THIS IS SEEE-REEEEY-USS
Yahoo! suggests I should address the Celine question. Now I will admit that Dion isn’t much cop, indeed would happily concede that the very existence of Celine Dion invalidates all prior achievements of human civilisation and surely makes us a galactic laughing stock from Arcturus to Rigel. But the point is that everybody holds this view – I have travelled the world looking for somebody who likes Celine Dion records and no, from pole to pole there is agreement that she’s a frightening hag with a voice like cough medicine in your eyes and the purse-lipped looks of a Job Centre undermanager (esp. with her horrendous ‘new wave’ barnet).
So who is buying the records? Two possibilities present themselves: firstly, people who haven’t learned to speak. This isn’t entirely unlikely. The second possibility is that nobody at all is buying them, that Celine is a fiction and her chart positions are coded messages planted by our military-industrial masters for the attention of deep cover agents. “Hmm, Think Twice at No.1. I must bomb Quebec.” (OK, so that’s a rational reaction rather than a secret message).
Celine serves a useful function, though: by serving as a totem of all that sucks in music, she keeps the happy consumer oblivious to the fact that all the Proper Records they listen to instead are just as bad. I’d rather sever my foot than play “My Heart Will Go On”, for sure, but I’d happily lose at least my toes rather than hear David Gray again – don’t come bleating to me about how Celine’s no good when you’re just going to go home and listen to the goddamn Corrs.