“I told Céline that if she recorded the Titanic song, it would ruin her career. I didn’t like the song – I still don’t. So I didn’t produce it. I turned it down”: Music legend David Foster says that he passed on producing Céline Dion’s biggest hit..
Few figures have shaped mainstream pop quite like David Foster. As a producer, arranger and songwriter, he has spent five decades behind the boards for artists including Chicago, Earth, Wind & Fire, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson.
His long-running collaboration with Céline Dion is among the most successful producer-artist partnerships in pop history. Foster first encountered Dion when she was still a teenager, after receiving a tip from a friend at Canada’s CBC.
“I got a call saying, ‘You have to hear this girl — she’s incredible,’” Foster recalled on the And The Writer Is… podcast. After listening to a tape of her singing, he was so impressed that he flew to Montreal immediately.
What he found was hardly a glamorous industry showcase. Dion performed at a tent set up for a family gathering, singing “I Will Survive” while children ran around and relatives chatted over picnic tables.
“I was thinking, ‘Are you hearing what I’m hearing?’” Foster said. “Nobody else seemed to notice. I just knew — I’ve got to work with this girl.”
And work together they did. Foster helped craft some of Dion’s defining hits, including “The Power of Love,” “All By Myself” and “Because You Loved Me.” Given that history, it would have seemed inevitable that he would produce what became her most famous song: “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme from Titanic, directed by James Cameron.
But Foster passed — emphatically.
“I told Céline that if she recorded the Titanic song, it would ruin her career,” he admitted. “I literally said that to her. I didn’t like the song. I still don’t.”
Instead, production duties went to Walter Afanasieff, who reworked the arrangement after reportedly being unimpressed with the initial demo.
At the time, Dion herself was said to be hesitant. She had recently recorded “Because You Loved Me” for the 1996 film Up Close and Personal and, earlier in the decade, the title track to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast alongside Peabo Bryson. Another major movie ballad may have felt like overkill.
However, persuaded by her husband and manager René Angélil, she recorded a demo — and the rest is history. “My Heart Will Go On” went on to sell an estimated 18 million copies worldwide and became inseparable from Dion’s legacy.
Foster insists he harbours no regrets. Still, he finds it ironic that many people automatically assume he was behind the global smash.
“When people bring up Céline, the first thing they say is, ‘I love that Titanic song,’” he said. “And then I have to explain that I didn’t produce it. They don’t believe me. So now I just say, ‘Thank you.’ But I had nothing to do with it.”