Céline Dion

One of the most powerful and prolific vocalists of her time, Celine Dion was born the youngest of 14 children in Charlemagne, Quebec. Profoundly interested in music from the time she could talk, Dion was performing at her family's piano bar Le Vieux Baril from the time she was seven. At 12, she co-wrote her first song with her mother and her brother Jacques, and her other brother Michel sent the demo to music producer Rene Angélil. Angélil was so moved by young Dion's searing voice that he mortgaged his own house to finance her first album, 1981's La voix du bon Dieu, which became a local hit in Quebec. Dion's popularity in the French-Canadian music industry would grow exponentially over the following decade until she ultimately decided to go international, releasing her English-language debut Unison in 1990. Two years later, Dion recorded the duet with Peabo Bryson "Beauty and the Beast," the title track from the Disney animated musical, and Dion's fame in the U.S. began to climb. Her next Anglophone album, 1993's The Colour of My Love, proved a massive hit, catapulting Dion to superstar status. Simultaneously, her affection for her producer/manager Angélil was also evolving and by the following year, the pair were married in a lavish ceremony broadcast live on Canadian television. Dion would continue to record in French, releasing D'eux in 1995, while her English-language albums would prove substantially more commercially successful, with 1996's Falling Into You selling over 11 million copies in the U.S. alone. 1997's Let's Talk About Love was also a massive hit, thanks in no small part to the appearance of Dion's love theme from the blockbuster "Titanic," "My Heart Will Go On." From 2003 to 2007, Dion performed a wildly popular residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas titled "A New Day " After embarking on a world tour in 2010, Dion ultimately returned to Caesars in 2011 for a second residency. Though she would take a hiatus from performances for several months following the tragic death of Angélil in 2016 from complications due to throat cancer, the residency would ultimately continue until 2019.