In four decades in music, Celine Dion has accumulated hits ! In English and French. One of his first successes dates back to 1982: Of love or friendship. A song whose text was signed by the lyricist Eddy Marnay – whose first name will be given to one of the twins of the star – who had been inspired by the first love emotions of the young singer…
Indeed, it was the biographer Georges-Hébert Germain who related the backstage of this song in the official biography he dedicated to Celine Dion published in 1998. He then gave the floor to Eddy Marnay, the one who will offer no less than five diva albums. “I realized, thinking of those days of my adolescence, that probably since the world began, things have been like this between young boys and young girls, in this short period of time after childhood when they are born. awaken to love, hesitating on the border between love and friendship… And I said to myself that there was no reason why Céline had not experienced it or not don’t live or dream about it“, he said. And the lyricist had been right since, long before falling in love with his manager René Angélil, the young Céline had had a crush on a certain Sylvain.
“She sometimes went to spend a few days with her heart Claudette, in Verdun, in the working-class suburbs. A neighbor, Sylvain, came to hover around him. He was shy and very handsome. One day they kissed in the porch. And Céline wondered afterwards if she was in love, and if he loved her. She was looking for signs, she was feeling her heart (…) With handsome Sylvain, she couldn’t figure out what she felt“, wrote Georges-Hébert Germain. This amorous torment had then strongly inspired Eddy Marnay as he readily admitted: “It is from this mixture of emotions that I was inspired to write Of love or friendship [écoulé à 500 000 exemplaires rien qu’en France, NDLR]. There is impatience and doubts, a great desire to understand, a need to know.“
40 years of songs by Celine Dion: the stars sing for SidactionMarch 26, 2022 on France at 9:10 p.m.