Céline Dion - Courage review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 0

(Columbia)
A team of young, hip producers signals Dion’s newfound cult status, but it’s the wobbly-lipped ballads, not EDM, that she does like no one else

For decades, you knew where you were with Céline Dion. She belted out power ballads, she wowed the crowds in Vegas, she sold millions and millions of records. And she would never, ever be fashionable. There were no unexpectedly funky B-sides for DJs to dig out and confound the dancefloor with; no forgotten early concept album (bar an unreleased Phil Spector collaboration) hinting at an intriguing musical path not subsequently followed. Dion seemed to have arrived pretty much as she remained: parked defiantly in the middle of the road, flicking the Vs – or whatever gesture the Québecois use to express disdain –at passing trends. Indeed, Canadian critic Carl Wilson used her 1997 album Let’s Talk About Love as the basis for a book interrogating the meaning of so-called bad taste.

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