Celine Marie Claudette Dion CC OQ is a Canadian singer. Known as the "Queen of Power Ballads", she is noted for her powerful and technically adept voice. Her music has incorporated genres such as pop, rock, R&B, gospel and classical music. Her recordings have been primarily in English and French, although she has also sung in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese and Chinese.

Artistry

Influences

Dion cites idols as varied as Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Charles Aznavour, Carole King, Anne Murray, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston and the Bee Gees, all of whom she would eventually collaborate with. Michael Jackson in particular was a major motivation for her to learn English as early as in the 1980s. Her music has been influenced by numerous genres, including pop, rock, gospel, R&B, and soul, and her lyrics focus on themes of poverty, world hunger, and spirituality, with an emphasis on love and romance. After the birth of her first child, her work increasingly focused on maternal love.

Voice and timbre

Dion once claimed herself to be a mezzo-soprano. However, attempts to adapt classical voice types to other forms of singing have been met with controversy. Kent Nagano, maestro of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, remarked, "All you just sang was soprano", after Dion auditioned with two solos from Carmen, wanting to know if she could sing opera. Her timbre has been described as "thin, slightly nasal" with a "raspy" lower register and "bell glass-like high notes".

Legacy

Dion is regarded as one of pop music's most influential vocalists. She has been referred to as the "Priestess of Pop". Ed Christman from Billboard called Dion the "Queen of Pop". Her music and vocal styling, alongside that of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, have been said to shape how the bulk of modern female pop vocalists sing. These three artists have been widely credited with reviving the power ballad, and in doing so reshaping the adult contemporary radio format, making it one of the most popular formats of the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2002, Billboard named her as the "Best-selling contemporary female artist in history".

Personal life

As the youngest of 14 children, Dion grew up wearing hand-me-downs and sharing a bed with several sisters. As a baby, she slept in a drawer to save on a crib. She was bullied at school and called "Vampire", owing to her teeth and skinny frame. Local tabloids even dubbed her "Canine Dion" in the teenage years of her career. She often spoke of running home from school to play music in the basement with her brothers and sisters. "I detested school", she would later write in her autobiography. "I had always lived surrounded by adults and children a lot older than me. I learned everything I needed to know from them. As far as I was concerned, real life existed around them." Dion's eldest sister was already in her twenties, married, and pregnant with her first child at the time Dion's mother, Thérèse, was pregnant with Celine.