Celine Dion My Love Ultimate Essential Collection (2cd, 2012)

Celine Dion is an album by Canadian singer Celine Dion, released on 31 March 1992. It is her second English studio album and 17th in total. It includes the Grammy and Academy Award-winning song "Beauty and the Beast." Dion's real international breakthrough came when she paired up with Peabo Bryson to record the title track to Walt Disney Pictures animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991). The song captured a musical style that Dion would utilize in the future: sweeping, classical and soft rock influenced ballads with soft instrumentation.

This two-CD set collects most of Celine Dion's essential recordings from her pre-superstar years, when she was a very young French singer, popular in Canada and France. This set starts with the heavily synthesized Euro pop of the 1988 Eurovision contest winner "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi," which was the song that introduced the singer to international audiences, and is something of a milestone in her career. Many of the songs on this set are fair, and differ from the processed teen pop of the late 1990s because of the ever-present sincerity in Dion's voice. Highlights include the elegant ballads "Tellement J'ai D'amour Pour Toi," "Benjamin," and "La Voix Du Bon Dieu"; the shimmering "Avec Toi" and "Du Soleil Au Coeur"; and the anthemic "C'est Pour Vivre."

Celine Dion's A l'Olympia was recorded live at the legendary Parisian venue shortly after she scored her first U.S. chart-topper with "The Power of Love," which is included here. Therefore, the material on this disc consists mostly of early English-language hits ("Where Does My Heart Beat Now" and "Love Can Move Mountains"), and selections from her first U.S. French-language release, Dion Chante Plamondon, including the rousing "Des Mots qui Sonnent," "Le Blues du Businessman," and "Ziggy." There are two tracks on this collection which are unique to this album, those being the beautiful "Elle" and her version of the Bagdad Café theme, "Calling You." Also included is her take on the Jacques Brel song "Quand on n'a que l'Amour" and a medley (titled "Medley Starmania") of Luc Plamondon songs. The material sounds great live, her voice as always a technical marvel, but with three live import CDs already on the market, and with some songs repeated, this album is destined for collectors.

Let's Talk About Love is the fifth English-language studio album by Canadian singer Celine Dion, released on 14 November 1997, by Columbia/Epic Records. The follow-up to her commercially successful album Falling into You (1996), Let's Talk About Love showed a further progression of Dion's music. Throughout the project, she collaborated with Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees, Luciano Pavarotti, Carole King, George Martin, Diana King, Brownstone, Corey Hart and her previous producers: David Foster, Ric Wake, Walter Afanasieff, Humberto Gatica and Jim Steinman. Let's Talk About Love includes Dion's biggest hit, "My Heart Will Go On". Written by James Horner and Will Jennings, and serving as the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On" topped the charts around the world, and has become Dion's signature song.

Her first English-language effort following a pair of mid-decade personal tragedies, Celine Dion's 12th set Courage is a transformative, cathartic release for the powerhouse vocalist that carries listeners through her process of healing and moving on. While the deaths of her husband and brother inform much of the album, they do not completely define it. Rather, Dion's phoenix-from-the-ashes power shines and reveals a confident rebirth as she rebuilds life and reclaims herself. Paired with its intentionally uplifting French-language predecessor, 2016's Encore un Soir, Courage continues to track Dion's grief, just with a contemporary pop angle. While the comforting Encore was suffused with traditional pop-guitar backing, Courage grasps the spirit of the late 2010s with vigor, recruiting a team of co-writers including David Guetta and Skylar Grey.

Like politicians, pop superstars staging a comeback need to be on message, devising a story line and sticking to it from conception to completion. Celine Dion's message is a simple one – one that would be evident to anybody paying the slightest bit of attention. After a ballyhooed semi-retirement following 1999's semi-collection All the Way – a retirement where she gave birth and tended to her manager/husband's recovery from cancer – it was time to begin a new chapter in her life, something made explicit in the title of the comeback, A New Day Has Come. Of course, the new day is the new chapter of Celine's life – she's still a caring, loving wife and mother, but she's ready to return to music with a vigor, including a three-year stint as the main attraction at Caesars in Las Vegas.