One of the best-selling songs in history almost never happened. The director did not want it. The singer did not want to record it. The composer kept the demo in his pocket for weeks, waiting for the right moment to play it for anyone who would listen.
Celine Dion has confirmed in a new video shared on Instagram that she initially refused to sing “My Heart Will Go On,” and that the song created real friction between Titanic director James Cameron and composer James Horner.
“I’ve had some classic songs offered to me that won Oscars and will be remembered for way after I’m gone,” Dion said. “I didn’t want to sing ‘My Heart Will Go On.'”
That admission, from the woman whose voice made the song immortal, is the starting point of one of music’s most unlikely success stories.
James Cameron felt that ending Titanic with a pop song would be inappropriate. James Horner, the composer of the Titanic score, initially composed “My Heart Will Go On” as an instrumental motif for the film.
Horner disagreed with Cameron’s position quietly and decisively. He went ahead and arranged the song without Cameron’s knowledge, working with lyricist Will Jennings to write the words and approaching Dion to sing it, all without telling the director. Cameron had reportedly told Horner he did not want any song with lyrics in his film, comparing it to asking whether you would put a pop song at the end of Schindler’s List.
Horner ignored that instruction. He believed in what he had written.
Simon Franglen, who was working with Horner on electronic textures and synthesizers for the score, suggested Celine Dion, with whom he had worked on many hits. Dion initially did not want to record it, as she had already recorded the film songs “Beauty and the Beast” and “Because You Loved Me” and did not want to be typecast.
Horner arranged a meeting with Dion and her husband and manager, René Angélil, at their suite at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He sat down at the piano and performed the song himself.
Dion later told Billboard: “With all the respect that I have for James — he is not the greatest singer. I was making this sign like, ‘This is not possible.'”
Angélil stopped Horner mid-performance. He told him he was not doing the song justice, and proposed a compromise: let Celine record a demo. Just a trial run. Nothing committed.
Dion was not pleased. “I wanted to choke my husband,” she said. “Because I didn’t want to do it.”
But she agreed.
When Dion arrived in New York City to lay down the vocal, she was not in ideal form. She told Billboard: “I have belly pains. My girly days are starting to happen.”
That evening, she had a cup of black coffee before entering the studio, something she said was not her normal practice before recording because of the effect it has on her voice. She described it as making her vibrato slightly faster than usual.
It did not matter.
Dion went into the booth, turned the lights down, and laid down the vocal nonstop, in a single take. Everyone present was getting chills. Franglen recalled: “That very first ‘Near, far, wherever you are’ — everybody knew that she could belt, but there was something about the delicacy.”
When she turned around, everyone in the studio was crying. Horner told her they might not need to do it again. Dion said she told him: “What are you talking about?” She had come in to do a demo. She had not come in to finish a song she did not want to sing.
The recording existed. Cameron did not know about it. Horner carried a cassette of the track for weeks, waiting for exactly the right moment to play it for the director.
That moment came during a gathering at Cameron’s home. Horner played the recording. Cameron listened several times. He agreed to include the song at the end of the film, though he was concerned he would be criticized for going commercial.
Cameron also wanted to satisfy anxious studio executives and understood that a hit song would improve his chances of completing the film. Sony had paid $800,000 for the rights to the Titanic soundtrack, expecting a theme song. They had been told there would not be one.
The demo Dion recorded that evening in New York, on a cup of black coffee and one take, was the version used in the finished film.
“My Heart Will Go On” debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 28, 1998, and the Titanic soundtrack ran at the top of the Billboard 200 for 16 weeks.
The song topped charts in more than 25 countries. In the UK, it debuted at number one with first-week sales of 234,000 copies and had sold over 2.1 million units by February 2022. In Germany, it was certified four times platinum.
The song won four Grammy Awards in 1998: Record of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Song of the Year, and Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television. It also won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
James Horner, who wrote the melody, died in a plane crash in 2015 at age 61. He did not live to see the song’s 25th anniversary.
Nearly three decades later, Dion has made peace with the song she did not want to sing, the song recorded in one take on a cup of coffee, on an evening she spent resenting her husband’s suggestion.
“I am extremely thankful that they thought of me,” she said. “That director accepted to have a song in his movie. That composer believed in me to sing this song.”
She paused.
“My heart still goes on. More than ever.”
