Courage
Upon erupting into a house single fit for any Vegas club, *Courage*’s opener, “Flying on My Own,” finds Celine Dion alone. “The warmer winds will carry me,” she sings at high altitude, her voice climbing. “Anywhere I want them to/If you could see what I can see/That nothing’s blocking my view.” *Courage* is the Canadian star’s first album (in any language) since the 2016 death of her husband and longtime manager, René Angélil. Recorded almost entirely in Las Vegas—near the end of the wildly successful eight-year residency there that she and Angélil had conceived of together—these are songs of resilience, of moving forward when all you want is to look back. To get there, she collaborated with some of modern pop’s biggest names (Sia, Sam Smith, Skylar Grey, Greg Kurstin, David Guetta) for everything from heartbreaking ballads (“Courage”) to brief flirtations with rapping (the piano-driven lullaby “Perfect Goodbye,” which features contributions from Steve Aoki). “I’m having some kind of breakthrough,” she sings on “Lying Down,” a tale of faltering love. “I’m ready to live.”
Twenty tracks by Celine Dion! To what do we owe such fortune? Not that you’d think it was her: on this new record the usual yodelling power ballads have been largely swapped out for an eclectic menu of every genre in the dictionary.
Review: Celine Dion's 'Courage' has her believing in life after love. Brittany Spanos reviews.
The Canadian singer has assembled a crack team including Sia, Sam Smith, Skylar Grey and Greg Kurstin, and pored through their offerings to find the songs that spoke to her the most
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.
In terms of both length and theme, the singer’s 12th English-language album can feel exhausting.
A team of young, hip producers signals Dion’s newfound cult status, but it’s the wobbly-lipped ballads, not EDM, that she does like no one else