Â鶹Éç

'My Love' is unlikely to change anyone's mind, Celine-wise. It's a heartfelt, perhaps slightly overwrought ballad*, which begins with a long section where Celine sings acapella before the piano kicks in - and indeed why shouldn't she, because she's got the chops for it. I'll lay my cards on the table here: it's not really my sort of thing, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it on its own merits when it's being done well.

And it is here, pretty much. There's some rather peculiar pronunciation going on ("malluuhhhrve") but that's all part of her charm, I suppose, and I think it's safe to say that people who've enjoyed her previous work will find plenty to enjoy here.

I daresay there'll be many of you who didn't even make it this far because you already knew how you felt about this song, whether it be "yay!" or "nay :(" before you even got to the cut-link, but those of you who came in here in the hope I might reveal that this was the beginning of Celine's experimental and exciting new grunge-rock direction - sorry, no dice.

Considering everything I've written above I'm grading this not in terms of how it appeals to me personally, but in terms of how it fits in the general canon of Celine, which I think is the fairest way to do this. So:

Download: Out now
CD Released: October 13th

(Steve Perkins)

* Part of the reason this isn't as startlingly irritating a Celine Dion song as some is that it is relatively subtle. I mean she can sound like Meat Loaf being hit by lightning, so she deserves some credit for this, even if it is still massively theatrical compared to, say, Laura Marling.