When she was only 5 years old, she was singing in her family's piano-bar: Who is Celine Dion?

The sister of Canadian singer Celine Dion, who struggles with "stiff person syndrome", a rare neurological disease, reported that the famous singer can no longer control her muscles.

According to the New York Post, Dion's older sister Claudette said, "He works hard, but she can't control her muscles anymore."

"Vocal cords are muscles, the heart is also a muscle," said Claudette, adding that the syndrome is rare and therefore scientists have not done enough research. 55-year-old Celine Dion was seen for the first time in a long time at a hockey match in Las Vegas in November.

Céline Marie Claudette Dion (born 30 March 1968) is a Canadian singer. Referred to as the "Queen of Power Ballads", she is noted for her powerful and technically skilled vocals. Her music has incorporated genres such as pop, rock, R&B, gospel, and classical music. Her recordings have been mainly in English and French, although she has also sung in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Chinese.

Dion shared an announcement about her illness on her Instagram account in December 2022. The famous singer, who said that her disease affected her ability to walk and sing, announced that she was taking a break from concerts.

Dion said, "Unfortunately, spasms affect every step of my daily life. Sometimes I have difficulty walking and I cannot use my vocal cords as I normally do when singing."

WHAT IS STIFF PERSON SYNDROME?

Stiff person syndrome is a disorder that causes stiff muscles and painful muscle spasms that can be triggered by things like loud noises and light touch. The exact cause of the syndrome is unknown, and it is thought to be caused by "autoimmune diseases" in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's normal tissues.

WHO?

Dion was born on March 30, 1968 in Quebec, Canada. She was the youngest of 14 children of her mother, Adhemar Dion, and her father, Therese Tanguay. The family was Catholic and financially weak. When Dion was only 5 years old, she was singing in her family's piano bar called "The Vieux Baril". At that time, her only dream was to become a singer.

Dion composed her first composition at the age of 12 with the help of her mother and father. The name of the song was “Ce N'Était Qu'un Rêve”. One of her brothers sent a recording of this song to producer René Angélil, whose name he saw on the back of a cassette cover. Angélil liked Dion's voice very much and mortgaged Dion's house so that she could record the album. Thus, the artist's first album, "La Voix du Bon Dieu", was released in 1981.

The album became very popular in Quebec. Following this success, she participated in the World Pop Song Contest organized by Yamaha in Tokyo and received both the "Best Singer" and "Best Song" awards. Thus, her fame slowly began to spread around the world. Meanwhile, she also became the first Canadian singer to receive an award in France with her song "D'Amour Ou d'Amitié". She also received the "Best Female Singer" and "Best Breakthrough Artist of the Year" awards at the Felix Awards.

She wanted to become a world-class star, but her manager Angelil thought that the artist needed to undergo a physical restructuring process for this. So Dion began to renew himself.

When Dion, representing Switzerland, won the Eurovision Song Contest held in Ireland in 1988 with the song "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi", her dream of becoming a worldwide star slowly began to come true. To expand into the American market, Dion needed to take English lessons, so she started taking English and diction lessons at École Berlitz School in 1989.

After this 1 year, she entered the targeted market with the album "Unision". She worked with Canada's leading musicians for this album, and the songs were mainly in the soft rock style of the 1980s. The album included songs such as "Where Does My Heart Beat Now", "(If There Was) Any Other Way", "The Last to Know", and "And unison". "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" peaked at number 4 on the American charts. Thus, Dion began to become a rising star in America, Asia, and Europe.

As her fame spread in America, her French fans began to react to the artist for neglecting them. To calm this reaction, Dion rejected the "Best English Album of the Year" award she won at the Felix Awards. She wanted to explain that her priority is not English albums, but her French fans.

Another turning point that would take Celine Dion to better days was her duet with Peabo Bryson for the Disney animation "Beauty And The Beast" in 1991. The song reached the top 10 in the United States, winning the Academy Award for "Best Song" and the Grammy Award for "Best Group Performance in Pop." This song was also included in Dion's 1992 album "Celine Dion". The album was again rock-oriented, but this time the songs also featured classical music and soul influences. Also, the subject of the songs was often love. The success of these two albums made Dion a superstar in North America. The video clip of "Next Plane Out", one of the songs from this album, featured images of Dion and her lover on the beach, and this clip started the trend of cliché love videos.

In 1992, Celine Dion started dating her manager Angelil, but they decided to hide it for a while so that the 26-year age difference between them would not be perceived as strange by the public. In 1993, Dion decided to announce this union. Contrary to expectations, their fans gave great support to this union and the couple got married in December 1994. Her husband, Rene Angelil, died of esophageal cancer on January 14, 2016, at the age of 74.

On January 25, 2001, her son René-Charles Dion Angélil was born. In 2010, they had twin boys named Nelson Angelil and Eddy Angelil.

Continuing her musical career with English songs, Dion did not neglect to release a French album after each English album. These were “Dion Chante Plamondon”, released in 1991, and “À l'Olympia”, released in 1994. À l'Olympia was a recording of one of Dion's concerts at the Olympia Theater in Paris, and it became the best-selling French-language album of all time in France.

Although the electric guitar has always been one of Dion's main instruments, the mid-1990s were a period of change in the artist's musical style, shifting from rock to pop and soul. Now, lighter instruments were used to reveal Dion's powerful voice. However, these new attitudes did not receive positive marks from all critics. Dion was now being compared to artists such as Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Despite all this, Dion's albums released during this period were ranking higher in international high schools than before. In 1996, she won the World Music Award for the "World's Best-Selling Canadian Female Singer" for the third time.

The album "Falling Into You", released in 1996, included a wide variety of genres and used a wide variety of instruments to reach a wider audience. The song "Because You Loved Me" from the album remained at number one in American and Canadian high schools for a long time, and was also included in the album containing the soundtrack of the movie "Up Close & Personal". Critics also gave full marks to this album, and it won two Grammy Awards for "Best Pop Album" and "Album of the Year". The artist also performed at the 1996 Olympics. Thus, their dreams of becoming world famous had fully come true.

The album that followed "Falling Into You" was "Let's Talk About Love". In the songs of this album dated 1997, Dion was accompanied by names such as Barbra Streisand, The Bee Gees, Luciano Pavarotti, Diana King, and George Martin. With the release of the movie Titanic in the same year, one of the songs from the album, "My Heart Will Go On", became number one in high schools all over the world. With this song, Dion won 4 Grammy Awards. After all these successes, the singer decided to go on a tour in 1998.

Before the 2000s, Dion released two more albums; 1998's "These Are Special Times" and 1999's "All the Way A Decade of Song." Following the success of these albums, Dion sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. In 1998, upon the offer from VH1 channel, she performed with Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey, Aretha Franklin, and Shania Twain in the program "Divas Live".

The album “A Decade of Song” was the last album that Dion announced that she would release in the 1990s. She needed rest now. Another reason for Dion's retirement was that her husband Angelil had throat cancer.

Returning to the stage after the September 11 attacks, Dion sang the song "God Bless America" at a charity concert.

The album "A New Day Has Come", released in March 2002, ended Dion's 2-year silence.

In 2003, the next album, “One Heart”, was released. This time the album was different from the others in that it focused on dance music. However, critics this time argued that Dion's lyrics were banal and said that the artist was no longer creative at all.

After the birth of her son, maternal instinct began to gain prominence in Dion's works. Her 2004 album "Miracle" was about the love a mother has for her child. The album also included reinterpretations of Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" and John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy". However, this album did not receive good marks from critics.

Celine Dion took a clever stance against the negative criticism she received in the 2000s and signed a contract to perform a total of 600 shows in Las Vegas, five nights a week. The show included dancing, music, and visual effects. Even though the tickets were very expensive, the hall was full every night. Dion's income from the show, which started in 2003, exceeded $76 million by 2005. Following this success, the contract was extended until 2007.

In 2005, she collected the French versions of her most popular songs in the album "On Ne Change Pas". In addition, the song "I Believe In You", a duet with Il Divo, was one of the three new songs on the album.

The artist's talent has always earned her respect.