Courage

Upon erupting into a house single fit for any Vegas club, Courage’s opener, “Flying on My Own,” finds Céline Dion alone. “The warmer winds will carry me,” she sings at high altitude, her voice climbing. “Anywhere I want them to/If you could see what I can see/That nothing’s blocking my view.” Courage is the Canadian star’s first album (in any language) since the 2016 death of her husband and longtime manager, René Angélil. Recorded almost entirely in Las Vegas—near the end of the wildly successful eight-year residency there that she and Angélil had conceived of together—these are songs of resilience, of moving forward when all you want is to look back. To get there, she collaborated with some of modern pop’s biggest names (Sia, Sam Smith, Skylar Grey, Greg Kurstin, David Guetta) for everything from heartbreaking ballads (“Courage”) to brief flirtations with rapping (the piano-driven lullaby “Perfect Goodbye,” which features contributions from Steve Aoki). “I’m having some kind of breakthrough,” she sings on “Lying Down,” a tale of faltering love. “I’m ready to live.”