The last 50 years of pop music would have sounded very different without the involvement of David Foster, the musician, producer, composer and arranger who’s worked with the likes of Chicago, Earth, Wind & Fire, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson.
And then, of course, there’s Céline Dion, who he met when she was still a teenager. He would go on to work on many of her biggest hits - The Power of Love, All By Myself and Because You Loved Me, to name but three - but, speaking to the And The Writer Is… podcast, he says that he turned down the chance to produce what would become her signature song.
Recalling his first encounter with Dion, Foster says: “I got a tip from a friend that worked at CBC in Canada, saying, ‘You got to hear this girl. She's amazing.’ She sent me a tape of her singing something, and I flew all the way to Montreal because I was that impressed.”
Foster goes on to say that he turned up at a tent that had been erected for some kind of Dion family picnic, where Celine sang I Will Survive.
“I was like, Jesus… like, and all the kids are running around, and everybody's talking, and like, picnic tables. And I was like, ‘Are you guys hearing what I'm hearing?’ And of course, they weren't. And I was like, ‘I gotta work with this girl.’”
Work with her he did, across multiple albums, and the relationship was extremely successful. So when Dion was offered the chance to record My Heart Will Go On, the theme song for James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster, Titanic, Foster would have been a natural choice to produce it.
It didn’t happen, though - in fact, Foster says that he advised Dion that she shouldn’t touch it.
“I told Céline that if she recorded the Titanic song, it would ruin her career,” he confirms. “I literally said that to her because I didn't like the song. I still don't, so I didn't produce it, Walter [Afanasieff] did - I turned it down.”
It’s rumoured that Dion herself wasn’t too keen on recording another movie song, having recently contributed Because You Loved Me to the soundtrack to 1996’s Up Close and Personal and, prior to that, the title track to Disney’s 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast, a duet with Peabo Bryson.
However, she was convinced to record a demo by her then husband René Angélil, and with Afanasieff eventually onboard - he didn’t like the demo so changed the arrangement - it went on to sell an estimated 18 million copies.
It sounds like Foster has no regrets about not being involved, but he says that, when he talks to people about the artists he’s worked with, they immediately assume that he was.
"If it ever gets around to Céline, that's the first [thing]: ‘Oh, I love that Titanic song,’” he says. “Then I have to say, ‘Well, I didn't produce that.’ Then they think I'm just full of shit, period. So now I just say, ‘thank you.’ But I had nothing to do with it.”
