Another Dion signature is transforming vulnerability into a show of strength. Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” is written as a wretched admission of need but Dion turns it into the exact opposite: a cry of independence. When she sang the line “Sometimes I’m frightened” from “The Power of Love,” she held up a defiantly clenched fist.
The effect could be goofy — fine, it was often goofy — but it was also irresistible because Dion has the uncanny ability to make the most rehearsed note, banter or high kick feel absolutely heartfelt. Does it matter if an emotion is real if it sounds real?
Her utter lack of self-consciousness, irrepressible good nature and delirious ad-libbing have long made Dion an eccentric outlier in the often cynical world of pop stardom. The last was, unfortunately, mostly kept under control at Barclays, save for a glorious moment when she mused that she was talking to the audience in her “dog voice” (the voice with which she speaks to her pet) and let out a bark. This restraint — a relative term for someone touring with a 17-piece band — may be the product of Dion’s decade-plus, 1,141-show Las Vegas residency, a grind that could have demanded her to tamp down her well-known ebullience in favor of a more polished efficiency.
Dion used to be mocked by the critical establishment but is now fairly accepted as a sui generis phenomenon. It’s hard to tell when the perception began to change, but a good place to start would be Carl Wilson’s 2007 book “‘Let’s Talk About Love’ — A Journey to the End of Taste,” an essay by a critic who set out to write about the singer because he despised her, only to emerge from the research process as, well, maybe not a convert but at least someone less reflexively judgmental about her music and her fans.
In the meantime, Dion herself has not changed. She may have recently emerged as a toned fashion diva, but her musical approach remains the same. No unplugged shows for her, no Bon Iver covers or dallying with avant-garde producers: David Guetta and Sia will do, thank you very much.
At her best, Dion projects a sense of bigness — besides fairly simple graphics, the background videos in her show often showed cosmic images, as if they were the only thing measuring up on the Dion scale — while still sounding accessible, like a working musician doing her best for the crowd. Yet her secret sauce is not power but precision, the way she remains in control on every single note, like a sniper locked in on a target.
The Barclays concert was a well-oiled machine, and satisfying as such, but it was hard not to miss, just a little bit, the ebullient Celine from a Madison Square Garden gig back in 2008. Maybe she should set herself an actual challenge next, and do an intimate Broadway residency à la Springsteen — with wiggle room for improv.
Celine Dion
At Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday and Thursday; NYCB Live Home of the Nassau Veterans Coliseum on Tuesday; and Prudential Center in Newark on March 7 and 8.
