Céline Dion
The Quebec girl who slept in a dresser drawer, won Eurovision, and ended the decade owning the biggest song in the world. Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" topped the charts in more than 25 countries, Falling into You won Album of the Year, and then she went to Las Vegas and showed every pop star what a residency could be.
Céline Dion was born March 30, 1968, in Charlemagne, Quebec, the youngest of fourteen children; as a baby she slept in a drawer to save money. At twelve she co-wrote her first song, and her brother mailed the tape to manager René Angélil, who mortgaged his house to fund her 1981 debut. She won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest singing for Switzerland, took Berlitz English lessons in 1989, and released Unison in 1990; "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" reached number four, and her "Beauty and the Beast" duet with Peabo Bryson won a Grammy. At the 1991 Félix Awards she refused the English Artist of the Year trophy, insisting she was a French artist. Angélil, 26 years her senior, had become her partner in secret; she announced it in the dedication of The Colour of My Love (1993), and they married on December 17, 1994, live on Canadian television.
That album gave her a first US number one with "The Power of Love" and a British phenomenon in "Think Twice," seven weeks at number one. Falling into You (1996) won the Album of the Year Grammy, went twelve-times platinum in the United States and carried "Because You Loved Me" and "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"; she sang at the Atlanta Olympics opening ceremony that July. Let's Talk About Love (1997) added Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees and Pavarotti, and "My Heart Will Go On," which James Cameron did not want in Titanic until he heard James Horner's demo. The single topped the charts in more than 25 countries, was the best-selling single of 1998, won the Oscar and the Grammys for Record and Song of the Year, and has sold more than 18 million copies. By the decade's end she had sold over 130 million records, and VH1's 1998 Divas Live put her beside Aretha Franklin, Gloria Estefan, Shania Twain and Mariah Carey.
She stepped away in 2000 as Angélil fought esophageal cancer, had a son in January 2001, and returned with A New Day Has Come, which debuted at number one in 2002. Then she bet on Las Vegas: a three-year, 600-show contract in a 4,000-seat Colosseum built for her at Caesars Palace, directed by Franco Dragone. A New Day… opened March 25, 2003, and ran until December 15, 2007, more than 700 shows, nearly three million tickets and more than $385 million, the most successful residency ever by Billboard's count. The Los Angeles Times named her the top-earning artist of the 2000s. She canceled her tour in 2022 after a diagnosis of stiff-person syndrome.
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