The French Album

Performer: Celine Dion
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Personnel: Celine Dion (vocals); Basile Leroux, Patrice Tison (guitar); Christophe Negre, Sylvain Beuf (saxophone); Christian Martinez, Antoine Russo (trumpet); Denis Leloup (trombone); Arnaud Dunoyer De Segonzac, Roland Romanelli (piano); Yannick Hardouin, Neil Jason (bass); Christophe Deschamps (drums); Erick Benzi (programming); Carole Fredericks, Yvonne Jones, Beckie Bell (background vocals). Producers: Jean-Jacques Goldman, Erick Benzi. Recorded at Studio Mega, Paris, France in November and December 1994. Canadian Dion's first language was French, so it probably shouldn't have come as a surprise to anybody that she'd do an album in her native tongue, specifically a collaboration with Luc Plamondon, accurately described here as one of Canada's premier French language pop lyricists. Musically, it's pretty much business as usual, i.e. a mix of lovely pop ballads big production flourishes, soaring chord changes, and stadium-ready guitar parts. Some of the songs, particularly, the opening "Des Mots Qui Sonnent" rock quite a bit harder than one might have suspected; think a Gallic version of Foreigner. Best song: the romantic "Une Garcon Comme Les Autres (Ziggy)," which is not, alas, a French tribute to David Bowie's immortal spaceman.

Celine Dion's ascent from stardom in her native Canada to the upper echelons of international pop divadom is one of the 1990s major success stories. Blessed with a formidable set of pipes and a preference for heart-in-the-throat ballads, the precociously talented Dion initially won over American listeners in 1991, 10 years after her French-language debut, with the title track from Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. From then on, Dion became a music-biz phenomenon, with platinum record sales, sold-out concerts, and across-the-board appeal rivaling her idol, Barbra Streisand.

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