Well, I heard about Céline Dion for the first time around 1995, when my father and I found the motion picture "Beauty and the Best" in original language, because the Disney cartoons have always been my passion and I wanted to have a two languages collection.
In the closing credits, when the names of the authors of the soundtrack appeared, we read Céline Dion. I remember that it didn't make me so much curious because: first of all, I was just 11 and I was not very interested in singers, and then, even if in that moment I heard the song "Beauty and the Beast" and her voice was considerable, somehow or other I was not attracted by it. I don't know why... maybe because I was not thinking of it so much, or maybe I was not interested in it.

I didn't hear about her until the beginning of the following year, 1996, when out of the school, a friend of mine stopped me to show me a thing: the Céline album "FALLING INTO YOU". I took the album, I looked it, I examined it and I told her: it's one of the artists who makes a name for herself with only an album, the only positive thing is that she sang for Disney. "Listen to me, forget her!". My friend was not persuaded.

She has been bothering me for several days and months, talking about Céline. Every time we met, Céline was at the center of her thoughts, and I began to dislike Céline. The antipathy ended after some time, a day I didn't go to school, I turned on the radio and, by chance, I listen to "FALLING INTO YOU".

In fact, I didn't know the name of the singer, even if my friend told me it repeatedly. In fact, at the end of the song I couldn't hear neither the singer nor the title of the song, because immediately I turned off the radio because I was shaken. Somehow, that voice bewitched me.

Finally, the "Célinic" effect began to work, even if she didn't in 1995.

And here the misunderstanding happened: I didn't know neither the title of the song nor the name of the artist, I went to the records store and I looked for either the song or the album. I didn't know what to say to the "poor" storekeeper who spent almost an hour to find the record; I told him that maybe the artist was Madonna (that's I mistook Céline for Madonna!!) and I sang softly the motif, hoping to obtain something. After a long series of searches, making him listen to the motif once again (it was almost unrecognizable sung by me), he took out "FALLING INTO YOU".

I admit that I wouldn't believe it: that song has been under my nose for months, due to the friend who drove me crazy, but I never paid attention to her. I looked at the storekeeper saying that maybe he mistook the singer and I asked to listen to the song; there was no doubt: it was the same song!
Prostate and happy at the same time, I didn't buy the album (the storekeeper killed me) because I was not persuaded and I went at a run to my friend; after some chords, she gave me the tape of "Falling into you" (since she had the cd as well). I listen to it one hundred times, I think.

By then, Céline was a part of me.
In short, now I'm a great fan, but if I listened to my friend before, or if I better listened to the song of the cartoons, maybe it shouldn't be the same thing.... goodness knows...

Sara Nightingale