Celine knows to save it all for the “Youuuuuu’re heeeerrre / there’s noooooothing I fear,” by far the most palatable lyrics of the song (and the most conducive to car or shower screaming).
Surely that counts for something! And the key change comes after two minutes of particularly breathy vocalizing on the part of Dion, who usually lets it rip a bit earlier in her ballads. But Celine performs the “My Heart Will Go On” modulation on a boat (in the video, anyway).
1 spot, and no one is trying to argue with “I Will Always Love You.” We’re not crazy. If you do, you will be rewarded with a slow build to one of the most glorious key changes in recorded music history. If you can make it past the words, “Far across the distance and spaces between us / you have come to show you go on,” then you can survive anything. “My Heart Will Go On” isn’t trying to be anything other than a means for Celine Dion to wail about lost love for three minutes, and by declaring its intentions up front, the song gets the gag factor out of the way early. Never before or since has a recorder played so pivotal a role in pop music surely, an entire generation of elementary schoolers now learn to perform “My Heart Will Go On” instead of “Hot Cross Buns.” From those first tinny notes, you know exactly what you are in for, which is a saccharine, Divas Live–ready love anthem. (Think “Men in Black” or Armageddon’s “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”)īut let’s talk about the song itself.
#MY HEART WILL GO ON SONG MEANING MOVIE#
As a movie theme song, its legacy is eclipsed only by Whitney Houston’s (admittedly far superior) “I Will Always Love You,” and this is a remarkable achievement when you consider the competition that “My Heart Will Go On” faced even in its own era. Even if you did not personally enjoy “My Heart Will Go On,” you knew the words to “My Heart Will Go On” and you could probably even quote the Titanic dialogue that was spliced into certain radio edits. It dominated the airwaves for the better part of 1998. And more important, it’s actually pretty great.Ĭonsider the hard facts first: “My Heart Will Go On” s old 15 million copies, and won Grammys for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Performance. But once upon a time, “My Heart Will Go On” was a record-breaking smash hit. “My Heart Will Go On” encapsulates most everything that once-enthusiastic moviegoers now dislike about Titanic: It’s outdated, cheesy, and overly dramatic. “No, actually, I do feel like throwing up.” It has become fashionable - okay, in some circles, it was always fashionable - to hate on Celine Dion’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning love theme for Titanic, much in the same way that it has become hip to rag on Titanic the movie (once a Best Picture winner, now a cutesy joke in Love, Actually). “I shouldn’t say that,” she added, before immediately reversing course. “My Heart Will Go On” makes Kate Winslet feel “like throwing up,” she told a U.K. Last week, in the middle of an extremely honest press tour for Titanic 3D (out today), Kate Winslet gave an official voice to a sentiment that has been bubbling in the public consciousness for some time now.