The Musicgoer: Schmaltz Me to the End of Time

One of my favourite scenes in Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste—a book-length analysis of the mysterious appeal (mysterious to rock critics, anyway) of the multimillion-selling album by Céline Dion—comes near the end, when author Carl Wilson describes the difficult process of actually bringing himself to play the damn thing on his home stereo.

He lives in a very poorly soundproofed building, you see, which means that whenever his neighbours have sex or argue or play techno, he hears it. “And I know they hear me,” he writes. “It turns out that I am not so bothered by having strangers hear me have sex, compared to how embarrassed I am at having them hear me play Let’s Talk About Love over and over.... It took months before I could bring myself to play it at full volume, rather than through headphones or some other subterfuge.”

What is it about Céline Dion that provokes such an immediate, visceral reaction among music snobs? Is it something inherent in the quality of her voice—which, after all, is far more technically accomplished than most of the scratchy-voiced singers rock critics like to champion? Is it the unrestrained emotion she brings to bear on all her vocal performances? (But what’s wrong with unrestrained emotion?) Is it a question of “authenticity”—that Céline sounds fake and Vegas-y where other artists sound “honest”? (On the other hand, no one’s more Vegas-y than Frank Sinatra, and everybody thinks he’s great!)

Or is it a matter of cultural associations that have nothing to do with music? Is the problem that Céline tends to be popular with grandmothers, Wal-Mart shoppers, people with cat posters in their cubicles, people with at most maybe 20 albums in their entire record collection... the very type of terminally uncool people whom hipsters want absolutely nothing to do with, even in an ironic way?

Wilson tries all of those explanations on for size during the course of his book—and a few more for good measure. As a Canadian critic (he used to write for the Montreal alt-weekly Hour), Wilson also does a sensitive, insightful job of placing Céline in her proper cultural context within Quebec’s fascinating pop-music tradition. He offers a few thoughts on the long and surprisingly durable American tradition of “schmaltz” music, and interviews a few Céline fans to get their thoughts on her appeal. He pines to hear the “lost” studio sessions Céline recorded with producer Phil Spector. He ponders Céline’s bizarrely emotional post-Katrina interview on Larry King Live (“Let them touch those things!”), and he even sheds a tear at Céline’s blockbuster show in Las Vegas. (He’d recently broken up with his girlfriend, so he was in a vulnerable frame of mind.) And, of course, he listens repeatedly to Let’s Talk About Love, even the tracks produced by David Foster. Remember: this is the disc with “My Heart Will Go On” on it. You can’t say Wilson didn’t suffer for his art.

Damn! There I go again with the snide remarks! Why is it so hard for us professional music writers to talk about Céline without insulting her, without going out of our way to insulate ourselves from her music lest we be confused with one of those no-taste, tone-deaf record-buyers who’ve committed the capital crime of actually liking her?

That’s part of what’s so admirable about Wilson’s book. While he acknowledges his own instinctive dislike for Céline’s sentimental music and while he dutifully cites several hilarious examples of Céline-bashing in pop culture (my favourite is the joke about the Céline Dion sex doll being taken off the market because it sucked too hard), he scrupulously avoids taking cheap shots at her or her fans. And he doesn’t take the irony escape hatch, either. No, Wilson genuinely wants to get to the bottom of why people have the tastes they do, and why differences in taste can provoke such a violent reaction. He reads everyone from Kant to Céline message boards for insight, and he even tries to locate his own inner Céline fan.

I won’t say whether he finds it, but I can say that after reading A Journey to the End of Taste—kudos to Wilson, by the way, for the Louis-Ferdinand Céline allusion in the title—I’ll never look at Céline the same way again. But do I plan on playing her albums in my apartment, loud enough for the neighbours to hear?

Oh come on. As if. Get real.