Céline Marie Claudette Dion

Céline Marie Claudette Dion
Céline Marie Claudette Dion (OC, OQ) (born March 30, 1968) is a Canadian Grammy and Juno award winning pop singer and occasional songwriter[1] and actress.[2] She began her career in the early 1980s as a French singer before breaking into the international music scene in the 1990s.
Dion was born to a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne, Québec. She achieved success in francophone Canada after her manager and future husband, René Angélil, mortgaged his home in order to finance her first record. She later gained recognition in parts of Europe and Asia after she won both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. In 1990 Dion established a foothold in the anglophone music market with the release of Unison, published by Epic Records. During the 1990s she achieved worldwide fame and success with several English and French records, of which her most successful were Falling into You (1996) and "My Heart Will Go On" (1998), the theme to the 1997 film Titanic. In 1999 she announced a temporary break from entertainment in order to focus on her husband, who was diagnosed with throat cancer.
Following a three-year hiatus, Dion returned to the music scene with the release of the aptly titled A New Day Has Come. By 2004 she had accumulated record sales of 175 million, and was presented with the Chopard Diamond award from the World Music Awards show for becoming the Best-selling Female Artist in the World.[3] As of 2003 Dion has performed nightly in her show A New Day at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, under a contract that extends through 2007. Dion's music has been influenced by various genres, which range fro



Childhood and early career

Dion's performance at the Yamaha World Popular Song Festival won her the gold medal as well as top performer
The youngest of fourteen children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay, Celine Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken but "happy home" in Charlemagne, a small town about thirty miles from Montréal. Dion grew up singing with her siblings in the small piano bar belonging to her parents called 'The Vieux Baril,' and had always wanted to become a singer: in a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family and my home, but I don't regret having lost my adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a singer." [4]
At age twelve Dion collaborated with her mother and her brother Jacques, to compose her first song, "Ce N'Était Qu'un Rêve " ("It Was Only a Dream"). Her brother Michel sent the recording to music manager René Angélil, whose name he discovered on the back of a Ginette Reno album. Angélil was brought to tears by Dion's voice and decided to make her a star. He mortgaged his home to fund her first record, "La Voix du Bon Dieu" (a play on words "The Voice of God/The Road to God") (1981). It became a local number-one record and made Dion an instant star in Quebec. Her popularity also spread to other parts of the world when she competed in the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan, and won the musician's award for "Top Performer" as well as the gold medal for "Best Song" with "Tellement J'Ai d'Amour Pour Toi" ("I Have So Much Love For You"). By 1983, in addition to becoming the first Canadian artist to receive a gold record in France for the single "D'Amour Ou d'Amitié" ("Of Love or of Friendship"), Dion had also won several Félix awards, including "Best Female performer" and "Discovery of the year".
At eighteen, Dion saw Michael Jackson performing on television and she told Angélil that she wanted to be a star like Jackson. Even though Angelil was confident in her talent, he realized that in order for her to be marketed worldwide, her image needed to be changed. Dion receded from the spotlight for a number of months, during which she underwent a physical makeover.
Further success in Europe, Asia, and Australia came in 1987, when Dion represented Switzerland in the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi" ("Don't Go Without Me") and won the contest in Dublin, Ireland. However, her American success was yet to come, partially due to her status as a francophone artist. Finally, Dion was sent to the École Berlitz School in 1989 to polish her English and interviewing skills. It marked the start of her anglophone career.
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