Trivia / Céline Dion

• Approval of God:
  • Actually invited Ana Gasteyer, who did a parody of Celine on Saturday Night Live, to appear on one of her stage shows in New York.
  • She invited another impersonator, Véronic DiCaire, when promoting her French album Sans Attendre in a TV programme.
• Banned Episode: She had "I'm Your Angel" pulled from streaming services due to the scandals involving R. Kelly.
• Breakthrough Hit: Which song should be considered Céline's breakthrough English-language hit varies depending on which country you live in and your definition of "breakthrough."
  • In English Canada, her first chart hit was "Can't Live With You (Can't Live Without You)", a duet with Billy Newton-Davis released in 1989 (a year before Unison); her first solo chart hit was "(If There Was) Any Other Way." However, her first No. 1 hit was "If You Asked Me To."
  • In the United States, "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" was a Top Five hit (much bigger than it was in Canada, where it only hit the Top 30), but many fans point to "Beauty and the Beast" as her true breakthrough thanks to its award wins and its becoming her first U.S. gold and platinum single.
  • "Beauty and the Beast" was Céline's first hit in the U.K., but it could also be argued that her true breakthrough there was her remake of "The Power of Love," which paved the way for "Think Twice" which became a massive hit across Europe despite flopping in the U.S.
• Bury Your Art: Her R. Kelly duet, "I'm Your Angel," although a No. 1 hit, was basically scrubbed from her repertoire after the airing of the 2019 Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly, which explored his history of sexual abuse of children. It's no longer available on streaming platforms and she no longer performs it live.
• Dye Hard: A natural brunette, she has bleached her hair blonde from time to time, most notably during the One Heart era.
• In Memoriam:
  • Vole (later translated to English Fly) was dedicated to her niece Karine, who died from cystic fibrosis. She has since become a champion for combating cystic fibrosis, including a celebrity patron for a Canadian cystic fibrosis foundation.
  • Trois heures vingt (Twenty minutes past three), which is stated to be René Angélil's favorite song, was in a way repurposed as an In Memoriam song for him. So this song was played during his funeral, the ceremony itself started at 3:20 p.m., her video Encore Un Soir (One more night) shows a clock at 3:20, a remastered Trois Heures Vingt is included in her Encore Un Soir album (complete with a fresh lyrics video), and Céline sang that song in some her concerts after René's death. On the U.S. leg of her 2019-20 Courage concert tour, "My Heart Will Go On" served that same purpose when sung as an encore, followed by Céline blowing a kiss skyward.
  • Speaking of Courage, Dion's 2019 English-language album of that same title includes many songs that could be construed as being homages to her late husband, including the title song, "For the Lover That I Lost," and "Baby," among others.
• Referenced by...: In Turning Red, Ming compares 4*Town, the boyband in the film, unfavourably to Dion.
• Singing Against Type: She is so well known for singing ballads (well, one ballad in particular) that it's a strange, but welcome, change when she does something up-tempo. "That's the Way it Is" and "I'm Alive" from the Stuart Little soundtrack were both good examples, as were "Love Can Move Mountains," "Misled," the title song from her first English album "Unison," "Flying on My Own," and her cover of Roy Orbison's "I Drove All Night" (previously a hit for Cyndi Lauper).
  • However, with the exception of "That's the Way It Is," the more uptempo songs she's released as singles typically have not done as well as her ballads. At least not in English. In Quebec, where her image is more that of a general pop singer than specifically a ballad singer, she's been able to get away with more stylistic experimentation - one example is her 2003 French album 1 fille et 4 types, which incorporated elements of folk and even country music and was as critically praised as some of her English albums have been critically savaged.
• What Could Have Been:
  • She was meant to sing "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", for the soundtrack to Armageddon (1998) before it become a number one for Aerosmith.
  • After the success of "Beauty and the Beast," Céline was also pegged to duet with Michael Bolton on "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. Instead, the song was given to Dion's previous duet partner, Peabo Bryson, to sing with Regina Belle (at that time mostly unknown outside of R&B audiences), and, even without the combined star power of Dion and Bolton, became a number-one hit.
• Written for My Kids: Her 2002 hit "A New Day Has Come" is a Parental Love Song tribute to her first son, Rene-Charles. Partially averted in that she did not write the song; it was written by Aldo Nova and Stephan Moccio.

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