Dion’s Courage needs some boundaries
Confronting grief, singer sometimes strays too far from her comfort zone
Courage Celine Dion Columbia Records
When Celine Dion’s husband and one-time manager, René Angélil, died in 2016, the powerhouse Canadian vocalist, chart-topper, fashion icon, Las Vegas mainstay and soon-to-be biopic focus lost her mooring, her centre of gravity. He’d helped pick her songs, her arrangements and her clothes and, for better or worse, became Dion’s everything.
What was predictable, and warranted, was that Dion’s next album, Courage, would be dedicated to mourning and unmooring, to loss, to the universal feelings all of us have when we lose someone dear.
Dion’s best moments, be it All by Myself or My Heart Will Go On, are nothing if not a combination of moody mawkishness, grandstanding theatre and syrupy bombast. Beyond the ’80s hair metal bands, it is Dion who built and maintained the power ballad as her own weapon of mush destruction.
What wasn’t so predictable — well, maybe a little — was that Dion would go for the trappings of nu-pop-hop, EDM and Autotune frippery, big time.
With Dion’s comfort zone well established, the best thing she and her production team could do was freshen her sound. That’s understandable. The currency of ’90s nostalgia is part of Dion’s resurgence, even if anything too retro would fall flat or seem desperate.
The most glorious, and authentic, moments on Courage, then, address bereavement, fear and finality in that pearl-clutching, gasping-for-air singing style that is Dion’s, and Dion’s alone. For the Lover That I Lost grabs loss by the collar, draws it close and shouts it down, gorgeously.
The anthemic title song, a teary ballad, is tenderly conversational as it turns suffering into solid matter to whom you can speak.
The windswept I Will Be Stronger allows the widow Dion a chance to ruminate on her misfortune, deeply miss the man she adored, then move forward with faith and fortitude.
Things begin to turn weird — yet at least stay sonically stable and in Dion’s wheelhouse — with Lying Down, a cry of raw anger over a lover’s death. It’s brilliant — a Kubler-ross stages of grief look at finality.
But things go off the rails for other Courage songs. Lovers
Never Die finds Dion tackling nu-r&b with hip-pop inflections worthy of an Ariana or, worse yet, a Halsey. If The Chase wasn’t turgid enough, with attempts at fresh-faced Taylor Swift girl pop, and the reggae-touched (?!) Nobody’s Watching altogether painful, the EDM of Flying on My Own will gut you.
One could argue Courage is the sound of Dion unbound and unwound, ready to experiment beyond her theatrical soundscapes, and play in the fields with her tween chart contemporaries. That’s fine. Get it out of your system now. At least half of the album is fantastic. But don’t let her make a habit out of this.