Celine Dion Celebrates Tour Kickoff by Dropping Tracks from First Album in Six Years
By Chris Willman
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Although Celine Dion announced last April that she had a new album on the way, “Courage,” she waited until now to put a date to it or release any fresh singles. The occasion was the Wednesday kickoff of the singer’s Courage World Tour in Quebec City, excuse enough for Dion to drop three tracks from the album: “Imperfections,” “Lying Down” and “Courage.”
With these three songs joining a previously released song, “Flying on My Own,” fans now have four songs from the album “Courage,” her first English-language release in six years, now revealed to be set for Nov. 16. The songs can be streamed here .
Some of the new material has a borderline EDM pulse, which reflects the sweet spot of some of the producers and songwriters. “I’ve got my own imperfections,” she sings in an upbeat number produced by DallasK, best known for co-writing and producing Fifth Harmony’s massive “Work from Home.” “Lying Down” is, as you might guess from its title, a position from which Dion won’t take any guff. It’s more firmly in the diva ballad tradition, with just a few electronic flourishes amid the orchestration; the song was written by the singer Sia along with David Guetta and Giorgio Tuinfort.
“Courage,” the title song, may strike fans as the most personal as most anthemic, with simple piano and orchestrating underlying Dion facing loss with chest-thumping bravado, singing, “Courage, don’t you dare fail me now / I need you to keep away the doubts,” facing “a train wreck, but I’m not crashed yet.” The ballad was written by Stephan Moccio, Erik Alcock and Liz Rodrigues.
The world tour that starts tonight in Quebec continues with a six-night stand in Montreal before moving on to the U.S. starting Oct. 18 in Cleveland. It reaches Barclays Center in Brooklyn Feb. 28-29 and Staples Center in L.A. April 2, with dates currently set though April 27, when she’s back in her native country with a North American finale — for now — in Winnipeg.
