. You say I'm too young to live with a man. I say I don't care, I don't care, I don't care. I love you.

Oh my god, this will require so much autotune. Back in 87, Celine's new album, The Makeover, it was all part of a broader attempt to shift her identity, taking her from child star to adult songstress, and soon into a whole new market. The first thing that people have to understand, especially if you're, you know, the Anglophone markets and the Francophone markets are like two worlds. You know, we say two solitudes. It's very different. Céline Dion is the undisputed pop diva in Quebec since she was discovered at the age of 12.

She's only 21, but for years, Céline Dion has been a big star. A sellout in Quebec, a sensation in France. I have to work hard because, you know, I'm very known here in Quebec, and I want to be known everywhere in the world, but I have to concentrate myself on Canada because I'm not known at all. You know, when I go to Toronto, Edmonton, or Calgary, or Vancouver, whatever, you know, I walk on the streets and nobody asks me my autograph. or Calgary or Vancouver, whatever, you know.

I walk on the streets and nobody asks me my autograph. After some English lessons, some voice lessons, some dance lessons, her Quebec fans think she's ready for the rest of North America. In 1990, Celine releases her first English-language album, called Unison. Sorry I know I'm late Guess I lost all track Listening to Unison, I am brought right back to the cassette I got as a kid. There's synthesizers, basses being slapped, epic guitar solos, even elements of house music. And this one song on the album,

it still holds up. Where Does My Heart Beat Now? It's a slow-stepping emotional ballad with a dramatic build-up and early 90s electric guitar riffs. But it was not just the album's music that was getting noticed. On the cover of Unison, the French accent on Céline's name is gone. So when Céline makes this shift to singing in English, there are really mixed responses in Quebec.

So in that moment, English Canada is discovering Céline Dion. Quebec has known Céline Dion since she was 12, right? So there's a kind of possessiveness, which I don't mean in a negative way, but possessiveness and pride in this homegrown girl who pulled herself up by her bootstraps kind of thing, coming from hardscrabble beginnings and really making it. But there's a concern in Quebec that's expressed about a kind of betrayal, a sense of her getting too big for her britches. Are we not enough? Is it not big enough to be a star here? The comedy troupe Roquia Belle Zoray puts out a song that seems to be about Céline. I want to pong. Pong is Quebecois slang. It basically means to sell out.

I do not want to speak in my tongue. I just want the pong. There's an expression in Quebec, tu es né pour un petit pain, which means you're born for something small. So if you dare to dream too big, some people thought, like, how dare she? Like, she comes from Charlemagne.

I mean, it's like, you know, why her? That kind of a thing, that mentality. What is that balance between loyalty, fidelity to one's roots, and the desire and the commercial need to expand markets,

to expand horizons. So far as Quebec is concerned, that question has been settled. 1990. Just after Céline's debut English record drops, when the French accent on her name is struck from her album cover, Quebec is delivered a blow. The Prime Minister and the Provincial Premiers trying to find a way to pass the Meech Lake Accord. A move to revise the Canadian Constitution had been in the works. A revision that would officially recognize Quebec as a culturally distinct society, its own special thing within Canada.

But then, it all unraveled. How are you feeling tonight? Well, I must say I feel betrayed. Further stoking the already passionate independence movement, the country was at risk of being torn apart, and tensions between English and French are flaring. I'm pretty sad for the country and for Quebec. That same year, on a Sunday night in October, a 22-year-old Céline finds herself caught up in the middle of these political forces at a gala in Montreal.

I mean, it's huge. You're dressed to the nines, you know, you showed up on the red carpet. I mean, it's huge. You're dressed to the nines. You know, you showed up with on the red carpet. I mean, it was like a mini Hollywood version. The Ad Disque Gala is one of Quebec's biggest music events of the year. Basically, Quebec's Grammys. People watched. If you knew La Disque was on, you were not watching anything else. Sonia was at the Ad Disque that year. Unison had come out a few months earlier, and the album has sold really well. And she's nominated in Quebec for Best Anglophone Artist. This was a big deal.

The fact that she was nominated in that category was also a little bit of a dig. You know, here she goes singing in English, the enemy language, you know, that sort of a thing. Sonia's maybe making assumptions here, but it's hard to believe that the Adzisk establishment, essentially the gatekeepers of the Quebec music industry, would not have known what they were doing when they put Céline in the Anglophone category. As Quebec's sovereignty movement is so dialed up at the time, so is the protectiveness around francophone culture. And it felt like Céline was getting put in her place,

was being told not to pong. But Céline and René couldn't just not show up to the biggest event of the year either. So they did not want to ruffle feathers. You know, you have to play the game. And so on the night of the gala, when they announced the winner of Anglophone Artist of the Year, the camera finds Céline sitting in the audience with René.

He puts his head down for a moment and Céline looks over at him, as if to say, oh mon dieu, here we go. It's not the look of someone who has just won in a word. Céline pauses before standing up, then walks to the stage. She's wearing a body-hugging black mini skirt and a matching blazer with shoulder pads. A guy in a suit extends the golden statuette towards her, but she waves it off. And she takes the microphone. She was defiant. She was not smiling. And then Céline says,

Je ne peux pas accepter ce trophée-là. She can't accept the award. People were shocked. C'est pas parce que je ne suis pas fière de mon disque en anglais. Au contraire. She can't accept the award. It's not because she's not proud of her English album, she says. In fact, she's very proud of her album. She goes on to thank the record company for supporting her pursuits across the world as a Québécois artist. And then comes the kicker. And I thank the fans because they understood

that I am not an Anglophone artist. Nobody was going to tell her who she is. You cannot define me. I know who I am. She could be Celine and Céline. They just disqualified me of the 45 categories because I sang in English. I was singled out because I sang in English, and I just didn't think it was fair. Do you ever worry of the fact that at this particular time, when people are very sensitive about Anglophone or Francophone, that your Francophone audience,

your original audience who supported you in Quebec and so on, will think that you betrayed them because you're becoming an English-speaking star now, and you're going to be Americanized, you're going to be Anglicized. I'm always going to stay a Francophone Quebecer all my life. I'm proud of that. But I'm Francophone who's able to sing in English today. The day after the Addis Awards aired, public reaction is mixed. In one letter to the Montreal Gazette, an English newspaper, a reader accuses Céline of pulling a publicity stunt and says, just one little piece of advice for Céline Dion. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, or you might find yourself without any English money to feed you in the future.

In the same paper, Jacques Parizeau, the leader of Quebec's independence party, he says, I thought it was, for a girl like that, quite something to say. I was impressed, and I wrote her a small note to say so. At the Addis Gala the very next year, the name of the award is changed to Quebec Artist Most Illustrious in a Language Other Than French. Still, one gets

the sense that Céline, as a woman trying to be a star to all of Canada, English and French, was never going to please everyone. You said, I am Quebecoise. I know. And the problem is, are Quebeckers only French speaking? No, I know.

Are they, Celine? Are Quebeckers only French speaking? No, absolutely not. I'm glad to hear you say that. Absolutely not. There's a small C right here. There's not a capital C. There's not a capital D here.

Oh my God, it's terrible. It doesn't change me. It doesn't change my personality. I think it's a great album and it's not a capital D here. Oh my God, it's terrible. It doesn't change me. It doesn't change my personality. I think it's a great album and it's not because there's not an accent. But one thing's for sure. People were talking

about Céline Dion in two different languages now. C'est une vraie Québécoise. A true Quebecer, he says. Avec beaucoup d'ambition. American, comme pour un Mendy. With lots of ambition. American ambition.

Celine was ready to cross over into the U.S. But she had a secret about all those love songs she was singing. And her manager, Renée, feared this secret could stop her career in its tracks. I'll never forget the moment when they had to come out on stage where the album launch was taking place. There was an audience, people standing around, and he was petrified. I had to literally push him, push him on the stage. That's next time on Celine Understood. All right. I hope you like this. If you did, search Understood in whatever player you're using and hit follow. You'll find episode two, which is all about how Celine broke out of Quebec

and hit it big in America. We're going to put links in our show notes. Talk to you next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.