Songoftheday 3/10/21 - Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime, and never let go 'til we're gone...

 

 

"My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from Titanic)" - Celine Dion

from the albums Let's Talk About Love and Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture (both 1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 16

 

Today's song of the day comes from Canadian chanteuse Celine Dion, whose fourth album Falling Into You had spun off three top ten pop hits with the epic Jim Steinman song "It's All Coming Back To Me Now",  her cover of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself", and the #1 single "Because You Loved Me". The album itself also won two Grammy Awards for Best Pop Album and Album of the Year in 1997. Later that year, Dion released her next record, Let's Talk About Love, which sported a superstar duet as the first single with Celine paired with Barbra Streisand on "Tell Him". However reception of that song in the U.S. was shockingly pallid, not even reaching the top half of Billboard magazine's pop airplay chart, and with it not being released as a commercial single, it sort of fizzled out (it deserved better). Her record company released "The Reason" as a second single overseas, which was co-written by Carole King and produced by "fifth Beatle" Sir George Martin. The result was a moderate hit internationally, reaching the top-40 in the UK (#11), Spain (#13), and Ireland (#13), but wasn't promoted here in the States. In Japan, the single "Be The Man", a David Foster production, was offered as a second single, and became a top-40 hit there. But for the U.S., the second release and eventual first commercial single from the record would come from the movie Titanic, which would go on to break box office records and take over the consciousness of America. "My Heart Will Go On", with music written by composer James Horner and lyrics from Steve Winwood collaborator Will Jennnigs, was a late addition to the film to give it a "commercial boost" they thought it needed (which apparently it didn't). A soaring pop power-ballad with an unmistakable recorder hook, the song would cement the film on people's minds and catapult Dion's career even farther. For the record itself, Celine starts off mildly, with a breathy delivery which builds and builds on every verse and chorus until the bombastic conclusion where she vocally blows off the recording studio doors...

 

 "My Heart Will Go On" was held back for commercial release for awhile, and while it topped the pop airplay chart for ten weeks in America, it spent two weeks at the top of Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart, entering the list at the top on its very limited initial release in February of 1998. The song was big on "easy listening" stations, topping the Adult Contemporary chart for ten weeks, while spending a week at #3 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 format list. Internationally, the single went to #1 almost everywhere it was released, to name a few the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, and Sweden among others. At the Grammy Awards in 1999, "My Heart Will Go On" took home trophies for Record and Song of the Year, Best Female Pop Performance, and Best Song from a Movie or TV program. It also won the Oscar for Best Original Song as well. And both the Titanic soundtrack and Dion's own Let's Talk About Love, both released in November of 1997, would go to #1 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, with the soundtrack eventually selling over ten million copies, quite a feat for an almost completely orchestral score. Dion's album also went on to move over ten million, cementing that time as the big age of the CD. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Album in 1999, but lost that one to Madonna's Ray Of Light.

There would be no more commercial singles released from Let's Talk About Love, but another track from the album was get a big chunk of airplay and will appear in this series soon. Meanwhile, the instrumental "Southamption" from the Titanic soundtrack, conducted by Horner, even got some radio love with the fervor behind the movie, reaching #22 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart and #55 on the Hot 100 pop airplay list. 

(10/10)

(click below to see the rest of the post)

 

 

 Here's Celine performing the song in its infancy in 1997 for UNICEF...

During the height of the song's popularity, the inevitable slew of cover versions (often released as singles to pilfer from the fanbase unable to fork over for the whole album). One of them, a frenetic dance music cover from British act Deja Vu, made the pop chart in the U.S. at #58, and #86 in the UK...

 Back to Celine singing at the Academy Awards where she took home the prize...

Celine included "My Heart Will Go On" in every tour she's done since, like this show in 2007 in Las Vegas...

And finally, her triumphant return to the stage a year after her husband Rene's death at the Billboard Music Awards in 2017. This had me in tears in 2017; four years later, it still does.

Up tomorrow: The fresh prince is in for freaky times.