The opening line of Celine Dion’s new single translates to ‘Let’s dance, above the abyss.’Sony Music Canada/Supplied
Celine Dion’s comeback continues with the release of Dansons (Let’s Dance), a tenderly emotional French-language ballad written and co-produced by France’s Jean-Jacques Goldman. Because the single is being released across streaming platforms on a staggered schedule internationally Friday at 12:01 a.m. (local time), Australians heard the song first.
“Dansons, au-dessus des abîmes,” Dion sings. The first line translates to “Let’s dance, above the abyss,” and the Quebecker’s career did indeed fall off a cliff four years ago when she announced the cancellation of a world tour. She had previously been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a disorder characterized by debilitating muscle stiffness and painful spasms.
“It’s best that we cancel everything until I’m really ready to be back on stage,” she said in a statement in May, 2023. “I’m not giving up.”
Apparently, she did not. On March 30, her 58th birthday, Dion announced a series of 10 concerts in Paris this fall. She credited her return to the “power of love,” a reference to her 1993 hit with that title and a remedy Huey Lewis once famously endorsed.
Given Dion’s long hiatus from the stage, tickets sold out quickly, as expected. A week later, six more dates were added to the comeback run in the City of Lights.
It remains to be seen what kind of performer Dion will be − stiff person syndrome is considered a progressive condition. Will the Queen of Power Ballads be able to belt them out as she once did?
Celine Dion announced that she will return to the stage this fall with 10 concerts scheduled in Paris, spread out over September and October.
Reuters
The new single suggests the Dion who reappears in Paris in September might be a gentler version of the grand emoter of the past. Clocking in at 3:26, Dansons is a ballad in the classic sense, not a bodice-buster in the big style of 1996’s seven-minute-plus It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.
Think Karen Carpenter with a beret, a baguette and a soaring chorus.
The song’s middle-of-the-road bearing is in keeping with Goldman’s past work with Dion. He wrote and produced D’eux, her 1995 album that marked a shift from the singer’s bombastic tendencies toward a more mature style.
Goldman wrote Dansons in 2020 as a gentle anthem during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement in French, the songwriter said that six years later there was no need to change a word to the song. He explained that the world wasn’t any better and that we are still “dancing above the abyss.”
Dion’s vocals were recorded at Studio at The Palms, in Las Vegas’s Palms Casino Resort. The song is no gamble at all: Dion encourages waltzing, playing violins and holding back nothing in a hostile universe where the world no longer rotates smoothly.
In short, the message is to dance in perilous times. With his quasi-klezmer classic Dance Me to the End of Love, Leonard Cohen made the same recommendation.
It should come as no surprise that Dion’s new single is in French. The first public moments of her comeback took place during the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, where she sang the heartbreaking Hymne à l’amour under the Eiffel Tower.
A lyric video for Dansons will be released Friday at 10 a.m. ET. There’s a line in the song about a sweet “rendezvous.” In Dion’s case, that can be considered French for “I’m back.”