Celine Dion Will Go On

Nearly two years ago, I huddled with some co-workers over a phone watching a video Celine Dion had shared on Instagram. She announced she was canceling her European tour because she had been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that had made it difficult for her to move and sing.

“Hello, everyone,” she began. “I’m sorry it has taken me so long to reach out to you.” Her voice broke. “I miss you all so much.” This was Ms. Dion as we’d never seen her — fragile, tentative, worried — and all of us watching got a little emotional. It was startling to see a diva appear so mortal.

This week, Ms. Dion will premiere “I Am: Celine Dion,” a documentary about her life since that diagnosis. Watching a clip of her onstage introducing the film at a screening in New York to a standing ovation, I found the lump in my throat returned.

The diva is back, just when we need her the most.

Ms. Dion, 56, released her first album in 1981 at age 13, and she’s come to stand as one of the last pillars of a dwindling category: the pop divas. A diva’s commanding presence can be measured in gigawatts and the term instantly conjures a pantheon: Aretha, Barbra, Tina, Whitney, Patti, Chaka, Gladys, Mariah, Shania, Madonna, Dolly and Cher, to cite the luminaries who only require a single name. In the opera world, being labeled a diva can come with sexist overtones, a shorthand for a famous woman who makes unreasonable demands. But in her memoir, Mariah Carey described Aretha Franklin as “my high bar and North Star,” and this to me is the best distillation of what a pop diva represents: imperious, exacting, a kind of cultural lighthouse, someone toward whom the rest of us, fans and aspiring divas alike, can orient ourselves.

We’ve been mired in a diva deficit. The pop diva has come to feel like a cultural relic, an unattainable mode of stardom that carries more baggage than currency. It’s difficult for pop stars today to achieve the kind of consensus required to deserve the title. An artist like Taylor Swift is certainly omnipresent, but Ms. Swift’s public image hinges on offering an unyielding relatability that’s antithetical to the aura of a diva. Other contemporary stars, such as Billie Eilish, seem uninterested in the boastful triumphalism that comes with divahood.

Culturally, we need to hold in common certain things in order to even feel like a “we” at all — and the power of pop divas is that they can unify us in the celebration of a monumental star. Pop divas survived the schlock of the 1980s and the irony of the ’90s, and by the turn of the century we even had a diva glut. In 1998, VH1 launched a “VH1 Divas” series of benefit concerts to celebrate this vaulted class. (Ask me how many times I’ve watched this performance.)

Reigning divas were celebrated and new divas crowned, with Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus welcomed to the ranks. The final class that matriculated into diva status may boast Rihanna and Adele as graduates, but those divas seemed to close the door behind them. The job of pop diva became so much harder during the great cultural fracturing of the 2000s and 2010s.

Hence the welcome return of Ms. Dion, one of the few singers with a diva’s power to electrify. The arrival of Ms. Dion’s documentary is a reminder of just how much we’ve missed figures like her.

I recently watched a video clip of Ms. Dion being interviewed by the Canadian journalist Adrienne Arsenault. Ms. Arsenault said to Ms. Dion, “I feel like people, on the one hand, really want the best for you physically, but then will they say, ‘Ah, I hope there’s one more concert.’”

It’s a humane point, born out of decency. Ms. Arsenault is trying to recognize the pressure we collectively place on these performers, even at the cost of their health. Her question also assumes something that’s become clear to me about divas: We need them more than we may realize. Yet is it even appropriate for people to expect that Ms. Dion will perform again?

Ms. Dion did not even register that dimension of the question. She has been one of our mainstay divas for decades, and she takes the job seriously. With no hesitation, she responded, “Oh, I’ll sing again.” She sounded resolute here, unwavering. She was even a little teary.

She repeated herself — “I’ll sing again” — and you had no option but to believe her. A diva gets what she wants.

Elamin Abdelmahmoud is an author and the host of the pop-culture podcast “Commotion.”

Source photographs by Alice Chiche, Gotham, Ponopresse, Ron Davis, Jeff Kravitz, Sam Levi, Steve Granitz, Raymond Hall via Getty Images.

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