A public appeal by Celine Dion for new songs for her next album in French has been met with a flood of offered tunes, according to a former Canadian media boss close to the singer’s manager.
About 4,000 songs were sent to Dion’s Web site and management company by the Oct. 5 deadline, Charles Benoit, ex-head of the Quebec TV arm of Canadian group Bell Media, told reporters this week.
Dion’s husband and manager, Rene Angelil, and the CEO of the Les Feeling Productions firm managing her career, Aldo Giampaolo, “were surprised by the dimensions this initiative has taken, and they asked me to organize the works’ selection,” he said.
Photo: AFP
In late August, Dion made her appeal for fresh songs, emphasizing that it was “open to everyone.”
The 47-year-old Canadian singer, most famous for performing My Heart Will Go On as the theme song for the hit 1997 movie Titanic, said she wanted new material for an album in French she plans to release next year, and for another one in English in 2017.
The current crop of submitted songs are all for the French album and came by letter, social networks and MP3 files from France and other French-speaking countries.
They are to be whittled down to just 25 songs by a panel of six French-language broadcast critics, said Pierre Fortier, a Quebec music festival director whom Benoit tapped to be in charge of the selection process.
“Naturally, out of the 4,000 songs received, there aren’t 4,000 hits, but we’ve already found several good ones,” Fortier said.
An online vote open to the public through Dion’s Web site is to choose which one of the shortlisted 25 songs is to make it on the singer’s album, with the winner to be announced on Dec. 1.
A 56-year-old French amateur singer-composer, Gilles Mazetto, said he hoped his submission, Cicatrice Dedicacee (roughly meaning “autographed scar”), would make the cut.
“It’s a message in a bottle I’m hoping will be picked up by Celine Dion,” he said. “I think the song fits her repertoire: It talks about passing time, the moments that define our existence, of those that remain.”
Dion’s last album came out in 2013. In August, she resumed regular concerts she has been giving in Las Vegas since 2011 after taking a hiatus to care for Angelil, 73, who has throat cancer.
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