December 11, 1999

Dion, Celine : That's the way it is

This is the sort of painless, soulless radio-filler your parents buy when they've finished re-purchasing every record they ever owned in every new-fangled format available.

Business as usual for Canada's multimillion-selling stick insect.
Like Streisand when she tried for genuine pop success in the late-'70s, nothing can stop Celine from over-singing and over-emoting every single note of this typically anodyne ballad. This is the sort of painless, soulless radio-filler your parents
buy
when they've finished re-purchasing every record they ever owned in every new-fangled format available. The 'festive' B-side, 'I Met An Angel (On Christmas Day)', mistakes hiring some piss-poor session saxophonist for recapturing that classic Spector-esque wall of sound, and evokes all the Christmas cheer of an airless LA recording studio: palm trees, dazzling sunshine, kids with machine guns.

Stevie Chick