Front Burner - Front Burner Presents Céline: Understood, Episode 4

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

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 [insert number] 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. More episodes of Understood are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/n5NBQC

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. Hi everybody, Jamie here. Happy New Year. If you checked the feed over the last week or so, you've seen that we've been dropping episodes of the show some of us made here about Celine Dion. It lives on our sister feed, Understood. That's where we've done seasons on the FTX Meltdown, Pornhub, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Our Celine season was a real delightful listen for me this year.

So if you missed episodes one through three, search Celine Understood and follow the feed while you're there. We've got more seasons in progress and that way you won't miss them. All right, that's it for now. Talk soon. It's a cold day in January. Fans and paparazzi are bundled in parkas

and lined up outside the Notre-Dame Basilica in Old Montreal. It was a farewell René Angélil had planned at the very church where he married his love, Céline Dion, more than two decades ago. After years of throat cancer, René died in Las Vegas on January 14th, 2016, just a few days shy of his 74th birthday. He was given what we call a national funeral here in Quebec. Flags across the province were flown at half-mast. Celebrities and politicians of all

stripes packed the pews, all here to honour the man who discovered a pre-teen Dion And made her a household name René's instructions for his funeral were detailed Céline enters the church in a black lace veil At exactly 3.20pm And the recording of her song Trois heures vingt, 3.20 Starts to play through the sound system. Céline places dark purple lilies on René's coffin and does the sign of the cross.

Then she touches his coffin one more time and makes a gesture that looks almost like sign language, like her side of their secret handshake, the one the couple would do together before she went on stage. Bonjour tout le monde. Merci à tous d'être là. There are several eulogies, including one from René Charles,

Celine and René's oldest son. You had a busy life, but we were communicating through golf, hockey, poker, and smoked meat. As the family says goodbye in a ceremony watched by fans around the world, he'll be remembered as the man who discovered a stunning voice and loved the woman who has it. Celine doesn't speak at Rene's funeral. But the program from the ceremony includes a message from her.

It says, But the program from the ceremony includes a message from her. It says, I understood that my career was, in a way, his masterpiece. I realized that if he ever left us, I would have to continue without him. For him. Six weeks after Rée's death, Celine returns to the stage in Vegas.

You know, Renée, I trusted him so much that I never really had the chance to worry about anything. Now I guess it is only a natural impulse to constantly question myself. Would he let the kids play with these toys? And is this song too fast? Is this song too slow? Don't talk too much. Don't talk too much For the first time in her decades-long career Celine is on her own

And as she steps out As Celine without Rene She'll find herself in a very different world One that's ready to see her in a new light Even as a grave challenge lies ahead for her. I'm Thomas LeBlanc, and this is Celine Understood, Episode 4, The Celine Essence. So Celine came up in a period of time where you could execute a playbook very successfully and it would work. And that is the idea of being ubiquitous through album release, tour, a big single, a movie soundtrack. And as you time those things properly,

they can just kind of like build and build and build on each other. This is Elamin Abdelmahmoud. He's the host of the CBC arts and culture show Commotion. And he recently wrote a piece in the New York Times about Celine's lasting appeal. At her peak, Celine Dion sort of executed this playbook to a T and quite perfectly. Celine's career with Rene by her side spanned decades. The 80s were spent in the unique niche market of Quebec. In the 90s, they hustled, crossing over both into the U.S. and around the globe. The numbers that Celine Dion put up in the 90s are so wild and inconceivable by today's standards.

I mean, Celine's albums are among the top selling albums of all time. Then in the 2000s, Rene and Celine made their unexpected move. Vegas becomes kind of the home base of Celine. I mean, she literally moves to Vegas in this period of time. Hey, did you make the pilgrimage? Have you been to Vegas? I saw the show in 2011, the second residency. I'm so jealous. I actually can't cope with that. I have to leave now. Goodbye. Celine and Rene's retreat to Vegas was either very lucky or very savvy.

Because while the pair were raking in millions through shows in the Coliseum, outside the world was changing. You get this period of time where, you know, Napster and LimeWire end up affecting the industry's model. We suddenly have really no idea how the industry is going to cope with the internet. Album sales plummeted and radio's influence waned. The iTunes store says, hey, why don't you buy songs right on here? And then Spotify launches in the early 2010s. Streaming takes over.

So there's a general decline in the buying a CD habit. The idea that you would go out and buy the album that this artist put out. There was a time that Celine could command attention for months on end with just a single song. Now, everything is consumed and tossed out so quickly. The culture that Celine had navigated with Rene was gone. And so was he. So after Rene's passing, everybody's wondering

what's going to happen with Celine. Sure, we were all going, what's going on here? What's going to happen here? What are you going to do next? You know. TV host Sonia Benizra. She started slowly, but I mean, you saw that she was taking control of, you know, and she wanted to work with people that she really liked. And I think she also wanted to live.

Live. That's it. I started working with Celine when her husband died. This is Law Roach, one of Hollywood's most powerful stylists. He's being interviewed for the online celebrity site Hollywood Unlocked. I was hired to come in and change the perception of who people thought she was. That perception of who Celine was, was not stylish. For a time, Celine had been mocked for her fashion sense. Like she wore this white drapey pantsuit to the Oscars in 1999, backwards, with a fedora. It landed her on worst dressed lists for years. But a little over six months after Renee's death, she shows up to Paris Fashion Week.

She's seen wearing this oversized black hoodie with a pair of tight jeans and gold Gucci heels. And on the sweatshirt are Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet next to the sinking Titanic. The outfit felt ironic, cheeky, and just different. I couldn't imagine her stepping out in something like that when Renee was still alive. And so she started to be known as like a fashion icon. And, you know, all the designers wanted to dress her and take her to the Met. She had never been to the Met. She hadn't been to a fashion show in 20 years.

And so I kind of opened that world back up for her. fashion show in 20 years. And so I kind of opened that world back up for her. She wanted to do what she never did before. Go to parties, be extravagant. I mean, she wore some outfits that were fantastic and others that were like, wow, that's really gutsy. I don't know what that is, but I think I like it. I'm not sure. It was fabulous. Celine, what are you wearing? This is Celine talking to E! Insider on the red carpet at the 2019 Met Gala, the celebrity fashion event. She's shimmering in silver tassels and crowned in silver peacock feathers.

I don't want to take it off. I'm going to go to bed with it. The theme of the gala that year is camp. What does camp mean to you? Well, it's like, you know, at first I was a little bit confused when I heard camp. I wasn't sure what it meant. Like, I thought, like, camping. I mean, we go camping. I mean, Celine is camp.

And I just love that she couldn't see the water that she was swimming in. It's probably around here that I should state the obvious. Celine isn't just a fashion icon. She's a queer icon. We've been championing her for a long time. I can't tell you how many Celine drag queens I've seen. for a long time. I can't tell you how many Celine drag queens I've seen. I think it's something about her personality that has always resonated with queer culture. She's authentic. She's earnest. She's over the top. It's a blend that starts to resonate online too.

So Celine Dion has given us a lot of memes. and it's actually something that you wouldn't necessarily expect out of someone like Celine Dion. She's someone who, in these little micro moments, can just appear so deeply funny that people want to use that meme and that gif over and over and over and over again. She's so incredibly watchable. She's someone who's willing to make fun of herself. She's played those silly games on Jimmy Fallon's show all the time. We're going to hit this button here, this Bluetooth. It activates the musical impressions. Here she is on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, singing Frère Jacques in the style of Cher.

Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, l'amour est vous, l'amour est vous. I don't want to hear your ding-dong, I don't want to hear your ding-dong. I mean, Celine Dion just makes these faces all the time. Like, she can't help herself. She's just someone who's, like, so animated. Here's Celine on carpool karaoke with a dramatic version of Baby Shark. Baby Shark, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo

Baby Shark, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo Baby Shark, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo Baby Shark I thought we were going to get a chest bump there. Baby shark, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Baby shark, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Baby shark. I thought we were going to get a chest bump there. Baby shark, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. She's someone who does not feel the need to hide her idiosyncrasies. So Celine's being memed all over.

She's a goofy hit on late night TV. She's on the red carpet at the Met Gala. At the Billboard Music Awards, she meets Drake. It's very nice to meet you. He tells her... I'm like a year away from a Celine tat, so... He wants a Celine tattoo. I don't know if you know this, but we're in the middle of a Celine-a-sance.

You should have let me know. I would have dressed appropriately. This so-called Selenissance, starting around 2016 and growing from there, is pretty remarkable. Here's a woman at around 50, finding new relevancy four decades into her career, in this totally different landscape than the one in which she originally found stardom. For sure, part of it has to do with her fashion makeover and her kooky meme ability, but I also think that there's something else at work. You had this movement of poptimism that came in the early sort of 2010s, which is to say this movement that takes to heart sort of evaluating pop music on serious grounds. This re-evaluation of how critics

understood pop music was very useful for artists like Celine Dion, who were for a stretch of their careers dismissed as somehow too lowbrow, too pedestrian, too poppy, you know, dismissing kind of out of hand things that sort of overflowed with emotion. And then suddenly you have people who are like, you know what, I'm happy consuming the thing that makes me happy. And if you want to critically engage with it, you can, but you don't have to. And this has allowed us to sort of let go of here's highbrow and lowbrow. That's kind of allowed us the opportunity to reevaluate our relationship with Celine. And suddenly we've reframed something that once used to be too much as now, like, just enough.

20 years after the peak of My Heart Will Go On and the whole backlash that it inspired, pop culture is taking another look at Celine and deciding, you know what? She's actually kind of cool. Even that 1999 Oscars pantsuit gets reassessed with one Vogue writer publishing a piece titled Celine Dion's Backwards Suit is my forever favorite Oscars look.

So here we go. This brand new song is called Flying On My Own. Here we go. In 2019, Celine releases her 27th album, her first English album since Renee's death. It's called Courage, and it debuts at number one on the US Billboard. On the album cover is Celine in a long red sequined dress. Behind her is darkness and fire. It's very Phoenix rising from the ashes.

She gives her audience in Vegas a sneak peek of the album with her single Flying On My Own. It's this dance pop track and the lyrics go I'm finding my way I'm flying on my own I'm finding

my way I'm flying on my own I'm flying on my own. I'm flying on my own. All the way to the other land. I'm flying on my own. Celine announces she's going on a world tour. She seems unstoppable. But behind the scenes, Celine was dealing with something

nobody could understand. She was suffering. In the Dragon's Den, Thank you. entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. It's October 2019. Less than a month into Celine's Courage world tour.

Celine's just had to postpone four shows in Montreal. And in a video, she apologizes to her fans. four shows in Montreal. And in a video, she apologizes to her fans. She says, for me, it's a lot harder to cancel a show than to do a show. And I'm so sorry for disappointing you. With all the interviews I've done with Celine, there is one thing that's a recurring theme with her.

She always was afraid to disappoint. Not giving 100% of herself, disappointing somebody who actually bought a ticket. This is what she thinks of. This person bought a ticket and they got to a hotel room and they had to pack their suitcase and maybe they forgot the dress that they were going to wear so they had to buy a new dress. She goes through all of that. In the apology video, she says she was excited to see everyone at home in Montreal. But she's been hit by a throat virus. A few weeks later, Celine's back on stage in Ottawa.

She seems off, nervous. She's not hitting those big, high Céline notes. Instead, her voice sounds small. She apologizes to the audience. Here's the Celine that we know and love. She was so concerned about her fans, so concerned about the people who worked for her. If she stops, they stop.

Money stops coming to them as well. So she was concerned about all of these things. When COVID happens, Celine has to put off her whole tour. And just when it's about to resume in 2022, she cancels all her North American shows. She pretty much goes quiet for nearly a year. Then, in December 2022, Celine posts a video on Instagram. Hello, everyone.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reach out to you. I miss you all so much. And I can't wait to be on stage talking to you in person. As you know, I've always been an open book. And I wasn't ready to say anything before. But I'm ready now. For years, Celine didn't know what was happening to her. I don't have a voice.

It's weird. It's closing, so I'm having, I'm really having a hard time right now. She'd have these episodes, and sometimes it would just go away, and she'd be able to perform, so you didn't have to think about it, but it was always in the back of her mind, because it would come back sporadically. She went to every possible doctor, every specialist. I mean, imagine you're Celine Dion. You have access to the best of the best and nobody could diagnose her. So in order to help her get through those years, she relied on medication. Eventually, Celine got an answer. I have been diagnosed with a very rare neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome.

Stiff person syndrome causes the body to suddenly tense up and spasm painfully. These spasms affect every aspect of my daily life, aspect of my daily life, sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I'm used to. This illness really is a progressive illness. There is no cure right now. At the end of her Instagram video, Celine says that she has to step back from performing while she focuses on her health.

This is somebody who has told us outright over the years that basically nothing can stop her from performing. This is where she gets her identity. Alameen Abdelmahmoud again. For her to be saying,

I don't know when I can return again, I need to take a pause. It's not Celine like we've ever seen her before. We're not used to that posture from Celine Dion. After going public with her diagnosis back in December 2022, Celine seems to step back a bit. She pops up at the Grammys, on the cover of Vogue France, and most dramatically, in a raw documentary about her health struggles.

But she disappears entirely from performing for her fans. I want to go back on stage. I need to know if I can. They need to know that I love them and I miss them. We had to confront the idea that maybe we'd never see Celine Dion sing again. And that felt like we were also losing something larger. You know, 20 or 30 years ago, you and I, we all sort of knew the same reference point.

We don't have that really anymore, largely because of the internet has kind of fragmented our listening experience. And so we all seem to exist in our own little cultural niches. We used to look to the North Star that is a diva. We used to have a lot of figures that earned the title. And we're talking about Mariah and we're talking about Whitney and we're talking about Aretha and we're talking about aiah and we're talking about Whitney and we're talking about Aretha and we're talking about a class, particularly of women singers.

And what's comforting to me about the existence of divas is that they become a sort of text that we all share. A here's a thing that we all know in common. It doesn't mean we all like it in common. It just means, hey, we know the same things and we're engaged in somewhat the same conversation. And what I like about Celine as an artist, but also what I like about Celine as an idea, is that Celine is a bit of a unifier, right? Like her music aims to do the largest possible thing, to house the most amount of people. And in a world where we're all looking to be awestruck, we're all looking to

be moved, and we're all looking to say, wow, that's an extraordinary thing that I don't experience every day. You need these figures that can just kind of cut through all the different niches we exist in because we know them together. We all look in the same direction and they're Celine. Holy shit. Dion's performance had been hinted at all week, creating a crescendo of anticipation. Wow. This past July, I watched with millions of others as Celine made her triumphant return at the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. I remember watching that moment

and I was like holding hands with my wife and my daughter was like on the couch and she was just watching us openly weep as we were watching this thing. After four years away from performing, after all she'd gone through, Celine was back. It was a remarkable moment in this decades long, truly singular career.

From Charlemagne, Quebec, all the way to the Eiffel Tower. My dream is to be an international star. I love to sing. No kidding. Who is going to stay a Francophone Quebecer all my life? All my life. I want it to be the best of me. I am in charge. Bye. Bye. In your mind, what is the cultural impact unyielding permission that she's given to people

to feel their biggest possible emotions that they can because she does that in her music. So we are Thursday night in Montreal's village, the gay village of Montreal. We're actually not super far from Rene's first office where Celine did the audition. Kind of crazy. And we are going now to an institution, like a karaoke institution in Montreal called Club Date. And it's where people go every night to sing songs, all eras, all genres. And every night there will be someone singing a Celine Dion song.

I guarantee you. Let's go in. Let's go inside Club Date and sing a Celine Dion song. What great artists do is give you permission to feel your emotions. I think what Celine Dion does is something even greater than that, which is feel them for you. I think these power battles, these big vocals, the thing that they can do is they can take the size of your pain or your love or your happiness, whatever it is that lives inside of you, and they can make it so much louder.

lives inside of you and they can make it so much louder. I'm going home. Through the days when the sun was so blue. And all the teeth turned to dust. And I just ruined my eyes. We were trying up forever. I finished crying. As of the time we're recording this last episode, in October 2024, Celine still seems to be working hard at dealing with the effects of stiff person syndrome. And she hasn't made any formal announcements of what exactly her plans are for the future.

But, Celine loves Vegas. And Vegas loves Celine. So I'm kind of expecting a new residency, and what will be really awesome is a new album. Or two new albums, one in French, one in English. Or maybe something from the vault. Maybe she has old stuff that we've never heard. I really want her to be healthy,

but I know what it means for her to be with the fans. So for her and for us, really, really do hope that she gets to sing again. Celine Understood was produced by Crystal Duhaime, Zoe Tennant, and showrunner Imogen Burchard. Sound design by Crystal Duhaime. Sound engineering by Julia Whitman. The karaoke was recorded at Club Date in Montreal. Thank you to singers Stephanie Khalil and Tamika Baudreau. And the show was hosted by me, Thomas LeBlanc.

The digital producer for Celine Understood is Roshni Nair. Our podcast art was designed by Tara Pocket. Our cross-promo producer is Amanda Cox. Our video producers are Evan Agard, John Lee, and Tamina Aziz. Special thanks to the helpful and patient team at CBC Archives. Kate Zeman, John Scaife and Joseph Rogers in Montreal. And also our CBC colleagues, Hadil Abdel-Nabi, Kate Evans and Jonathan Monpetit. Additional thanks to all the people who participated and helped on the series.

Gisleine Dion, Aaron Hurley, Sonia Benizra, Barry Garber, Carl Wilson, Alamine Abdelmahmoud, Aldonova, Walter Elmore, Zeynep Al-Kaysi, Afrem Onyebouleh, Vito Luprano, Mario Lefebvre, and Karim Nasreddin. Celine Dion's team declined our invitation to participate in this podcast. In order of appearance, audio in this episode from Celine Dion.com, Fox Soul, NBC Universal, ZDF, Sony Music Entertainment, Apple TV, the AUC YouTube channel, Meta,

the YouTube page of Enrique Aquaviva, Sony Music Entertainment, and the International Olympic Committee. This has been Celine Understood. The series was produced by CBC Podcast and CBC News. Executive producers are Chris Oak and Nick McCabe-Locos. You can follow Understood on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And before we go, if you like this show, try the ones you'll find earlier in this feed, like The Pornhub Empire, understood. It's all about that super popular site that you've

probably only ever accessed on your browser's incognito mode. Or there's the most recent season, Modi's India Understood, which takes a closer look at the divisive, powerful leader of the biggest country in the world, Narendra Modi.