entertainment

Celine Dion deposes Mariah Carey

By Mike Hunt ⋅ March 18, 1998 ⋅  Email this article ⋅  Print this article ⋅ Post a comment

Barely a year after force-feeding the unsuspecting masses with Celine Dion’s Grammy-gilded album “Falling Into You”, Sony Music is back from its ever-so-busy pop kitchen with a brand new Celine Dion stew. So open up and say ahh…

Arriving in November just in time to catch and take advantage of the wave of carefree, mindless Christmas spending, “Let’s Talk About Love,” Dion’s fifth English-language album, is a well-calculated corporate money-making scheme that jam-packs the talents of Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, Carole King, the Bee Gees, and legendary Beatles collaborator George Martin. By surrounding Ms. Dion with such well-respected acts, Sony Music hopes to persuade disapproving critics that she is no longer formulaic, saccharine, schmaltzy and superficial. But really, there’s no reason why they should worry about critical acclaim.

With a massive promotional and marketing blitz that included the plastering of gigantic Dion posters at major consumer converging points and the standard “millions shipped” reports from Sony Music marketing whizzes worldwide, this latest Celine Dion concoction continues to be swallowed by the gazillions all around the world — with no questions asked. It’s the kind of marketing genius that could also make broccoli look as appealing as a slice of chocolate thunder cake.

“Let’s Talk About Love” is seventy minutes of Celine Dion telling us she can sing really, really well; that she deserves another bag of Grammys. It’s a “sharply-designed opus” that takes Ms. Dion’s voice to ranges she has never gone before. Her voice, irrepressible as ever, soars over even the plushest arrangements across the album’s fifteen songs. She displays a distinct corporate-fueled confidence as she jumps from the torchiness of “The Reason” and “Why Oh Why” to the reggae-influenced “Treat Her Like a Lady” (with the wonderful Diana King co-writing and singing), the disco-fueled “Just a Little Bit of Love,” and the gospel-tinged “Love Is on the Way.” Her collaboration with the Bee Gees, “Immortality”, is surprisingly effective, though the song’s origins are curious. (The liner notes say the Gibb brothers wrote it for the London stage production of Saturday Night Fever.)

The much-hyped duets with Streisand (”Tell Him”) and Pavarotti (”I Hate You Then I Love You”) provide no new revelation: it’s just Celine singing with Babs and the Big Fat Opera Guy. It’s interesting how they all get lost in their own self-consciousness. Moreover, hearing Babs urging Celine to express her affections to a love interest is just too hokey and downright nauseating. Dion gives Canadiana a nod by picking up the lame mid-tempo “Miles To Go (Before I Go To Sleep)” (written for Dion by former Canadian pop poster boy Corey Hart).

Ms. Dion also keeps the tradition alive by including a movie song and a remake. “My Heart Will Go On”, the Tympanic-membrane-shattering love theme from the much-ballyhooed smash movie “Titanic”, has already topped the charts and is in heavy rotation in all the world’s radio and TV stations except Easter Island. “When I Need You” is a
retooling of Leo Sayer’s Albert Hammond/Carol Bayer-penned hit.

With an album as unrepentantly commercial and corporately well taken care of as “Let’s Talk About Love”, it’s undeniable: Celine Dion has definitely snatched the disputed Manufactured Diva Supreme-Corporate Baby title from Mariah Carey. But I wouldn’t rest on my laurels if I were Miss Dion. Expect a rebound from Miss 36 Octaves very soon.