The Current - The enduring power of Celine Dion

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Céline Dion returned to the global stage this summer after a rare illness forced her out of the spotlight and threatened her decades-long career. The new CBC podcast Celine: Understood explores her ascent from a small-town Quebec singer to a global pop icon.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. It was a moment that many had been waiting for. Tiny figure appears in white standing at the Eiffel Tower during the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, belting out Edith Piaf's L'Homme à l'Amour. And that voice is unmistakable. It's a big, big moment.

After being silenced by a rare illness called stiff person syndrome, Céline Dion was back. She is, of course, one of the most enduring superstars in the world, but her ascent from small-town Quebec singer to global pop icon was an unlikely journey. A new CBC podcast explores her appeal, her impact, and the culture that led to her rise. 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. the best of me. I am in charge. Thomas Leblanc is a Céline Dion superfan and the host of the CBC podcast, Céline Understood.

Thomas, good morning. Good morning, Matt. When I say superfan, you have a tattoo of one of her lyrics, is that right? I do. I have a song titled L'Amour Existe Encore. It's a French ballad from her 1991 Dian Chante Plamondon. So I have that song titled Tattooed on My Left Forearm.

Why would you do such a thing? I love this song. As a kid, my grandmother gifted me the cassette tape from the album Dian Chante Plamondon and also Unison, the first English album. And every night I would listen to it going to bed. So this song specifically, it's a song about the world being a mess, but love prevailing. And I've gotten that a few years ago, that tattoo. So it still holds true in my opinion. And so given that, we'll come back to the cassette in a moment, but given that,

what was it like when you watched, people had rumors that she was going to be part of the opening ceremony, but nobody really knew until suddenly she appears. What was that like for you? Well, I watched the whole thing and I just didn't know.

I was like, oh, is she going to sing at the Louvre, at the Arc de Triomphe, because the cameras were going all over Paris. But then when she appeared on the Eiffel Tower, I just started sobbing, like deep belly crying. And I had just missed her.

I missed her so much. I grew up, I never knew a world without Celine. So to see her appear after the illness, it was just very symbolic. I was just sobbing the whole song. And then I rewatched it several times in the days after. You never knew a world without her. I mean, this goes back to your grandmother, right? Yeah. I'm born in the mid 80s in Quebec. Celine was already a star when I was born. So my early memories of her are from the late 80s when she, you know, as a young woman

started to sing dance pop, which was very different from when she was singing in the early 80s when she was a young Catholic girl. And then my grandmother gifted me these two cassette tapes when I was five or six. And I even actually had seen the unison tour with my grandmother at the time. I was very young and that made quite the impression on me. I'd said in the introduction that the ascent of Céline Dion from small town Quebec singer to global pop icon was an unlikely journey. Go right back to the beginning. Her childhood is a big part of that unlikeliness in terms of how she ends up where she does, right? Well, she is just a product of her time. She's born in March 1968. I often joke that she's born

almost, you know, about nine months after Expo 67 in Montreal, where, you know, Quebec and Canada discovered the world. So she's part of that opening to the world. She's the last of 14 children. As Canadians, we know her lore, right? We know her story. But people around the world, some people in Paris didn't even know she spoke French, right? So some people need to be reminded of that story. I relate to her also because my dad is the last of 11 children. So lots of French Canadian Catholic families had similar stories. She was an accident. She knew it and she always joked about it. And she grew up in the 70s in Quebec. You know, Quebec nationalism was on the rise and the election of the PQ in 76. And she actually,

I find it quite beautiful that she's probably watched the Olympics, the Montreal Olympics on TV in 76 as an eight-year-old. And, you know, in my imagination, maybe that moment sort of inspired her. Obviously, she was singing. She was quite musical. And she's recorded a demo tape of a song written by her mother and her brother Jacques that they sent to René Angélil, who met with her in 81. And the rest is history. She sang that first song and she performed it on TV and quite quickly in Quebec and even France. She became a star. But it took a whole decade before she made her English language debut. Can you just go back just quickly to – I mean, you've hinted at this.

What was going on in Quebec society at the time when she was just – because people are products of the place that they come from. Yes. And very much that applies to her. Well, the 60s in Quebec is a period called the Quiet Revolution. So it's a period where French Canadians finally were able to hold positions of power that were historically more held by English language, you know, either descendants from Scottish immigrants, English immigrants. So that's the 60s. And at the same time, so there's this emergence of a Quebec showbiz community. So with the rise of television and radio, obviously.

So there's a sort of like Quebec celebrity culture is really born at that time. So you can probably tell that she was watching that in the 60s and 70s, well, 70s, and that influenced her. So that's on the sort of like culture side. On the politics side, as we know, the Parti Québécois was elected in Quebec in 76. Céline started her career at the time of the first referendum. And I've always found that quite interesting because there was this like moment of should Quebec stay in Canada? Yes no and you have this young this young lady singing in French and then eventually she starts to sing in English so that creates a conversation around language and around personal choice and around French culture and Quebec that I always thought was quite fascinating.

Part of that star culture is and and the industry that's around it, is seen and heard in this podcast. You play a recording of Céline showing up in a Raja Canada segment with her family when she was about 15 years old. Have a listen to this. Dieu, tu as guidé mes jeux, dis-moi ce que tu veux, je t'aimerai toujours, tellement cet amour pour toi. Tellement cet amour pour toi. Thomas LeBlanc, what do you hear there? Wow, clearly a powerful voice, the strength of her family. I also, you know, I think it was all there because she's a product of her society and her culture, but I think her family story,

her mom was always very present, very loving. Selena's always sung about love, romantic love, but when she was younger, it was actually like the sort of love in a more, in a broader sense. So I think that's what she's singing. Part of the sort of love in a more, in a broader sense. So I think that's what she's singing. Part of the fun of making this podcast was also going through all the CBC and Hadza Canada archives that, you know, I hadn't ever heard before. So that's what I hear. And then

her voice is also quite mature. She's about 15 at that time, 83, 84. And we can already recognize, you know, how she would sound much later in the 90s when we've come to appreciate her on the global stage. You mentioned René Angélil, who was her manager, later her husband. What was the role that he played in creating her in some ways? Well, it's interesting because in the late 70s, René is already a music manager. He's managing one of the biggest music stars in Quebec, Ginette Renaud, whoene is already a music manager. He's managing the biggest, one of the biggest music stars in Quebec, Ginette Renaud, who dropped him as a client. And then, you know, he had no client. He was 39. He was like kind of looking for a lifeline. And because he was quite successful

already, the Dion family found him, sent him a tape, met with him. So at the beginning, there's this, you know, they had a big age difference. He's 39, she's 12. It's a big age difference. And we explored that on the podcast, how when they sort of develop that relationship in the 80s, eventually she falls in love with him, but the family is not for it, especially her mother. But he's always been the strategist, the gambler, the business guy. We tell the story on the podcast on how he flipped a recording budget from $87,000, I think it was about $25,000, into almost an unlimited budget for her English debut. So, Rene was the gambler. Vegas was a big gamble.

So, he's gambled a lot on her through his career, through her career. And this December, we're going to celebrate 30 years of their wedding, the big wedding at the Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal. And we also revisit that moment of how, you know, it was perceived back then that, you know, Quebec's princess would marry her manager who was 26 years older and how the culture has changed so much in the last 30 years, it would be perceived very, very differently today if a woman that age would marry her manager who's 25 years older than her. Part of that strategy was releasing

that first English language album in 1990. And in the wake of that, she's nominated for Anglophone Artist of the Year in Quebec. There's a gala. She refuses to accept the award. Have a listen to what she said in an interview shortly after that. 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. 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. Well, 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. It's Celine Dion speaking with Adrienne Clarkson, of course.

You said that there was a conversation in the wake of that English language album. Conversation is one word. I mean, people have applied the word backlash to it as well. And you heard that there, that perhaps there was a sense of betrayal from some people. What was going on there? Well, in 1990, there's a big political push in Canada and in Quebec to bring back Quebec into the constitutional fold, which ultimately failed. But this is part of the context when this is happening. Selena is releasing her first English album.

Selena's always mostly strayed away from, you know, federalist, separatist politics. But I think what she's shown, what I'm hearing myself as a, I'm a millennial, right? So what I'm hearing there is a sort of template on how so many people of my generation, French Canadians, are able to be proud to be Quebecer and Francophone, but also embrace the world, embrace, you know, English and American culture, but not forget who we are. And I think Celine, for people my age especially, has, you know, shown that example. But I know that for people her age or older, it was seen, it was perceived very, very differently

at the time. And there was even a conversation on if people who spoke English in Quebec were actually Quebecers. And there was, I know there was also pushback from Adrian in that interview. So I think that's very rich. And it's interesting to revisit this like over 30 years later. How proud of people were people in Quebec, French, from the Francophone, when she became an English superstar, an English language superstar? Oh, my God. Well, what I tried to explain to people is that what Celine has accomplished in the 90s, being, you know, arguably one of the biggest English language

stars in the world, while also recording in French and releasing an album, Deux, in 1995, which became the biggest selling French album ever. She's become, for francophones in Canada, but also in Europe, she's become such a symbol of French culture and francophone culture. Then this is why they chose her in Paris. Like Celine is associated to Vegas, but she is also associated to Paris, having been there so many times playing Stade de France. So francophones all over the world are extremely, extremely proud of her. And I believe that being from Canada and being from Quebec has given her this way of playing with culture and adapting and understanding culture.

And this is why she's been able to relate to people from so many different backgrounds in ways that I don't know that American stars are able because their culture is so hegemonic. And Celine is just slightly on the other side being from Canada, and I think that's helped her actually. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons,

but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. There's an interview in the podcast. This is when she is at kind of the peak of her success in the late 90s, a superstar around the world.

Have a listen to this. I travel the world and I don't even know. I haven't seen nothing. People ask me the questions. Tell me and tell us and what do you think and what do you think? I don't know. I've done everything and I've done nothing, to be honest with you. I stopped going to school.

I was 16 years old, I think, and I can't even remember. I don't know too much about life. I need to be with my family and friends. We want to try to have a child. I need to be with my family and friends. We want to try to have a child. I need to be home and be a woman. I need to know my husband. I'm 30 years old. I think I deserve a break.

I'm 30 years old. I deserve a break. So that's something that's so funny to me because people need to realize that all the power ballads from the 90s were recorded when she was in her 20s. And she's sometimes being regarded as like this, you know, older style. But, you know, by the time she was 30 in 1998, most of the sort of big 90s power ballads were already recorded. So that's the first thing. And the second thing was she's actually saying in this interview is she's talking about globalization. She's talking about becoming this global superstar, seeing the world, but what kind of value that

actually has in her life and kind of getting back to her roots, which she's always made a really conscious effort, sometimes I think for kind of commercial and marketing reasons, but I think also sometimes for personal reasons, to stay connected to her background to Quebec. That being said, the late 90s is also when she permanently moved to America, right? She moved to Florida first, now she lives in Las Vegas. So there's always this tension with Celine of like, okay, she's Canadian, she's French-Canadian, but she's lived in America for so long. And there's a way, and what we hear in the interview is home is kind of where you make it or you decide to make it.

And I find it interesting because she's said pretty much the same thing in a recent interview in 2024, that she had traveled the world and never actually seen it. So she's also saying that fame is a sort of, you know, golden prison where you're kind of stuck in it. You watch, you see the world, but you can't fully participate. And I think that's what we saw this year is like a woman who's trying to break out of this and trying to be in the world and be with people. And that's what she's been, you know,

saying in media interviews around the documentary. And now being in Paris was quite the symbol of that. How important was Vegas to who she is now and that series of Vegas shows? Well, they changed what it meant to do. They changed what it meant to do a residency. Absolutely. You see, I mean, the result of that Adele and U2 and all the bands and artists who have performed that that can be traced right back to the fact that she set up shop there.

Yeah, exactly. And Celine was also part of, I like to say, a Quebec takeover of Las Vegas in the 2000s, where Cirque du Soleil and her were really instrumental in kind of reestablishing Vegas as a sort of tourist destination. So, you know, Montreal and Vegas have a really special connection for that reason. Like lots of Montreal people, they've worked in Vegas, they've visited Vegas a lot. So I think she was partly responsible for that. And, you know, I think, you know, she loves to be with people and this sort of like business of residencies allowed her to be with people as much as she could and not having to tour, not having to travel. It was a sort of ideal environment for her to raise her three kids. So I think that's the, but she's definitely part of the Vegas history now.

The podcast is called Celine Understood. And I mean, if you think of that arc of that career, a career that was interrupted by the neurological disorder stiff person syndrome, and then this comeback at the Paris Olympics and questions as to what she'll do next. How do you understand what she means? Oh, that's a big question. Our colleague Elamin Abdelmahmoud says on the podcast that she allows us to feel big emotions and to express big emotions.

And really, I had a sort of light bulb moment when he said that, because I think that's true with Celine. Her emotions seem so big. And when she sings, she's not, you know, trying to be cool or censoring herself. Or, you know, she's being like, this is a big emotion. I'm going to go as big as I can. And I think she's a vessel for a lot of people to live those emotions. I know that commercial music and pop music can be simplistic and it can simplify emotion. But I

think in a way, Celine is able to thread that. And through her music and also her personality, she's very funny. She's very charming. I think she's very good at being a celebrity. And she's just extremely, extremely watchable. And as I said, I've never known a world without her. And I think she's a sort of constant reassuring presence. And I love to watch her doing interviews and perform. And I hope to see her live again. So she's just this presence for so many people.

And she emerged in the time of monoculture, daytime television, radio. And she's a remnant of that era in a way. That's a big question, but a great answer. Thomas, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Thomas LeBlanc is the host of Céline Understood. The final episode of this podcast drops tomorrow.

You can listen to it and all the previous seasons of Understood wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.