Who recently ended her sellout 5-year Vegas run.
You'll notice if you click on that link that her closing night was compared, unfavorably, to Bjork's debut elsewhere in the city. "Humph!" goes the brief article. "Celine Dion sells out, while Bjork doesn't."
Now...Bjork's lackluster ticket sales *are* infuriating. She's a real original and she deserves better. But...in what universe is she even in competition with Celine Dion? It's apples and oranges.
I can understand being angry that a unique presence like Bjork doesn't get as much attention as she should.
But getting angry at *Dion* for it? As if Dion took what was rightfully Bjork's? Um, no. No, that makes no sense.
While reading closing-night notices for Dion, I found this epic and fascinating critical struggle with Dion and what she represents. (Its highlight is the brilliant, brilliant point that, whereas Dion may be schmaltzy, so is everyone else: "punk rock is anger's schmaltz." Man, I *loved* that. I had to sit with it for five whole minutes, just running it around in my head. "Punk rock is anger's schmaltz." That's beautiful.)
So anyhow. The article comes from the perspective, shared by many cultural gatekeepers, that the Celine Dion phenomenon is one of the worst misfortunes ever to have visited itself upon late twentieth century popular music. It reviews a book--an entire book--in which a critic manfully decides to question this assumption and forces himself to listen to Dion's music.
First of all, it's really shocking that a professional critic should only now learn to "admire a well-put-together taste set that's alien to our own." Shouldn't the ability to do that be a prerequisite for the job? Shouldn't a critic be able to say something like, for example, "I personally don't like the Young British Artist movement, but I can see that this installation piece by Tracey Emin perfectly expresses its goals and does so with a dash of self-aware humor, and is therefore a successful work"?
And this is important. Because here's the thing: if you're talking MOR power pop, *Celine Dion is pretty damn good.* People who are angry *at her genre* and take it out *on her* don't seem to understand that. If I was stranded on a desert island, I could do a lot worse than being stuck with a couple of Celine Dion CDs. I would be very grateful to end up with songs like "It's All Coming Back To Me Now," "Seduces Me," "Taking Chances" (especially since she quotes one of my all-time favorites, Eurythmics' "Here Comes The Rain Again"--and very effectively too). Yes, even "My Heart Will Go On." It's not my favorite, but I most certainly do not hate it. I reserve that for songs like Rod Stewart's "Love Touch," the inexplicably heavy airplay of which, back in its time, left me permanently scarred.
I guess the other thing is that some people are bothered by the open emotion ("schmaltz") in Dion's work. She's not distant or ironic. She's not small or self-effacing, with one of those pinched little-girl voices. She doesn't do quirky songs about private angst at 2am. She's operatic, actually, going big every time. I don't see why people who listen to heavy metal, another "big" and operatic form, don't appreciate that. To the extent that I like Celine Dion, it's *because of*, not despite, my history of cranking Pantera's "Cemetery Gates" and Queensryche's "Suite Sister Mary" at every opportunity.
So I appreciate her and I don't think the criticism she's gotten has been fair. Particularly not if it's come from people provinicially locked into their own "taste set," who have to listen to her music for several months to train themselves to evaluate its merits independently of whether they personally like it.
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And there was one detail about that last Vegas show that really got me.
Dion refused to cry.
