Céline Dion

Céline Dion (born 30 March 1968 in Charlemagne, Quebec) is a Canadian singer. The youngest of a family of fourteen children, she achieved almost immediate success in her home province of Quebec from 1981 with the song Ce n'était qu'un rêve. A series of French-language albums throughout the 1980s consolidated her popularity, while the track D'amour ou d'amitié (1983) earned her her first exposure in France. She extended her fame by winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988, representing Switzerland with the song Ne partez pas sans moi. She then learned English, changed her image, and signed a contract with Epic Records in the United States. Her English-language album, Unison, was released in 1990 and established her as a major pop artist in North American and Anglophone markets.

In the 1990s, she achieved worldwide fame, notably producing two albums that rank among the best-selling in music industry history, Falling into You (1996) and Let's Talk About Love (1997), each selling more than 30 million copies worldwide. She recorded several major international hits, culminating with My Heart Will Go On, the theme song of James Cameron's film Titanic in 1997. At the same time, she continued to produce French-language albums for Francophone markets, marked by a fruitful collaboration with Jean-Jacques Goldman, which notably led to the album D'eux (1995), the best-selling French-language album in France and worldwide, and S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998).

In the 2000s, she built a solid reputation as a stage performer, notably with the show A New Day… Live in Las Vegas, presented in Las Vegas from 2003 to 2007, which is the most profitable residency show in history, and with the Taking Chances World Tour from 2008 to 2009, which became one of the most profitable tours of all time.

Her first Las Vegas residency, launched in 2003 at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, ran for more than 1,100 shows in front of around 4.5 million spectators.

In the 2010s, she resumed her Las Vegas residency between 2011 and 2019 and performed on several regional tours around the world. In 2016, the death of her husband and manager, René Angélil, who had contributed greatly to almost every stage of her success, marked a turning point in her career.

Céline Dion's musical style draws on a variety of influences, from R&B to gospel, classical and pop. Recording mainly in French and English, but also occasionally in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese and Mandarin, she is widely considered and recognised as one of the most influential voices in pop music. She has received five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year, and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song have been given to songs she performed. In 2003, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry honoured her for selling more than 50 million albums in Europe. At the 2007 World Music Awards, she received the Legend Award in recognition of her "worldwide success and outstanding contribution to the music industry." Similarly, she received the Billboard Icon Award at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards in recognition of her entire career.