{"id":94,"date":"2009-08-12T08:01:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T13:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/08\/12\/090812_elvisandceline\/"},"modified":"2022-03-12T17:09:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-12T23:09:09","slug":"090812_elvisandceline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/08\/12\/090812_elvisandceline\/","title":{"rendered":"The King &#038; Celine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Considering that more than 1.5 million people have viewed the YouTube video of C\u00e9line Dion performing with Elvis Presley, this may not be news for you. But neither I nor my wife had seen it, and I figured that there were likely a few of you for whom this will also be new. I recommend it for several reasons. First, the video itself:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UmXHkL3xiMU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>As I said, I find this compelling for several reasons. First, I like the song (<em>If I Can Dream of a Better Land<\/em>), which, despite its naive and vaguely hippie-ish <a title=\"LyricsFreak.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lyricsfreak.com\/e\/elvis+presley\/if+i+can+dream_20049664.html\">lyrics<\/a> (not to mention its questionable theology), still provides some dramatic musicality.<\/p>\n<p>Second, I like both performers. Dion is one the biggest-selling female singers in history and one of the few contemporary performers that I&#8217;d pay to see in concert, and Presley&#8217;s musical legacy is unquestioned. Michael Jackson may have been the King of Pop, but Elvis needed no such qualifier.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I&#8217;m intrigued by the technology that brought two performers from different generations (the original footage for this video was from a 1968 concert, the year Dion was born). The video is one of those productions where your first thought is <em>wow!<\/em>, followed closely by <em>I wonder how they did that?<\/em>&#8221; With regard to the second thought, well, to borrow a line from Apple, there&#8217;s a video for that:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/o8zR2nDdzYM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Some YouTube commenters excoriate the creators of this video (Hollywood technical experts David C. Fein and Marc Fusco, operating on YouTube as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/2livefools\">&#8220;2livefools&#8221;<\/a>) for what they deem to be unfair criticism of the techniques and quality of the &#8220;spliced video,&#8221; but I think the creators are simply offering unbiased and expertly professional observations. They&#8217;re making no judgments about the quality of the performances (indeed, they go out their way to comment that it appears that Dion&#8217;s performance was intentionally toned down out of respect to Elvis).<\/p>\n<p><i>P.S. If you&#8217;re a purist and insist on a Canadian-free version of Elvis&#8217;s performance, here&#8217;s the original:<\/i><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xkx1LFXIyHg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Considering that more than 1.5 million people have viewed the YouTube video of C\u00e9line Dion performing with Elvis Presley, this may not be news for you. But neither I nor my wife had seen it, and I figured that there were likely a few of you for whom this will also be new. I recommend&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/08\/12\/090812_elvisandceline\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The King &#038; Celine<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-technology","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8686,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/8686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}