Celine Dion Resolution: 1280x1024 Pixels

Céline Marie Claudette Dion, CC, OQ, (French pronunciation: [selin dj""] ( listen); born March 30, 1968), is a Canadian singer. Born to a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec,^[4] Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record.^[5] In 1990, she released the English-language album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.^[6]

Dion had first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest.^[7][8] Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to CBS Records Canada in 1986. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide fame after signing with Epic Records and releasing several English albums along with additional French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music history.^[9][10] However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a hiatus from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer.^[10][11] She returned to the top of pop music in 2002 and signed a three-year (later extended to almost five years) contract to perform nightly in a five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.^[12][13][14]

Dion's music has been influenced by genres ranging from rock and R&B to gospel and classical. While her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is renowned for her technically skilled and powerful vocals.^[15][16][17] Dion is the best-selling Canadian artist of all time,^[18][19] is the second best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan era,^[20][21] and is the only female artist to have two singles sell more than a million copies in the UK.^[22] In addition, her 1995 album D'eux, is the best-selling French-language album of all time.^[23] In 2004, after surpassing 175 million in album sales worldwide, she was presented with the Chopard Diamond Award at the World Music Awards for becoming the best-selling female artist of all time.^[24][25] According to Sony Music Entertainment, Dion has sold over 200 million albums worldwide.^[26]

The youngest of 14 children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay, both of French-Canadian descent, Celine Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken, but, by her own account, happy home in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada.^[10][27] Music had always been a part of the family (Dion was named after the song Céline, recorded by French singer Hugues Aufray two years before her birth ^[28]). On the 13th of August 1973, (at the age of five) the young Céline did her first public appearance at her brother Michel's marriage, and performed Christine Charbonneau's song ^[29] Du fil des aiguilles et du coton.^[30] Then after she grew up singing with her siblings in her parents' small piano bar called Le Vieux Baril. From an early age Dion had dreamed of being a performer.^[31] In a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family and my home, but I don't regret having lost my adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a singer."^[32]

At age 12, Dion collaborated with her mother and her brother Jacques to compose her first song, "Ce n'était qu'un rêve" ("It Was Only a Dream").^[27] Her brother Michel Dondalinger Dion sent the recording to music manager René Angélil, whose name he discovered on the back of a Ginette Reno album.^[5] Angélil was moved to tears by Dion's voice, and decided to make her a star.^[27] In 1981, he mortgaged his home to fund her first record, La voix du bon Dieu ("The Voice of the Good God"), which later became a local number-one hit and made Dion an instant star in Quebec. Her popularity spread to other parts of the world when she competed in the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan, and won the musician's award for "Top Performer" as well as the gold medal for "Best Song" with "Tellement j'ai d'amour pour toi" ("I Have So Much Love for You").^[5]

By 1983, in addition to becoming the first Canadian artist to receive a gold record in France for the single "D'amour ou d'amitié" ("Of Love or of Friendship"), Dion had also won several Félix Awards, including "Best Female performer" and "Discovery of the Year".^[5][33] Further success in Europe, Asia, and Australia came when Dion represented Switzerland in the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Ne partez pas sans moi (Don't Go Without Me) and won the contest by a close margin in Dublin, Ireland.^[34] However, American success was yet to come, partly because she was exclusively a Francophone artist.^[35] At eighteen, after seeing a Michael Jackson performance, Dion told Angélil that she wanted to be a star like Jackson.^[36] Though confident in her talent, Angélil realized that her image needed to be changed in order for her to be marketed worldwide.^[27] Dion receded from the spotlight for a number of months, during which she underwent dental surgery to improve her appearance, and was sent to the École Berlitz in 1989 to polish her English.^[6]

In 1989, during a concert on Incognito Tour, Dion injured her voice. She consulted the otorhinolaryngologist William Gould.^[37][38] He gave her an ultimatum: have surgery on her vocal cords, or not utilize them at all for three weeks.^[37] Dion chose the latter and underwent a vocal formation with William Riley,^[37][38] because, according to Gould and Riley, she "doesn't know singing, she made a bad use of her vocal cords".^[37][38]