RAMBLE ON: "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" by Celine Dion

Celine Dion announces her arrival in the video for 1990’s “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” her first American hit. She starts with her back to the camera, she dramatically turns around, the video turns from black-and-white to color as her face appears, she’s glowing (literally, because of the backlight). The drummer pounds his drums, the spotlight hits, the crowd cheers. It’s a striking moment if, like me, your overriding image of Celine is a woman old before her time – born  middle-aged, eternally in mom jeans even at her most glamorous prime. It only gets worse if you start at the beginning of her career and see her time as a French-Canadian teen sensation. Celine has unwaveringly insisted that her marriage to her Svengali manager Rene Angelil was perfectly happy, but the decades of age difference, and the fact that he managed her from age 12, have never sat right with people; it will especially not sit right if you see those early videos from the young Celine, which put bluntly are the creepiest fucking things I’ve ever seen. The gawky awkward adult was once a gawky awkward teenager, and the jailbait-y videos are all the more uncomfortable for Celine’s lack of poise. In “Incognito,” the bushy-haired schoolgirl poses on a seedy-looking bedroom set for a fashion photographer, and looks for all the world like she’s way too young to realize the sketchiness of the scenario; another song is called “Lolita,” and judging by the Google translation of the lyrics, it’s not a misleading title. This surely happened at Réné’s direction; you will not look at these videos and be okay with the details of Celine Dion’s romantic life ever again.

But for this song/video, and maybe only this one, Celine Dion seems fresh and confident, like a real pop star that someone besides your parents might listen to. The synth drums boom, the bass comes in low to set up her entrance, the spotlight comes on. Her hair and wardrobe seem like they fit her for the first time. The effect in these opening scenes is undeniable: Celine Dion has come of age and she has arrived on the world stage, ready to become the world-conquering diva she was destined to be.

It takes her about a minute to ruin it. It’s that pointing finger, stuck in the air to punctuate the first big moment in the chorus. That gesture stuck with her through adulthood and always made her look like a schoolmarm giving you a scolding, but it at least fit her persona as it came to be defined. But here, at age 22, it makes her look simultaneously too old and too young, like a kid in her mom’s clothes. The clenched fist, held against her body to indicate her emotional distress, is almost as bad; or maybe it’s the way she stares straight at the camera like a deer, trying to emote. She looks ridiculous. On some level singing is about acting, and her failure to sell it in this video speaks to some greater failing in her as an artist. (The language barrier may be a factor; writer Carl Wilson notes in his landmark 33 1/3 entry “Let’s Talk About Love” that she’s more emotive in her native French.) She would of course become one of the best-selling artists of all time, renowned the world over, but on some level she would never escape her essential dorkiness; unlike Whitney, Mariah or Cher, she would never become someone who was on any level cool to like. On some level, liking Celine is being okay with unhipness.

It’s difficult to imagine a Celine who was ever fun, but she did start in teen pop. Her first English album “Unison” is, unsurprisingly, slick ‘90s cheese, but it’s also looser and more fun than you’d expect. Her singing is not just overwhelmingly powerful and technically perfect, but it’s also much less stiff than her later, more famous hits. It points to a very different direction she could have had as a young, sexy dance-pop diva; it probably would not have worked for her. (Imagine a Celine Dion whose future was dictated by this.) Naturally, the song that became the big hit was not any of the upbeat Paula Abdul-type dance songs but the power ballad, which ended up defining her instead.

If you’re disinclined to like Celine, “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” will not endear her to you, but I really do love it. It’s pure Journey-style cheese, but dragged through a decade of adult contemporary into the ‘90s; “Open Arms” sounds like the gnarliest of hard rock compared to “Where Does My Heart Beat Now.” It even has a very Journey-esque “na na” background chorus, but not delivered with any of Steve Perry’s gusto; only Celine, not her backup singers, are allowed to emote with that kind of cornball power. Wilson defined schmaltz as essentially sincerity and lack of shame, a way for white audiences to let loose and feel the kind of big emotions normally reserved for “ethnic” audiences without having to listen to “ethnic” music. That’s the key, the lack of soulfulness. Celine plays to the rafters but even here, at her, at her most soulful, she’s not a soul singer and would never be mistaken for one.

Still, sincerity counts for a lot. When she sings, “Where do silent hearts go?” it hearkens back to the similarly titled “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” a chart-topper for her contemporary Whitney Houston just two years earlier. Whitney was easily the better singer than Celine and capable of much more, but she can’t hide her boredom with “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”; she disliked the song and she was right to, so naturally she could only elevate it so far. Celine exhibits no such good taste; she launches herself at the song like it’s the greatest song she’s ever heard. The lyrics aren’t great and the production is dumb as hell, but she believes in the song. She sells it.

There’s an alternate video for “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” apparently only played in Canada. Unlike the concert footage of the more widely seen American video, the Canadian version actually tries to sell the sentiment of the song – Celine, in sepia tones, sits alone in an empty remote house, staring off into the middle distance longing for her lost love while flowing curtains billow towards her. I’m not going to say that no one has ever listened to this song and felt genuine heartbreak, but the concert video feels like the more correct version of this song. Celine fully intended to be a global superstar and only in a large crowd can the thundering hugeness of her sound be truly appreciated. This is music to cheer for, not to cry to. I have to admit, I love this song. Celine and her aesthetic will never really speak to me, but on some level she can’t be denied. “I feel it getting stronger and stronger and stronger,” she vamps at the end, and if there’s one thing Celine Dion can sell with her formidable pipes, it’s strength. How can a weakling such as myself resist?