Review This Again: Falling Into You By Celine Dion!

The Good: Good vocals, Generally good sound, Good use of c.d. capacity
The Bad: Some cheesy lyrics, Repetitive musical accompaniment, All the best songs are available on compilation albums.
The Basics: Falling Into You ages surprisingly poorly, with its best tracks easily being found on Dion's many compilation albums.


[There is a big meme in the art community going around now called "Draw This Again." In the meme, artists illustrate how they have grown in their chosen medium by putting side-by-side pictures of art they created in the past and now. My wife had the great idea that I should do something similar with my reviewing. So, for 2017, I will be posting occasional "Review This Again" reviews, where I revisit subjects I had previously reviewed and review them again, through a lens of increased age, more experience, and - for some - greater familiarity with the subject. This review is one such review, where I am re-experiencing Falling Into You after many years and with more experience as both a reviewer and one who has heard much of the Celine Dion library. The album was originally reviewed here!]

When it comes to Celine Dion's works, there are few albums less worth reviewing than Falling Into You. Falling Into You sold more than 11 million copies in the United States and over thirty-two million copies worldwide. It is one of the undisputed best-selling albums of all time. I decided to listen to the album for my Review It Again project because I had the fundamental question: Is Falling Into You any good? Falling Into You is popular, but popularity is not always indicative of enduring quality. To answer that question, I picked up the European Deluxe edition of Falling Into You, which has two more tracks than the standard U.S. release.

Falling Into You is good, but it is heavily frontloaded. Celine Dion is good on Falling Into You, but all of the best songs can be found with other superlative songs by her on compilation albums - the listener is not missing out on any truly great Celine Dion tracks by getting the highlights on one of her many compilation albums. If one picked up a compilation album, would they truly be missing anything by not getting the up-tempo, overproduced dance track "Make You Happy?" I think not. Falling Into You has some wonderful tracks, but the rest are utterly forgettable (I would love to poll a random sample of the thirty-two million album buyers and ask them to either quote or hum a few bars from "Seduces Me" and my assumption now would be most would not be able to).

With sixteen songs, clocking out at 75:54, Falling Into You does an excellent job of using the whole capacity of a compact disc. Falling Into You is a collaborative effort on many fronts but it is dominated creatively by writers/producers Jim Steinman, Jean-Jacques Goldman, and David Foster (producer only). Steinman was still riding high on the success of Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell (reviewed here!), which he was the main writer and producer behind and his works for Celine Dion help to frame and define the operatic sound on Falling Into You. Celine Dion, for her part, is a performer on Falling Into You; she sings the songs that others wrote, produced and engineered/played instruments on.

Falling Into You is a much more erratic album than many people seem to want to admit. Opening with two big ballads, the album suddenly goes poppy and then into a dance-pop number. There are very few organic transitions in the track to track development of Falling Into You. Some of the musical transitions are actually disturbing; the lonely, heartwrenchingly-delivered ballad "All By Myself" is followed "Declaration Of Love," which has a pop-Country/rockabilly sound to it. At least on the bonus album, that is followed by Dion's cover of the Carole King classic "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman." The bulk of Falling Into You is loaded with keyboard and percussion-driven pop tracks that are produced to highlight Celine Dion's vocals.

Celine Dion's vocals are exceptional on Falling Into You. What surprised me listening to Falling Into You all of these years later was how much the album relies upon backing vocals on many songs. "Dreamin' Of You," for example, stops using Celine Dion's vocals to carry the song and ends with a final third that is essentially just background singers carrying the song out. "I Love You" begins the same way and even Dion's popular tracks like "Because You Loved Me" include fairly excessive backing vocals. When she is allowed to present herself, Celine Dion performs in an exceptional soprano voice and is able to hold notes for an impressive amount of time. "I Love You" actually allows Dion to present a sugary quality to her voice that is very endearing and sells the lines in the song quite well!

What struck me about truly listening to Falling Into You this time was that Celine Dion picks some songs to perform that have particularly lame rhymes. Dion is known for schmaltzy love songs, but some of the lines are just worthy of wincing when one hears them. Even in 1997 when Falling Into You was released, the rhymes "I'm falling into you / This dream could come true / And it feels so good falling into you / Falling like a leaf, falling like a star / Finding a belief, falling where you are / Catch me, don't let me drop! / Love me, don't ever stop" ("Falling Into You") were hardly fresh!

That is not to say that Dion is unable to sing phrases that she makes resonate (even today!). The resilience Dion sings of in "I Don't Know" is compelling and universal. And the power of love exhibited when Dion sings "You were my strength when I was weak / You were my voice when I couldn't speak / You were my eyes when I couldn't see / You saw the best there was in me / Lifted me up when I couldn't reach / You gave me faith 'cause you believed / I'm everything I am / Because you loved me" ("Because You Loved Me") makes that hit a truly worthwhile song. Not all things that are popular are bad!

But even lyrically, Falling Into You is terribly frontloaded. Almost all of the best lines on the album are on the first few songs, while later songs get saddled with lines like "Call the man / Who deals in love beyond repair / He can heal the world / Of hearts in need of care / Shine a light ahead / When the next step is unclear" ("Call The Man"). This helps to create the perception that Falling Into You has a few good songs, but is not a particularly cohesive or strong album.

Falling Into You is a fairly average album; it peaks incredibly early and has several unmemorable tracks in its second half (after "I Love You," it pretty much falls apart). For those looking for Celine Dion works now, Falling Into You is hardly essential; its best tracks are all on compilations, making the rest of the album somewhat superfluous filler.

The best track is "It's All Coming Back To Me Now," the low point is probably the incongruent "Declaration Of Love."

For other Review This Again reviews, please check out:
The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan
Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos
Minutes To Midnight - Linkin Park

4.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Not The Celine Dion We Once Knew, Loved Me Back To Life Is An Overproduced Event Album!

The Good: Moments the vocals break through the production elements, I can't complain about including a Janis Ian cover!
The Bad: Overproduced, Not a cohesive album
The Basics: Loved Me Back To Life is an album that seems to be Celine Dion desperately chasing a hit song, more than a cohesive musical experience.


Every musical artist who has massive success has a peak from which they invariably fall. Every empire falls and for the truly enduring musical artists, that empire falls slowly and the artist or performer seldom goes quietly. As the world changes, artists like Celine Dion continue to try to find their place in it and even in 2013 when Loved Me Back To Life came on, most radio stations (at least in the United States) were not playing music like the songs that had made Celine Dion a worldwide musical phenomenon. While Celine Dion had ebbs and flows within her career before her Las Vegas residency, none of her albums had sounded so . . . desperate before Loved Me Back To Life.

Allow me to explain. Loved Me Back To Life is not a cohesive album, it is a collection of singles designed to try to sell one that will land the album. The album does not have a producer; like collaborative hip-hop albums, Loved Me Back To Life features various producers for each track as each producer attempts to make a hit and the album is pretty much thrown together and the hope Sony had was that one would stick with listeners. The result is an album that features songs like "Water And A Flame," which sounds like it could have been a James Bond theme and "Save Your Soul," which sounds like Rhiannon! And while technically accurate, Celine Dion's cover of Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" is hard to take seriously as Dion's personal history makes the lyrics feel entirely inauthentic from her.

With thirteen songs, clocking out at 60:58, Loved Me Back To Life is very much a collaborative effort which Celine Dion had very limited apparent control over. Dion did not write any of the songs on Loved Me Back To Life and she plays no instruments on it as well. Celine Dion does provide all of the lead vocals, but she is not credited even as a co-producer on the album, so it is questionable how much creative control she actually had over the venture.

Opening with the poppy, overproduced "Loved Me Back To Life," Loved Me Back To Life sounds right away more like a dance-pop album than anything else. Ironically, from "Thank You" (track 8) on, Loved Me Back To Life presents more familiar-sounding pop ballads that actually showcase more of Celine Dion's voice than the front-half of the album. Instead, percussion, engineering elements and auditory majesty seem to be the priority of Loved Me Back To Life; the album desperately tries to create something that sounds big and full. But with elements like an electric guitar solo at the end of the first track, listeners are far more likely to be asking "what the hell?!" as opposed to thinking they actually bought a Celine Dion album. The Gotye-like "Somebody Loves Somebody" finds Celine Dion fighting massive basslines to get her vocals out and the backing music is far more compelling than the lines Dion sings.

Vocally, Loved Me Back To Life is an unfortunate departure for Celine Dion. On the songs on Loved Me Back To Life, Dion does not try to hit the truly high notes that were once her staple. For sure, she goes whispy and high on "At Seventeen" and she holds notes a decent amount of time on "Somebody Loves Somebody," but far more often than not, Dion's vocals are altered by production elements or she stays in the lower registers, making an unimpressive auditory Celine Dion experience. Added to that, Loved Me Back To Life is notable in that it includes two guest vocalists - Ne-Yo on "Incredible" (Ne-Yo also produced "Thank You") and Stevie Wonder on his song "Overjoyed." I suppose Wonder and Dion might have wanted to work with one another, but the Ne-Yo song with its overproduced backing and odd vocal accompaniment just sound like Dion is desperately chasing a younger audience. Hell, on "Thank You," Celine Dion sounds like virtually identical to Michael Jackson (on "You Are Not Alone") for a disturbing amount of time on the track!

Lyrically, Loved Me Back To Life is all over the map. While the album starts with songs about love, the album moves into gratitude and then into completely inauthentic songs about youthful awkwardness. All of the songs are covers, so presumably she wanted to sing things like "I can't believe in every word you're saying / Wrapped up in every kiss you've poisoned / I could swear I've never tasted sin / But If I just knew / I'll forget what you've done / But I can't save your soul ("Save Your Soul"), which creates a fairly jumbled narrative. The musical protagnist knows their partner is lying, but seems to be okay with it as long as the subject does not want her to save his soul?!

The lack of consistent writing on Loved Me Back To Life leads to some of Celine Dion's least-compelling lyrics. There is no smash hit on Loved Me Back To Life arguably because of rhymes like "I'm pickin' up all the pieces / When I put 'em back together I'm like new / 'Cause my greatest wish has already come true . . . I'll be holdin' the wrap if you tumble and fall / There's love after love after all" ("Always Be Your Girl"). None of the songs have lines that pop in a new, fresh way for Dion.

But Loved Me Back To Life becomes very hard to take seriously when Celine Dion covers "At Seventeen." The song is wonderful with lines like "I learned the truth at seventeen / That love was meant for beauty queens / And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles / Who married young and then retired" ("At Seventeen"), but they are entirely outside Dion's experience. Celine Dion was a massive pop star in Canada by seventeen. She is hardly the one to credibly sing "And those of us with ravaged faces / Lacking in the social graces / Desperately remained at home / Inventing lovers on the phone" ("At Seventeen").

Artists absolutely should evolve, but on Loved Me Back To Life, Dion is only a performer. Celine Dion is performing, with incredibly minimal creativity to her work (the song I knew best on Loved Me Back To Life was "At Seventeen" and Dion stripped it back to a sound very similar to Janis Ian's "one woman and a guitar" sound, unlike anything else on the album) and the choices Dion and Sony make on this album make it sound more like a desperate attempt for a hit than anything truly creative or thematically unified. Instead, Loved Me Back To Life is a remarkably ineffective attempt to swing for a very different sound and because Dion does not settle on a sound or message, Loved Me Back To Life comes across as more messy and desperate than divine.

The best songs are "Thank You," "Water And A Flame," and "At Seventeen;" the others are not worth listening to.

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Power Of Love (single)
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times
Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life
Taking Chances
I Drove All Night (single)
My Love: Essential Collection
My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection

3.5/10

See how this album stacks up against every other musical work I have reviewed by checking out my Music Review Index Page for a listing where albums are organized best to worst!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

"The Power Of Love:" A Whispy Song, A Waste Of A Single.

The Good: Not a bad song
The Bad: Overproduced, Short (does not use the medium well).
The Basics: A fine song for those who like romantic pop ballads which are heavily produced, “The Power Of Love” is a disappointing use of the c.d. medium as a single.


When it comes to the works of Celine Dion, there are few songs that will probably make it onto each and every one of her compilations the way that her song “The Power Of Love” does. The song was Dion’s first multinational hit and the song that defined her breakout as a performer in the United States. It is, in many ways, the embodiment of the pop ballad and it is almost universally recognizable, even when it is remade as elevator music. It is also an utter waste as a c.d. single.

The c.d. single of “The Power Of Love” is a one-track release with the album version of The Power Of Love on it. The c.d. single offers no additional tracks, no remixes, no alternate versions, nothing. This is a regular c.d. upon which only 4:48 of music is imprinted. And while “The Power Of Love” is a good song, it is schmaltzy and Celine Dion fans – and casual listeners – will have no good reason to hunt this down as it appears on at least three full albums (that come instantly to my mind).

That said, “The Power Of Love” illustrates the lack of creative control Celine Dion has over the works she performs. She is a performer, not an artist and nowhere is it more clear than on this single. In this case, the sole song on the disc was written by four writers, none of whom were Dion. As well, Dion plays no instruments and she was not involved in the production of the single at all. That said, what she does on “The Power Of Love” is sing.

Celine Dion has a pretty amazing soprano voice and on “The Power Of Love,” most of her natural voice is actually evident. Unfortunately for listeners, while she has the swells and stanzas dominated with her natural voice, there are moments – especially at the beginning – where the vocals have a more produced sound to them. Ironically, this is not when she is mumbling through the opening lines of the song, but rather right before the first refrain. In the refrain, she illustrates amazing pitch and great lung capacity.

But the ridiculous aspect of “The Power Of Love” (other than its short duration) comes in its production. This is a keyboard-driven song with a programmed synclavier which gives the song a feel of actually possessing a string section. While there is an electric guitar – none of these played by Dion – that comes in to give the slow ballad more of a pop-rock edge, the keyboards dominate. And the problem is that when it seems Dion has the most to show off with her powerful, trademark vocals, this is when the instrumental accompaniment drowns her out and prevents the listener from getting the full magnitude of her voice.

As well, those who are not a fan of sappy pop love songs will find there is little to recommend “The Power Of Love.” The song is poetic, with lines like “Even though there may be times / It seems I’m falling away / Never walked away, I have / ‘Cause I am always by your side” which are then hampered by a pretty banal rhyme scheme in the refrain. Indeed, when it is set up with “’Cause I’m your lady,” the lines that follow, including “And you are my man / Whenever you reach for me / I’m gonna do all that I can. . .” are pretty predictable. The lines are clearly heartfelt and inoffensive – this is a love song, not a song about “getting some” – but they are uncomplicated. This makes for a good hit song (simplicity bodes well for the memories of the masses), but is not honestly a timeless song that is likely to be covered by other artists in decades to come.

That said, Celine Dion’s vocal interpretation of the lines others have wrote for her is not inherently bad and one finds themselves listening to this simple single wishing very much that they could hear an acoustic version of it. Sadly, that is not to be on this single. It is just the commonly-available studio-produced track. Nothing more, nothing less. Hold out for an album with the song on it.

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times
Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life
Taking Chances
I Drove All Night (single)
My Love: Essential Collection
My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection

3/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Truly The Only Album Fans Of Celine Dion Actually Need: My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection.

The Good: Some catchy tunes, Duration
The Bad: Very repetitive sound
The Basics: A good collection of the first twenty years of Celine Dion's career, the two-disc My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection is THE version to pick up for those who must.


For those who follow my monthly Artist Of The Month campaigns, I sometimes fear that I might be presenting a feel that is very repetitive when I immerse myself in a single musical artist. This problem is exacerbated when one is reviewing a performer instead of an actual creative talent because notes must be made about the performers lack of input into the material so credit may be laid at the feet of those actually responsible for the works. That said, some days there are truly repetitive reviews and as September winds down and I spin the last Celine Dion discs in my (and her!) arsenal, today is one of them. As I investigate My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection, there might be an even more familiar than usual tint to it. That is quite simply because earlier I reviewed My Love: Essential Collection. The one word makes a huge amount of difference. This c.d. is actually a two-disc set. It contains the entire first album (so I shall not repeat the critique of that) as well as a second album with lesser-known hits.

Of the two, this is THE Celine Dion ultimate collection to get, if one feels they must have Celine Dion in their collection. The reason for this is quite simple: for a few dollars more, one gets all of Celine Dion's radio hits (including "To Love You More!") and b-sides that are harder to come by, like Dion's covers of "River Deep, Mountain High" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman." As with her usual fare, Dion is not much of a creative talent, but I tend to argue in favor of compilation albums that offer a broader sense of the performer and My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection does that.

The bonus material on My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection is an additional ten tracks (there is a hidden version of the original "My Love" at the end of the second disc, not on the tracklist), one disc, with seconds under eighty minutes of music. As a result, the total two-disc set has twenty-eight songs and almost three hours worth of music. As with the one-disc version none of the additional songs were written or even co-produced by Celine Dion. She does not develop any sudden instrumental talent on the bonus disc, so it has Celine Dion solely performing the works of others.

What is nice for fans is the inclusion of some of the more obscure tracks that help fans by eliminating the need for them to track down obscure soundtrack or tribute albums. Most prominently, My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection includes "Dance With My Father," from a Luther Vandross tribute that seems to be harder to find. Similarly, after all of the Celine Dion albums I've listened to this month, this collection seems to be the only place to find Celine Dion's renditions of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "I Knew I Loved You." These songs easily justify the extra dollars for the two-disc set, though truthfully Celine Dion does not own them (at least the former) the way the original artists did. Still, hearing covers of songs like "River Deep, Mountain High," which was popularized by Tina Turner, one wishes for Celine Dion's rendition of "Alone" from her album Taking Chances. The reason for this is simple: this collection perfectly embodies Celine Dion as the diva she is.

Celine Dion, like Turner and Cher is less a creative persona and much more a vocal talent with a strong ability to make the words and music of others recognizable. Celine Dion does this with a birdlike soprano voice that easily outshines most of her peers. Indeed, the tenor voice of Andrea Bocelli on "The Prayer" is so overshadowed by Dion's melodic soprano voice that one almost wonders why she bothered with a duet. Most of the bonus songs feature Dion using her trademark soprano voice and she goes higher on some of the songs (like "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman") than the originals did. Still, she adds some variety and her version of "River Deep, Mountain High" illustrates that she can go a little lower and more soulful with her vocals than she usually does.

Just as fans of the radio-hits of Celine Dion might have felt odd about getting a few new tracks with the one-disc version (which is pretty much a standard to try to lure those who have all of the albums a "greatest hits" is compiled from to buying the new compilation), those who pick up the two-disc My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection are bound to find it bursting with some of the forgotten Celine Dion hits. In addition to "Love You More," My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection has "Tell Him," the duet Celine Dion performed with Barbara Streisand. This, though, is a great example of how the album embodies the exact niche Celine Dion has dominated for her English-singing career.

Celine Dion is a performer, almost exclusively, of emotive, romantic ballads that are designed to tug on the heart strings. They are slow, feature Dion's vocals forthrightly presented before the instrumental accompaniment and are in no way the most original lyrics ever presented. Songs like "I Drove All Night" have obvious, predictable rhyme schemes and they hold up poorly over multiple listens. While some of Dion's later songs move more into singing about change and growth, most of her music is about the importance of love, the strength of relationships and the loneliness of loss when a love disappears (they never seem to go sour on this album, just get lost somehow).

Instrumentally, the additional tracks on My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection are very much a continuation of the hits that are found in Dion's repertoire. Dion is backed up almost always by light strings or keyboards. "River Deep, Mountain High" has a departure from this with a more intense percussion section, but "Dance With My Father" is exactly the type of overproduced schmaltzy song one expects to hear on the light rock stations. It matches the instrumental timbre of "My Heart Will Go On" and "The Power Of Love" well.

Ultimately, it is hard not to give credit to Celine Dion, even if she is manufactured by a pretty immense team of producers who have created Brand Celine. My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection reminds the listener that Dion has dominated the airwaves for two decades because she has vocal talent and her producers know how to exploit her talent with an impressive collection from the contemporary songbook. This two-disc version illustrates that the same team seems to have the resources and resolution to continue Dion producing for the next twenty years, making it doubtful that this is truly the "ultimate" collection.

The best songs are "The Power Of Love" (disc 1) and "To Love You More" (disc 2) and the low points are "I'm Your Angel" (disc 1) and the unmemorable "There Comes A Time" (disc 2).

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times
Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life
Taking Chances
I Drove All Night (single)
My Love: Essential Collection

6/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

She Drove All Night, This Single Drives Me Crazy: "I Drove All Night" By Celine Dion!

The Good: Moments of vocal adequacy
The Bad: SHORT!, Overproduced, Poor use of the medium.
The Basics: Another disappointing c.d. single, "I Drove All Night" offers listeners nothing they don't already get on Celine Dion's album One Heart.


If it seems like I am down on c.d. singles, well . . . I am. These short, cheap discs are made of the exact same materials as standard compact discs and yet they use about 1/8th of the discs total capacity. They become ridiculous wastes of space and money. And for the argument that they are inexpensive ways to get only the best songs by an artist, I will happily rebut that now. C.d. singles are often more expensive in the long term than actual albums. For example, with Celine Dion's U.S. release of her single "I Drove All Night," it was a shelfwarmer for a while, then disappeared from the marketplace. As a result, its value has now appreciated to the ten dollar range (utterly ridiculous in my book). Conversely, the lackluster album One Heart - which "I Drove All Night" is from - can often be found on sale for ten dollars or less if one is a smart shopper. Because c.d. singles are a novelty now (most companies no longer produce them), their value has generally increased as a result of the collectible nature of them.

Even so, there are c.d. singles that are better than others. The best c.d. singles provide listeners with rare b-sides and bonus tracks that are not available elsewhere. The worst c.d. singles provide only the title track. The slight step up from that (still horrible) are the c.d. singles that include the title track and one other song from the album that the single is from. The U.S. release of Celine Dion's "I Drove All Night" falls into that category. This two-track disc includes two songs: "I Drove All Night" and "I Know What Love Is." This makes it utterly worthless to anyone who isn't a Celine Dion collector (not listener, but collector of all things Celine Dion).

With only two songs, clocking out at a measly eight and a half minutes, "I Drove All Night" continues the tradition of Celine Dion's music being minimally hers. Neither song was written by Dion (the title track was originally written for Roy Orbison, in fact!), she does not play any instruments and she does not have any sort of production credit on these songs. In fact, even Dion's vocals are only minimally hers on these songs as the album is so overproduced as to obscure her natural voice frequently. This song led the album "One Heart" and was part of Chrysler's sponsorship of Celine Dion. The thing is, this c.d. single seems like a cheap advertising tool more than a musical experience.

First, Dion's version is overproduced with pounding bass and drums. This makes the pop song heartless and lacking in anything remotely resembling "soul." Whereas Orbison's version had a more stark sound that conveyed the raw emotionalism of the lyrics, Dion's version is a cheap dance number that sounds like a car commercial soundtrack.

Second, Celine Dion's natural voice is produced as well on the title track. The reverb is turned up and amid the additional production elements that smooth out imperfections, it becomes impossible to tell whether or not Dion's long-held note is truly impressive or the result of simply stretching the note with good production software. I lean toward the latter if for no other reason than the rest of the song has such a frenetic quality that to go from shorter breaths to such a long breath is wickedly difficult to pull off. On "I Know What Love Is," which is a more traditional Celine Dion ballad, Dion's vocals do have a more natural quality to them.

Finally, the lyrics on "I Drove All Night" are not anything to write home about. The rhyme scheme on the lines is pretty predictable and the sentiment is not overwhelmingly original. Indeed, the lines "I drove all night to get to you / Is that all right? / I drove all night / Crept in your room / Woke you from your sleep / To make love to you / Is that all right? / I drove all night" ("I Drove All Night") become grating with the repetition needed to get the song up to four minutes long! In other words, this becomes a very typical pop song about relationships from the instrumental sound to the lines themselves.

Conversely, the ballad "I Know What Love Is" does have some lyrical merit. On that song, Dion sings "Now there's no mountain / Too high for me to climb / No ocean so wide / That I could not reach the other side / Now I believe in me / 'Cause you live and breathe in me / And nothing can come between / We are one star / No night can darken" ("I Know What Love Is"). Despite having some pretty cliche images, the song does have a decent sense of poetics and imagery. Dion carries the sense of feeling for the song well and it is not a bad song.

But both of the songs use a very "assembled" sound to them where the instrumental accompaniment sounds more like it is the result of a drum machine, guitar sound on the keyboards and a string section loop than actual musicians. This becomes repetitive and annoying when played over and over again.

Both "I Drove All Night" and "I Know What Love Is" are the original album versions of these songs, which makes it even more pointless to purchase this c.d. single. It is not like the listener is getting alternate takes or more inspired renditions of the songs.

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times
Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life
Taking Chances
My Love: Essential Collection

2.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

Is This All? Is That Too Much To Hope? Celine Dion's My Love: Essential Collection

The Good: Great vocals, Recognizable songs, Duration
The Bad: Little new, Songs blend together, There is a better two-disc version.
The Basics: A collection of almost entirely recognizable tracks, My Love: Essential Collection is a one-disc "greatest hits" album that offers listeners all of Dion's radio hits.


For those who might not have been following my reviews this month of my Artist Of The Month, Celine Dion, I have developed quite a feeling of boredom for the works of this particular vocal performer. Inarguably, Celine Dion has an amazing soprano voice (when she uses her natural voice and illustrates her vocal talents) but she largely performs the same type songs, slow, melodic, melodramatic ballads, over and over again. So, when my month-long exploration brought me to My Love: Essential Collection my heart skipped a beat: could this truly be it? Is it possible that if Celine Dion is releasing an "Essential Collection" that she might be hanging up her mantle and no longer producing c.d.s? This feeling of elation was expanded when I looked and saw the follow-up: My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection! "Ultimate" could mean final, in addition to best . . . can it be? Only time will tell . . .

As it stands, My Love: Essential Collection is the 2008 outing for Celine Dion and its companion album is My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection. The difference is an entire disc and My Love: Essential Collection is a one-disc collection focusing on Celine Dion's English-language hits compiled from over the last twenty years. The album has what Dion and her producers would argue are the essential songs from her English-singing career and for those looking for the radio hits of Celine Dion, this is a good way to go. In addition to the recognizable and obvious ballads, like "Beauty And The Beast" and "My Heart Will Go On", and the overproduced pop hits like "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" and "I Drove All Night," My Love: Essential Collection includes a pair of b-sides in the form of a live version of "My Love" and her new performance of "There Comes A Time."

With seventeen tracks, clocking out at over seventy minutes of music, My Love: Essential Collection is an anthology album that is ideal for those who like what they have heard from Celine Dion on the radio, but are not terribly interested in anything more by her. As always, Celine Dion has almost no creative control over the album and she is not responsible for writing any of the songs on the album. As well, she does not play any musical instruments nor is she involved with any of the production aspects of the album. Celine Dion is a vocalist only and on this album, she tends to perform in a very monolithic and monotonal way, making for an overall unsatisfying listening experience.

The lack of creative influence over the songs on My Love: Essential Collection ultimately makes for a very bland overall listening experience for this compilation. The album is front-heavy - as Dion's career is - with slow, melodramatic ballads that illustrate Dion's vocal talents but are the musical equivalent of puff pastry: ultimately unsatisfying and lacking in real substance. So, for example, while "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" opens the album with some sense of vocal intensity, it is followed by movie themes like "Beauty And The Beast" and "If You Asked Me To" which are pop ballads that are utterly forgettable.

The songs blend together as the common elements between them are not just Celine Dion's vocals, but an overproduced instrumental quality that is dominated by keyboards and light string sections. Because of this, the performances - which are almost all the standard recordings of each of the hit tracks - begin to take on a narcoleptic quality, as if the point of the album is to lull the listener into a romantic haze. Unfortunately for listeners, the effect is not to put one in a frisky or cuddling mood, but rather to put the listener into a coma from the overly sweet, sleepy songs.

It is not until the twelfth track that the album tries something up-tempo. That's not to say all of the prior songs are all identical, but the few creative leaps before "That's The Way It Is" are remarkably safe and within the expected range that schmaltzy romantic ballads are known for. So, for example, "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" has a more operatic quality - which is pretty much the standard for the song's writer/producer Jim Steinman - than something like "Because You Loved Me," but they are both part of the same gestalt; their overall sound is from the same musical tradition and Dion's execution of both songs is virtually identical.

For the most part, Celine Dion sings earnest ballads with an emotional intensity that is matched by an impressive range. Celine Dion's hit songs on My Love: Essential Collection are almost all using Dion's soprano voice and she sings clearly and sweetly on songs like "My Heart Will Go On" and "Where Does My Heart Beat Now." She goes a little lower for her later tracks like "I Drove All Night" and with more emphasis on "I'm Alive." She treads more toward pop-rock on the later songs as well and the result is an album that starts slow and sleepy and becomes something upbeat long after the listener has stopped caring.

As well, the middle of My Love: Essential Collection is remarkably weak, despite Dion's pretty consistent tendency to make hit songs. But when her producers included a duet from her holiday album ("I'm Your Angel") they cut the pace and recognizable quality that almost every other track on the album had. It becomes an unmemorable way to break up Dion's big hits "My Heart Will Go On" and "That's The Way It Is," which was pretty much when Celine Dion ruled the airwaves.

But for those who do like Celine Dion's radio hits, there are some noticeable omissions, like "Love You More," which was the b-side to the "My Heart Will Go On" single. Instrumentally, almost all of the songs have Dion accompanied by light rock favorites like the keyboards or a string section, though her later songs actually have percussion that is featured prominently ("Taking Chances"). For the most part, though, the instrumental accompaniment to Dion's vocals are flawlessly produced, programmed instrumentals that become background loops to Dion's soft vocals or crescendos.

Ultimately, the strongest reason not to recommend My Love: Essential Collection is that like many performers, Celine Dion has a better version of the same album out. The two-disc My Love: Ultimate Essential Collection offers more bang for the buck than this one-disc version and ultimately is a better value for fans as it offers a more well-rounded view of Dion's career as opposed to just her radio hits. As well, the other album includes all of the tracks on this one-disc album, so one is not missing out on anything.

The best track is "Power Of Love," the low point is the utterly unmemorable "I'm Your Angel."

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times
Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life
Taking Chances

5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

Celine Dion Enters The World Of Inane Pop With Taking Chances, A Surprisingly Likable Album.

The Good: Decent vocals, Good overall sound
The Bad: Very poppy, Short
The Basics: Very average, Celine Dion takes a chance on making a very produced pop-rock album and Taking Chances works . . . for what it is.


Every now and then, my views as a reviewer come into conflict with my basic human emotions. The latest example of that phenomenon is happening right now as I listen to Celine Dion's album Taking Chances for the eighth time. For those who do not follow my reviews, the eighth listen is the magic spinning of a disc that allows me to feel like I have listened to the album enough to actually write about it. And as Celine Dion sings cover songs made famous by other divas and bands, I find myself not loathing the album. For sure, creatively this album is almost as barren as most of Dion's other works, but the more I listen to this, the more I like it.

On Taking Chances, Celine Dion avoids being the crooner or Las Vegas lounge singing act one might know her as. Here, she presents herself as a pure pop diva and while I am not fond of the genre for the most part, it is hard to listen to the album and not feel anything but respect for Celine Dion as a performer. Finally, her producers have tried a style for her where she is not boring, not presenting the same songs everyone since Sinatra has covered and she holds her own doing the works of others. As a result, most of the problems with Taking Chances are just the faults of the genre as opposed to specific problems with Celine Dion.

With sixteen songs occupying 65:34 on compact disc, Taking Chances is more of a songbook of pop-rock writers than it is a collection of standards, making it a departure for Celine Dion that is, at the very least, louder. Even so, Celine Dion does nothing here that she hasn't already done on other albums; she only sings, performing the lyrics of others on the disc. As a result, she is not responsible for writing or co-writing any of the tracks and she is not involved with the production in any way. As well, she does not play any instruments and Taking Chances embodies a pop-rock sound that is heavily produced and assembled as opposed to well-played instrumentally. The album's songs are almost all produced by different producers, yet the result is a surprisingly cohesive album that sounds like Celine Dion has all that it takes to be the next Cher.

The connection to Cher is easy to make considering that the second song on the album is "Alone" ("How do I get you alone . . .") which Cher popularized. That type of forthright and bold presentation of her songs is more how Celine Dion presents herself on Taking Chances. The Aldo Nova, Andre Bagge, and Peter Sjorstrom song "Shadow Of Love" sounds vaguely familiar from a big hair band and Celine Dion actually makes the rocking song her own. It might be the only example - she does "Alone" well, but Cher still takes the cake on that one! - but it is a good example of how Celine Dion seems committed to trying something new here.

As such, Celine Dion invests a lot of vocal energy in the songs on this album. She competes with thrashing guitars on "Shadow Of Love" and she overwhelms with her vocals on the single "Taking Chances." Indeed, even the crescendos and pounding drums on "Surprise Surprise" cannot overcome her vocal strength. In this way, the producers did something very right on the album. The producers resist the urge to drown out Dion's vocals and instead let her lead the instrumental accompaniment as opposed to letting the sweeping keyboards and guitars overwhelm her voice.

As well, Dion here actually exhibits more range than she has on any previous albums of hers (that I've heard). For example, on "Surprise Surprise," she goes into the lower registers of alto and below for the first half of the song. When the song is quieter and her voice is deeper, she carries the listener's interest before going into her comfortable soprano range when the song becomes a very traditional pop-rock song. Similarly, she takes on an almost country music twang for "This Time" and she has more of the force and vocal intensity of a cowgirl than a showgirl.

This is not to say that Taking Chances is devoid of anything familiar to those who love Celine Dion as a more traditional performer. "New Dawn" is very much a traditional Gospel song and Celine Dion presents it as she would have on any of her other albums. Similarly, "Right Next To The Right One" is a song about love lost that sounds like it could have come from virtually any of Celine Dion's other English-language albums. Similarly, "A Song For You" has a stark quality with Dion and a piano that is exactly what one might think of when they think of Celine Dion.

But overall, the album is very obvious and simple pop rock and it is not bad at that. The songs have very catchy light pop-rock beats and the few dance songs, like the up-tempo "Can't Fight The Feeling" work as pop songs. Of course, the vocals on that track are obscured by production elements - there is a mechanical quality to the voice on it - but that makes it work even better as a pop track as that is pretty common for pop songs.

Anyone who likes traditional sounding, overproduced pop-rock will find something to like on Taking Chances and considering that is what Celine Dion is going for here, it is worth noting that she succeeds. The best track is "Shadow Of Love," the low point is "New Dawn."

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times
Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life

6/10

For other music reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

Celine Dion Craps Out On Singing Songs To Children With Miracle.

The Good: Vocal ability
The Bad: Charmless versions of classics, SHORT, Overly commercial, Instrumentally dull
The Basics: Dull and poorly arranged as an album and in the interpretation of some tracks, Miracle seems far more commercial than Dion's usually soulful works.


I doubt it would surprise many of my readers to know that: 1. I loathe commercialism and 2. I am not much for children's albums (as I pretty much am uninterested in all things pertaining to kids). So, when the two are mixed pretty obviously, as they are on Celine Dion's album Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life, I might actually be accused effectively of being biased against the work from the beginning. That said, in order for me to be truly taken down by such charges, the net result of the bias would have to be damaging to the review. In this case, it is not. My mother, who wandered up while Dion's rendition of "The First Time I Saw Your Face" was playing for about the eleventh time, made a sour face and cursed surprisingly vigorously. It seems she has very fond memories of a loved one with that song and in her words, "[this person] is butchering a great song!"

Celine Dion's cashgrab in association with photographer Anne Geddes was released with the stated purpose of celebrating the life of Dion's newborn. However, the multimedia nature of the advertising and packaging for the Miracle disc informs those with an eye for it that the real intent of this disc was to keep Celine Dion's name on the charts while she performed exclusively in Las Vegas for a few years. The result is a c.d. that is bland with a booklet of Anne Geddes's photographs of Dion and children (not all of them are hers) that reads like an advertisement for their book. But, on the merits, Celine Dion's album Miracle is bland, uninspired and replays extraordinarily poorly.

With only thirteen songs clocking out at 52:24, Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life is an album Celine Dion released that features photographs by Anne Geddes in the liner, advertising a book of photography by the same name. Dion performs all thirteen songs as lullabies and this represents a creative void from the producers of Dion's songs and albums as this album is arguably her most boring piece of music ever assembled. To be fair, her dance album One Heart is worse, but it is bad in an entirely different way. While that album is ridiculous for the ethnic pretenses it puts on and the overproduced nature of almost all of the songs, Miracle is entirely narcoleptic. If the point of One Heart is to sell Celine Dion as a dance-pop star, Miracle's point is to sell the performer as a sleep aid.

Without fail, the songs in Miracle are presented as slow, sleepy ballads that are lullabies in their truest form. Songs like "What A Wonderful World" and "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face" are rearranged from their traditional arrangements just to allow Celine Dion to create slow pieces that are not emotive, but rather are sleep-inducing. There is a hypnotic quality to Miracle that comes from beginning the album with the lullaby by the same name and moving right into "Brahms' Lullaby." Equally unfortunate is how none of the songs escape the listless treatment of Celine Dion lazily presenting each song.

As always, Celine Dion is not responsible for creating any of the songs on the album. She did not write or produce any of the songs or the album as a whole. As usual, Dion does not play any instruments on the album and she is not involved with even arranging any of the songs. Dion is a singer only and as a result, Miracle is an album where she simply performs the arrangements other people put before her.

To be fair to Celine Dion, she does have an excellent voice. She sings every song on Miracle with an adept quality that makes it clear that she has some talent. As I write this, she is singing "A Mother's Prayer" for the eighteenth time (I've listened to this album a lot in the last day and a half!) and she is inarguably a flawless soprano. She knows how to sing and she has great vocal control. On "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face," she holds notes for a long time and the combination of long and high works for her. She creates music that is beautiful and melodic with her voice.

The problems with Miracle, then, are in how the songs are arranged and in the instrumental accompaniment. The instrumental accompaniment on Miracle is, easy to say, boring. The songs are all performed on piano or light strings with no recognizable percussion section. This makes sense because the album is intended to be all lullabies, but the sense of monotony overwhelms the gentle sound. It is possible to have percussion on a lullaby (that's why the triangle was invented!), but Dion's producers stick with a much more traditional mold which omits percussion and produces Dion's vocals to the forefront.

But what finally made me knock this album down were the arrangements of the songs on the album. Individual songs are arranged in ways that are dull and the album itself is arranged in a problematic way that makes one wonder what the producers were thinking. For the former point, I cite the songs I know best from this album, "Beautiful Boy." "Beautiful Boy" is presented by Celine Dion in a way that slows down John Lennon's lullaby. The problem is that Dion sings it without any emotion. Her vocals are technically flawless as far as pitch and range go, but the song is the auditory equivalent of a dead-eyed stare in the way she presents the lines. There is no passion, no real warmth or love in her voice as she sings the words and as a result, the song feels listless and like a cheap knockoff of the original.

"Beautiful Boy" comes late on the album, after a song that Dion sings in French ("Le Loup, La Biche Et Le Chevalier (Une Chanson Douce)," and it is one of the songs based upon a more robust original. "Come To Me," the closest Miracle comes to having an up-tempo song, precedes these songs, but comes on the heels of nine lullabies and my best guess is that the producers simply figured that no one would hear them because they were already asleep. The album frontloads the most sleepy songs and the last few songs on the albums are arrangements or presentations that butcher the emotional resonance of the original songs.

There are plenty of other, better, albums out there for children. Protect yours from boredom by avoiding Miracle: A Celebration Of New Life.

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
One Heart
These Are Special Times

2/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Celine Dion's Sellout Album Arrives When Chrysler Sponsors One Heart *Shudder*

The Good: Some catchy tunes/good beats
The Bad: Terrible vocals, Annoying sound, Overproduced, Duration
The Basics: A creative, intellectual and commercial flop, Chrysler's big dance album for Celine Dion, One Heart has nothing to recommend it.


Every now and then, I encounter an album from an artist or performer that completely guts any respect I might have ever had for them. The example that always comes easiest to my mind is Jewel's album 0304, which was the album where Jewel mortgaged her folk roots for the dance genre. The album shows none of Jewel's emotional depth and it is marred by overproduction which obscures her actual talents as a singer-songwriter. It was her sellout album in my book and one of the worst albums I've ever heard. So, when I popped in Celine Dion's One Heart, I had a pretty firm comparative analogy.

One Heart is Celine Dion's sellout album in the same way as Jewel's 0304. Replacing Dion's actual voice is an overproduced, mechanized version of her sound. She is backed by drum loops and overbearing synths, produced to overwhelm her vocals, instead of letting her voice lead the songs. Replacing the familiar, slow ballads of Celine Dion are upbeat dance tracks that continue Celine Dion's obsession with songs about love with a completely different sound than any of her full albums has had before. In other words, on One Heart, Celine Dion sounds like anyone but.

This album is pure pop and seems designed to capitalize more on current trends (or the trends of 2003 when it was initially released) than it is the talents of Celine Dion. Dion opens the album with two dance tracks, then moves into a light pop song where she sounds more like Jann Arden than herself. But even by the time "Faith" - the third track - comes along, the listener is already turned off to the album. I attribute this to the inane sound of the first two tracks and the use of the word "ironical"* in "Love Is All We Need." Some things one just cannot come back from.

One of those things is trying to reinvent yourself as a dance-pop star when your target audience is fans of Barbra Streisand. While the Streisand audience is likely to take Dion back as soon as she releases something with some semblance of maturity (I suspect most of her target audience did not make it to her familiar-sounding, though ridiculously lyricked "In His Touch"), the thing many of us are likely to be more wary of is Celine Dion selling herself to a corporate sponsor. The main single from One Heart was the album opener, "I Drove All Night" which was used as a jingle for Chrysler. I understand almost all artists (but not The Doors!) will get corporate benefactors and sell their music as jingles, but it is disturbing when the sponsorship creates the album and not the other way around. In other words, when an artist uses their work to help a company it is one thing, when a company uses an artist to promote themselves, it is entirely another. One Heart, with its inclusion of the Chrysler corporate logo right into the packaging and notes in the liner (as well as pictures of Celine Dion in a car from one of the commercial shoots), represents the execution of the latter idea and the result continues to drain whatever creative influence Celine Dion might have had over her album from it.

With fourteen songs, clocking out at a measly 54:17, One Heart was Celine Dion's last new album before Chrysler housed her in Las Vegas for three years to perform nightly for them. The album has Celine Dion singing and at moments, her vocals are recognizable. But on songs like One Heart and "Stand By Your Side," her vocals are produced such that her natural voice is almost completely obscured and unrecognizable. The backing vocals on "Stand By Your Side" are so overwhelming that Dion is more often the accompaniment to her backers! This is not uncommon in today's music (Beyonce and Christina Aguillera do it, for example), but when one is paying for Celine Dion, we'd like Celine Dion's voice. Alas, we get that only on one track ("In His Touch") in an unmarred way where the production elements do not ruin her voice.

This is unfortunate because the one thing Celine Dion has going for her as a performer or anything resembling an artist is her voice. Celine Dion does not write any of her own material, she does not play any instruments and she turns production over to so many different people that her albums seem to be the buckshot approach from every known hitmaker in the business. That tradition is continued on One Heart, where once again Celine Dion does not write any of her own songs and whole teams are brought in to produce her songs. She does not play any instruments, but to be fair to her growth as an artist and performer, she is credited with her own background vocals on "Forget Me Not."

The unfortunate aspect of One Heart is how little there is to write about it because it is so monolithic in its delivery. This is one of the most sedate, traditional pop albums I've ever heard and the biggest departure from the innate talents of Celine Dion yet. Thematically, Celine Dion returns to singing almost exclusively about love and relationships. She adds more Gospel-themed songs into One Heart with songs like "Faith" and "In His Touch," but she guts the emotional resonance of them by including them on the same album that she has "Coulda Woulda Shoulda." Note to Celine Dion: whenever you try to sound either tough or ethnic, it just does not work for you! Dion even returns to her French Canadian roots with "Je T'aime Encore."

But even for a stylistic departure from her familiar ballads, One Heart is creatively underwhelming. "Sorry For Love (2003 Version)" is a remix of a song she had on the album before this and it is not a huge creative leap from the original. But even in the familiar-sounding songs like "Have You Ever Been In Love," One Heart is underwhelming. That song, for example, was written by five writers and the best imagery lines they could come up with were "Have you ever been in love / You could touch the moonlight / When your heart is shooting stars / You're holding heaven in your arms" ("Have You Ever Been In Love"). This is pretty overdone imagery and Dion and her team of writers say nothing different with it.

Of course, saying something is better when it is said in a way that it can be understood. "Reveal" is almost entirely unintelligible as Dion is overwhelmed by the programmed drums and guitars. Celine Dion has a pretty dainty sound at times and it does not work when her voice is competing with heavy-bass production elements. The result is unfortunate dance tracks where Dion screeches out things like "What we do in privacy / Make a woman out of me / When you're close it feels so right / You and I reveal tonight" ("Reveal") and the only reason why more listeners aren't scratching their heads ("reveal" as a euphemism for "make love?!") is that her vocals are so lost amid the instrumental accompaniment that they are lost.

I could pick each song apart thus, but the album is pretty cohesive in its terribleness**. Each bad track is followed by another one which somehow manages to be worse than the one before it. Celine Dion has a real dud on her hands with One Heart and one may only hope that she either blamed it on her corporate sponsors*** or the teams that put her material in front of her. I suppose the only real advantage of not having much creative control over an endeavor is that it's easy to deflect the blame.

"I Drove All Night" is a catchy pop number and the least bad song on the album and while the rest of the album is bad, none are quite as gut-churning nauseating as "Coulda Woulda Shoulda."

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
A New Day Has Come
These Are Special Times

1/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

* an actual word and grammatically correct here!
** not an actual word, but it ought to be.
*** seriously, Chrysler helped pay the bill in exchange for using "I Drove All Night."****
**** That's an unfounded accusation on my part, but this album has all the artistic flair of an auto assembly line.

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

A New Day Has Come, Celine Dion's Music Has Only Minimally Changed.

The Good: Vocals, Some decent instrumental accompaniment, Duration
The Bad: Often overproduced, Some very campy lyrics.
The Basics: A good, but largely unremarkable Celine Dion album, A New Day Has Come mixes up the familiar formula of Dion's ballads with mixed results.


My wife is largely the reason Celine Dion is my August Artist Of The Month. You see, she's a fan and I thought I'd do something nice for her considering I often have my music on around the house and she was not so wild about my last Artist Of The Month, Pete Seeger. Yes, I try to keep the peace here. However, the more I listen to the works of Celine Dion, the less impressed I am. With A New Day Has Come, though, I find myself having a whole new bagful of gripes as opposed to finding Dion stagnating.

To be sure, Celine Dion is creatively stagnating on A New Day Has Come, but this is largely because she has almost no creative control over her albums. She sings songs and she seems to sing whatever is put in front of her. Thematically, A New Day Has Come is a bit more diverse than her earlier works given that she sings more about change and loss than just easy, committed love. But while vocally Celine Dion provides little new here, those producing her try to reinvent her with more of a pop edge than the light pop ballads that made her famous. The problem is, lacking the dominant ballads, there is no real hook on this album and it wanders from dance track to gospel song to ballad to radio-friendly sugarpop.

With sixteen tracks - the title track is repeated on the album - with a duration of 67:57, A New Day Has Come presents a Celine Dion willing to do a little bit more than her usual sing high and slowly routine. Here, she sings fast ("Rain, Tax (It's Inevitable)") and in a soulful manner ("Prayer") which breaks up her otherwise monotonous delivery of other people's lines. No, this is not the album where Celine Dion suddenly breaks out as a great creative talent. Instead, here she presents the words and music of other people like Aldo Nova, R.J. Lange, and Mack Gordon and Harry Warren. Celine Dion does not write or co-write any of the songs, nor does she play any musical instruments to accompany her vocals. Instead, the album has Celine Dion as a the singer only that she is. On the plus side for fans, here she presents her own vocals and is not as dependent upon duets. While she is backed extensively on "I Surrender," she is largely solo on A New Day Has Come.

This album has Celine Dion presenting her flawless soprano voice either competing against production elements - heavy bass and strings - or overwhelming the instrumental accompaniment. Arguably the best surprise on the album is Dion's rendition of the classic song "At Last." She sings it with surprising clarity and with an unsurprising management of the register the song demands. Celine Dion has great range and when she moves into the higher soprano ranges and plunges into a slightly more alto register, she does so effortlessly in ways that are auditorily amazing. "At Last" embodies that perfectly.

Unfortunately, on songs like "Sorry For Love," Celine Dion is presenting the lines she sings in front of infectious and obvious dance beats and her slow delivery seems narcoleptic in front of the pounding sounds. Here lies the problem with letting others determine the creative direction of an artist, the sound is more sloppy than creative or even interesting. "Sorry For Love" has cheesy echoes, obvious synths and mindnumbing beats that distract from the natural talents of Celine Dion and her voice. This track, along with the few other dance tracks on the album, sound like Celine Dion is attempting to mimic Madonna by reinventing her sound.

Ironically, the result is an album that coasts entirely on the hype and reputation of Celine Dion. Hearing this album years after the hype what stands out most is the lack of a hook. The dance tracks don't have a catchy refrain and the ballads are thematically less intense than Dion's usual love songs. Yes, there is irony here as I often kvetch about Dion's lack of thematic diversity, but on A New Day Has Come, Celine Dion's producers gut her thematic branching out by mirroring it in a stylistic branching out that works far less well for the performer. The results are songs that sound unlike Celine Dion songs, but generally fail to captivate the audience the way her usual tracks would.

Also disappointing is the way Celine Dion uses A New Day Has Come on the album twice. The fifth track is the "radio remix" of the song that does not make its appearance until track fifteen. The two versions are not incredibly different by any means and the remix seems more like filler than anything else. For sure, the standard version is a soft, slow ballad, while the remix is an upbeat pop number, but the truth is, Celine Dion could have made it a radio hit as the ballad instead of the pop track.

When Celine Dion is not branching out with songs about change or the loss of love, her songs are remarkably droll. Take, for example, "Ten Days" which is repetitive ("pray" is repeated in inordinate number of times) and "The Greatest Reward," which is a troublingly obvious love song. After all, haven't we already heard rhymes like "You trusted me to grow / I gave my heart / To show / There's nothing else / I cherish more / I stand by you / For sure" ("The Greatest Reward"). Paired with songs with words rhymed with themselves (how hard would it have been to find a rhyme for "be" in "Sorry For Love" without rhyming it with "be?!") it seems like those who are managing and producing Celine Dion's albums are creatively barren.

What saves the album from absolute destruction is Celine Dion's voice and the attempt to experiment - even when they experiments are unsuccessful. There is an effort being made to make Celine Dion have even more appeal (one wonders why when by this point she had one of the top three high-grossing albums of all time for a female artist) and that pushes Celine Dion - and her listeners - away from the entirely familiar. Unfortunately, much of it is just not worth more than a single listen.

For other works by Celine Dion, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Celine Dion
The Colour Of My Love
Falling Into You
Let's Talk About Love
The Collector's Series, Volume 1
These Are Special Times

5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |