Céline Marie Claudette Dion ( ; born 30 March 1968) is a Canadian singer. Referred to as the "Queen of Power Ballads", she is noted for her powerful and technically skilled vocals. Her music has incorporated genres such as pop, rock, R&B, gospel, and classical music. Her recordings have been mainly in English and French, although she has also sung in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Chinese.
Born into a large family in Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion was discovered by her future manager and husband René Angélil, and emerged as a teen star in her home country with a series of French-language albums during the 1980s. She gained international recognition by winning the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, where she represented Switzerland with "Ne partez pas sans moi". Her debut English-language album, Unison (1990), established her as a viable pop artist primarily in North America and several English-speaking markets, while The Colour of My Love (1993) gave her global superstardom. Dion continued her success throughout the 1990s with several of the bestselling English-language albums in history, such as Falling into You (1996) and Let's Talk About Love (1997), which were certified diamond in the US with more than 30 million sales worldwide each. She also released a series of international number-one hits, including "The Power of Love", "Think Twice", "Because You Loved Me", "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", "I'm Your Angel", "That's the Way It Is", "I'm Alive" and her signature song "My Heart Will Go On", the theme for the 1997 film Titanic, which solidified her popularity.
Dion continued releasing French-language albums between each English record; D'eux (1995) became the best-selling French-language album of all time, while S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998), Sans attendre (2012), and Encore un soir (2016), were all certified diamond in France. During the 2000s, she built her reputation as a successful live performer with A New Day... on the Las Vegas Strip (2003–07), the highest-grossing concert residency of all time, and the Taking Chances World Tour (2008–09), one of the highest-grossing concert tours of the 2000s.
She has been regarded by several magazines as one of the greatest singers in music. With record sales of over 200 million worldwide, she is listed as one of the best-selling music artists of all time, as well as the best-selling Canadian recording artist and the best-selling French-language artist in history. In 2003, she was honoured by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for selling over 50 million albums in Europe. Seven of her albums have sold at least 10 million copies worldwide, the second-most among women in history. She has won five Grammy Awards, achieved two Honorary Doctorates in Music degree from Berklee College of Music and . Billboard named her the "Queen of Adult Contemporary" for having the most number-one adult contemporary songs for a female artist. Dion is also the sixth all-time best-performing female soloist in Billboard 200 history. At the end of 2009, Dion was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as that decade's top-earning artist, with combined album sales and concert revenue exceeding $747 million.
Life and career
1968–1989: Early life and career beginnings
Dion was born in Charlemagne, Quebec, northeast of Montreal, the youngest of 14 children of Thérèse (, 1927–2020), a homemaker, and Adhémar Dion (1923–2003), a butcher, both of French descent. She was raised a Roman Catholic in a poor but, by her own account, happy home in Charlemagne. Music had always been a major part of the Dion family, and she was named after the song "Céline", which French singer Hugues Aufray had recorded two years before her birth. On 13 August 1973, she made her first public appearance at her brother Michel's wedding, where she performed Christine Charbonneau's song "Du fil, des aiguilles et du coton". She continued to perform with her siblings in her parents' small piano bar called Le Vieux Baril, "The Old Barrel".
She suffered a number of accidents as a young child, including an incident at five years old when she was struck by a car as her father and brother Clément looked on. She was hospitalized briefly with a concussion.
From an early age, she had dreamed of being a performer. In a 1994 interview with People, 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." As a child in Quebec, Dion participated in Girl Guide programs as a member of Girl Guides of Canada.