Watch Angine de Poitrine Make Their Late-Night Debut on Fallon

The outerspace-via-Québec math-rock aliens conquered the crowd at 30 Rock with a rousing performance of their new song, "Zugzegk".

Billy Eff is the Content Director for Rolling Stone Canada. An award-winning journalist and columnist, he has previously contributed to outlets including VICE and Urbania. A passionate advocate for underground music and a musician himself, he has conducted several hundred interviews with artists and industry professionals across a wide range of styles and genres over the past 15 years. He is based in Montréal, Québec.

It's been a dizzying year for Angine de Poitrine, the Saguenay, QC band who shot to fame within the last few months, thanks to their over-the-top costumes, strong sense of anonymity and polka-inflected microtonal math-rock. They can count nearly every rockstar on Earth as a fan, from Canadian prog-rock veterans Rush to Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who has a tendency to fly out to see the band perform whenever he can.

Last night, the duo reached another milestone by making their American TV debut on late-night's biggest stage, Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. To mark the occasion, Angine de Poitrine premiered a new song, titled "Zugzegk".

Though not featured on their latest album, Vol. II, the song sounds like it would have its place on a deluxe edition, with its tortuous time signatures that relents into a boppy, surf-rock chorus before going back to their signature complicated harmonies on the double-necked guitar.

Angine de Poitrine are currently wrapping up an American tour before going back to Europe. They come back to Canada in November for shows in Toronto, Québec City and Montréal.

Macklemore performing in France in August

Macklemore has been removed from the rest of Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour after several venues allegedly told the trek’s promoter that they would not allow the rapper to perform. The news came after Macklemore made several onstage statements in support of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and called for a “free Palestine.”

In an exclusive statement shared with Rolling Stone, Messina Touring Group, promoter of the U.S. leg of Sheeran’s Loop Tour, said: “As the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour, we have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans. After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”

Macklemore was slated to appear at eight of the 10 shows left on the U.S. leg of Sheeran’s tour, which is set to resume this Friday, Sept. 19, in Philadelphia. The venues that allegedly objected to the rapper include: Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts; Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta; Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis; Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina; AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas; and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Reps for Sheeran, Macklemore, and most of the venues did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Macklemore — who’s been an outspoken supporter of Palestinians and those in Gaza for several years — joined the Loop Tour earlier this month, performing two shows at MetLife Stadium outside of New York City, on Sept. 4 and 5. At the first show, the Seattle rapper yelled “Free Palestine” onstage and expressed solidarity with people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. He also showed images from the devastation in Gaza and performed his protest song, “Hind’s Hall,” about pro-Palestine demonstrators at Columbia, who occupied a building and named it after Hind Raja, a six-year-old killed by the Israeli military.

“A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: ‘Free Palestine,’” he said during the first MetLife show. “I said, ‘Free Palestine!’ I want those words to be loud and clear, so that people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them.”

This spurred much criticism and backlash from pro-Israel groups. StopAntisemitism accused the rapper of ambushing fans with “anti-Israel propaganda” in an Instagram post, which the pop singer Pink amplified.

Pink later explained that she did not object to Macklemore’s calls for a “Free Palestine,” but said, “I have never asked for another artist to be silenced and I’m not asking now. I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund. What I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, ‘that scared me, and it scared people I love,’ without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being told I’m somehow cool with genocide because I noticed?”

Additionally, the Israeli American Council launched a petition demanding Sheeran remove Macklemore from the rest of the tour, claiming his actions raised questions over “where the line should be drawn when an opening act uses a global concert platform to advance a one-sided political agenda.”

At the second MetLife show, Macklemore reiterated his calls for a “Free Palestine” and addressed Jewish members of the audience, saying, “Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace; love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.” (Humanitarian groups and a United Nations commission have said Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. Israel and its allies, including the United States, have denied this.)

The stadiums that allegedly would not allow a Macklemore show did not immediately return requests for comments either, including for explanations as to why they objected to the rapper performing at their venue. While two of those stadiums are privately owned — Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough — the rest are owned and, in many cases, operated by cities, states, or other government entities, potentially raising First Amendment issues if the venues barred Macklemore over his statements.

The last stop on Sheeran’s Loop Tour, for instance, is Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, which found itself in a similar spot earlier this summer after booking two Kanye West concerts. The shows, unsurprisingly, drew backlash and calls for cancellation due to West’s many past antisemitic statements, but they went ahead as planned.

Pointedly, Ye’s promoter included a clause in his contract prohibiting Raymond James Stadium from canceling the gigs based on the rapper’s past public statements or viewpoints. But legal experts also told local news that canceling the shows would’ve likely violated the First Amendment. Because Raymond James is owned by Hillsborough County, Florida, and operated by a public board, the Tampa Sports Authority, any cancellation based on Ye’s past statements could have been seen as the government restricting speech.

When reached for comment on the Macklemore decision, a rep for the Tampa Sports Authority told Rolling Stone, “We can confirm Macklemore will not be performing at the upcoming show. Apart from this lineup change, the concert will go forward as planned.”

The North American leg of Sheeran’s Loop Tour is set to run through the fall, wrapping Nov. 7 at Raymond James Stadium. During the trek, Sheeran will continue to receive support from Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe. A South American leg of the Loop Tour will follow in November and December.

Drake

Drake has shared more details about his mysterious “Fear of Missing Out” project ahead of its release next week.

Drake began hinting at his latest offering on social media in August, sharing photos of his family alongside the caption: “FOMO 2026.” Two weeks later, he followed that up with an image of a CD cover titled “Fear of Missing Out.” Fans online have speculated whether it’s an upcoming album, tour, or music video.

Turns out, the latter prediction was most correct, as Drake himself revealed Saturday on social media that “FOMO” is “a not so short film directed and scored by the family.”

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The announcement was accompanied by a clip of Drake piloting a neon yellow speed boat as a female voice says in voiceover, “What if I told you there were two versions of your life. In one, you avoid risk and withhold love. You feel like you’ve gone missing from yourself. You look for something you can’t find. In the other version of your life… you find it.”

Drake also reiterated Fear of Missing Out’s release date: September 15.

The rapper is no stranger to making his project reveals as elusive and difficult as possible. In April, the artist hid the release date for his Iceman trilogy in a gigantic block of ice plopped in a downtown Toronto parking lot. Fans climbed onto the glacial block with sledgehammers — one even brought a blowtorch and hairspray — in attempts to access the big reveal.

Lil Durk on Oct. 28, 2023 in Newark, NJ.

Lil Durk was acquitted of all charges Friday after a three-week trial where prosecutors accused him of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot and defense lawyers attacked the credibility of the government’s cooperating witnesses, calling them admitted killers who implicated the Grammy-winning rapper to avoid life sentences.

The musician, born Durk Banks, hung his head and started crying as the verdict was read. His wife, India Royale, wrapped her arm around his mother, the author LaShawnda Woodard, in the second row of the gallery. One of his lawyers, Christy O’Connor, linked arms with Banks to steady him as he broke down with emotion.

“This was a full sweep against the full force of the Justice Department and the FBI,” Banks’ lead lawyer Drew Findling told Rolling Stone before exiting the courthouse to a cheering crowd of fans. “This is overwhelming. It’s taking my breath away, and I’m happy for him, most of all.”

The jury of seven women and five men took three days to return their resounding victory for the “All My Life” rapper. His co-defendants Deandre Wilson and David Lindsey were convicted of conspiracy to commit stalking, stalking, and stalking resulting in death. They were acquitted of the murder-for-hire charges.

Banks will remain in custody pending a second trial on racketeering-related charges that were severed from the first case. The remaining counts, alleging murder in aid of racketeering and possession of a firearm in furtherance of that killing, are scheduled for trial on Oct. 5 in the same courthouse before the same judge, but with a new jury. Banks’ lawyers are expected to challenge his continued detention before then.

“We’re feeling great, outstanding. I was on the edge of my seat, overly nervous,” Banks’ father, Dontay Banks Sr., told Rolling Stone as he smiled broadly outside the courtroom. “I’m glad the truth came out. I’m glad 12 people who have nothing to do with anyone saw the truth — that he had nothing to do with this. So that was a great thing.”

Banks Sr., who attended each day of the trial, said his joy over the verdict was tempered by the loss of life at the center of the case. “We feel for the family who lost a son. I’ve lost a son, so I know what she’s going through. It’s very hard,” he said. “We do sympathize with her. That’s the thing we all want the world to know.”

Banks, 33, had been facing five federal counts at the trial in downtown Los Angeles, including conspiracy to commit stalking, stalking resulting in death, and murder for hire. Prosecutors claimed he put a price on rival rapper Quando Rondo’s head because he blamed the Georgia musician for the 2020 killing of his close friend and musical protégé, King Von. They claimed the alleged bounty set off a chain of events that ended with Quando Rondo’s cousin dead. Durk denied the allegations, and jurors found the government failed to prove its case.

In closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors said Banks “wanted revenge” for King Von’s death and made that desire known to members of his Only The Family hip-hop collective, or OTF, in text messages. They painted the multi-platinum rapper as a hardened Chicago gang leader who “had his shooters on speed dial” when he allegedly decided “it was time to kill” Quando Rondo while the rapper was “vulnerable” during a visit to Los Angeles.

Jurors saw video evidence showing three gunmen, one armed with a Glock allegedly modified to operate as a machine gun, opening fire on Quando Rondo’s Escalade at a gas station across from the Beverly Center shopping mall on Aug. 19, 2022. Quando Rondo, whose legal name is Tyquian Bowman, survived, but his 24-year-old cousin, Saviay’a Robinson, known as Lul Pab, was killed.

The government’s case relied heavily on three cooperating witnesses who reached plea deals, including two of the shooters. Kasey “OTF Jam” Hester and Keith Jones told jurors they opened fire on Bowman’s vehicle expecting to be paid by Banks. They pleaded guilty to charges including murder and murder for hire, the jurors heard. The third cooperator, Banks’ former personal assistant Kavon “OTF Vonnie” Grant, who described himself as a “broker [of] high-end stolen vehicles,” also pleaded guilty and was the one who obtained the guns and stolen Infiniti used in the attack.

Banks’ lawyers argued the three men lied on the stand to reduce their own sentences. They said Grant, not Banks, was closest to King Von of all the men and was so consumed by revenge that he became the true “mastermind” of the broad-daylight ambush.

In closing arguments, Findling called Grant a “fraudster” and “master of deception” who planned the shooting without Banks’ knowledge and later persuaded prosecutors that Banks was responsible.

“He has manipulated every single person,” Findling said, noting that Banks fired Grant in early 2023, several months after Robinson’s death. “Would you fire someone you assigned to lead a killing? That is preposterous.”

Hester testified that he was recruited for the shooting on Aug. 18, 2022, about six months after being released from prison for attempted murder. He said he was riding with his wife when Anthony “OTF Boonie Mo” Jones called and told him to head to the airport for an urgent trip to California. Hester claimed the call was on speakerphone and that he could hear Banks on another call in the background.

Hester also testified that earlier that year, while at an Atlanta studio with Banks and members of his entourage, Banks complained that rapper 6ix9ine was “trolling” him with taunts that he needed to step up and “slide for Von,” meaning avenge King Von’s death. Hester said Banks told the group that anyone who killed Quando Rondo would “be straight.”

In his portion of the defense closing, lawyer Brian Steel called Hester a “serial killer” convicted of three murders who could not be trusted. During cross-examination, Steel confronted Hester with jail calls in which he appeared to discuss telling prosecutors what they wanted to hear to avoid prison. “I’m going to do what I got to do. Whatever it takes to make sure I don’t do no time,” Hester told his wife in a May 5, 2023, recorded call.

Grant claimed on the witness stand that Banks set the plot in motion after learning Bowman would be in Los Angeles to buy marijuana. He said Banks directed him to obtain a stolen vehicle and told him the Chicago-based hitmen would fly to San Diego rather than Los Angeles to avoid detection. Grant acknowledged driving the rented BMW seen following Bowman alongside the stolen Infiniti. He said he accompanied the men to an In-N-Out minutes after the shooting, then returned to Banks’ rental home.

Banks’ lawyers called Grant’s account a fabrication. They said prosecutors presented no evidence Banks ever paid anyone. “This case is flooded. It is a tsunami of reasonable doubt,” Findling said. “[This is] a bounty case with no money.”

Jones testified that he was recruited on Aug. 18, 2022, during a FaceTime call with Banks’ co-defendants, Wilson and Lindsey. He said Wilson told him they “had a location” for Bowman and that “Durk got a million for us.” He also claimed Wilson was on FaceTime with Banks as the group drove from San Diego to Los Angeles. The jurors rejected that testimony.

The defense called Hester’s wife and the mother of King Von’s child to challenge the cooperators’ accounts. Shekema Springfield, a U.S. Army officer who had a son with King Von, testified that she and King Von lived with Grant after moving to Atlanta and that Grant helped manage King Von’s finances. After King Von was killed, she said, Grant told her “not to worry about it” and that he was “going to take care of it.”

Asked about Grant’s truthfulness, Springfield replied, “He’s a liar and a thief.”

Hester’s wife, Lashawntay Hester, testified that she contacted Banks’ defense after her husband took the stand and agreed to testify against his account. She said the phone call that allegedly sent him to California never happened. Prosecutors argued she was upset that Hester had agreed to cooperate with law enforcement.

Another major challenge to the evidence unfolded outside the jury’s presence, after prosecutors played a clip from a 2023 interview in which hip-hop podcaster DJ Akademiks asked Banks whether he was still “triggered by the ‘slide for Von’ comments.” Banks replied, “For some reason, I just don’t see those comments no more. For some odd reason. I don’t know, it might be the water.”

In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morse claimed it was “absolutely clear that he was admitting to his involvement in the murder of Saviay’a Robinson.” Morse delivered the line in the government’s final rebuttal, so the defense had no opportunity to respond.

After jurors began deliberating Wednesday, Banks’ lawyers filed an emergency motion asking the judge to reopen the evidence so jurors could see another portion of the roughly three-hour interview. In the segment the defense sought to admit, Banks said he didn’t take rapper 6ix9ine seriously. “I try not to get into it with people. I’m trying to turn all the hate to love,” he said.

To bolster their argument that prosecutors had misread the exchange, Banks’ lawyers cited a Tuesday night livestream in which Akademiks said the interview segment had been “scripted” for “dramatic effect” to promote Banks’ album. “Me and Smurk, we rehearsed this,” Akademiks claimed, using a nickname for Banks.

U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald denied the motion, ruling that prosecutors were free to argue their interpretation of the exchange. He said jurors could just as reasonably view Banks as an outsider commenting on the fallout from Robinson’s death, rather than as someone acknowledging a role in it — an interpretation the verdict suggests they ultimately accepted.

“I totally get why Mr. Akademiks is furious about this. If the same thing had happened to me, I would be furious, as well, but that is not the point,” Judge Fitzgerald said. “The jury will decide what the jury decides.”

Song lyrics and music videos loomed large over the trial, with jurors seeing Banks’ unreleased “Redman” video on screens around the courtroom. In the video, filmed in January 2021, Banks is seen mourning King Von and then chasing and shooting an actor prosecutors claimed was portraying Quando Rondo. Prosecutors said it was evidence of a revenge motive, while Steel countered it was creative speech by a “grief-stricken” poet.

“It’s not a get-back act of violence. It’s a get-back act of videography,” Findling said in his closing argument, comparing the video to a Quentin Tarantino film in which “ears are being cut off” and “people are being brutally murdered” as part of a widely accepted form of art. For Banks, he said, retaliation took the form of music. “The get-back is a diss track. It is something common in the music industry.”

The judge also allowed lyrics from several of Banks’ songs into the trial, including “Pissed Me Off,” “Who Want Smoke??,” and “Ahhh Ha,” in which he raps, “Don’t respond to shit with Von. I’m like ‘Fuck it, you trippin’, go get your gun. They droppin’ locations, I’m gettin’ it done. Fuck tweeting, we slidin’, the feds are comin’.”

Robinson’s mother, Andrea Robinson, attended the start of the trial. At a hearing last year, she told the court she was devastated by the death of her only child.

“I never in a million years thought I’d lose my baby,” she said through tears. “He had a family. He has a mother. He has three kids. They will never know their dad. … It hurts so bad that I can’t pick up the phone and call him.”

Two months before trial, prosecutors filed their third superseding indictment alleging murder in aid of racketeering activity and firearms possession in furtherance of murder in aid of racketeering. They allege Banks ran a criminal enterprise responsible not only for Robinson’s death, but for a 2022 killing in Chicago, and an alleged February 2019 attempted murder in Atlanta. Judge Fitzgerald said in a mid-July ruling that prosecutors “chose to withdraw evidence of the ‘Chicago incident'” from the Los Angeles trial earlier in the case and would have to live with that decision.

Scores of spectators routinely packed the federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles throughout the case. While Young Thug attended one of Banks’ earlier court hearings, MGK, also known as Machine Gun Kelly, and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, made appearances during the trial.

“This been my bro for a decade when he called and asked if id pull up and support im there no question. Free durk,” MGK posted on X.

My Chemical Romance

Gerard Way revealed at My Chemical Romance’s concert Saturday in San Antonio that the band plans on recording a new album, their first LP in over 16 years.

My Chemical Romance has spent the past year on tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of 2006’s The Black Parade. The group released one more LP — 2010’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys — before disbanding for a half-decade in the mid-2010s.

The group reunited in 2019 for a series of tours but only one new song, 2022’s “The Foundations of Decay.” However, at Saturday’s show, Way revealed to fans that MCR hopes to start work on their long-awaited next album.

“We should probably make more songs. [“The Foundations of Decay”] was really awesome when we kept doing it,” Way told fans at the Alamodome. “And then you know, stuff happens, life happens. But, just know that, we kind of always wanted to make another record, so we hope to. Because you guys, honestly, kept us alive for so long that you guys deserve another record.”

Saturday’s concert marked the official end of the North American leg of the Long Live the Black Parade Tour, though the band will remain on the road for a pair of festival appearances — Louisville’s Louder Than Life and Sacramento’s Aftershock — before My Chemical Romance play a five-night residency at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl that concludes on Halloween, October 31.

After that, MCR will embark on a monthlong tour of southeast Asia that ends in late-November, at which point the band hopefully can get back in the studio.

NANTERRE, FRANCE - SEPTEMBER 12: Celine Dion performs on the opening night of her residency at Paris La Defense Arena on September 12, 2026 in Nanterre, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)

Announced for 8 p.m. with no opening act, Céline Dion finally appeared at 8:48, after a wait that had only intensified the fever inside Plenitude Arena. By then, the chants had reduced one of the world’s most famous singers to the only name Paris seemed to need: “Céline! Céline! Céline!”

For days, the city had been speaking the same language. A nearby transit station had been temporarily renamed for her; businesses had joined in, sometimes enthusiastically enough to blur the line between celebration and marketing. Even the sushi restaurant across from the arena had a papier-mâché Céline holding its menu. Paris had not simply welcomed Dion back. It had appropriated Céline affectionately, commercially, and almost everywhere.

Then, with almost no fanfare, the enormous stone structure at the center of the stage slowly opened. A narrow light appeared. Dion appeared alone in black and remained silent, letting the wave of applause and affection from the arena wash over her. She barely moved, almost in contemplation. The ovation kept building, and eventually the tears came.

When she began the stripped-down opening lines of “On ne change pas” — “We Don’t Change” — her voice was already trembling with emotion. This title suddenly meant something more on this particular night. Jean-Jacques Goldman wrote the song. The album D’eux remains their most important collaboration. It came out in 1995, with Goldman as its writer and producer, and went on to become the best-selling French-language album of all time. “On ne change pas” came later, but opening with a Goldman song immediately brought Dion back to the French repertoire that has bound her to this audience for decades. The emotion soon overtook her. At one point, Dion had to stop singing altogether and let the audience carry the song for her. She had promised herself she wouldn’t cry, she told them, but those were tears of joy. Then came the words the arena had been waiting years to hear.

“I am standing here in this town I love,” Dion said. “It was a promise that I made to come back — and we made it.”

It was Dion’s first full concert since March 8, 2020, when her Courage World Tour stopped in Newark, New Jersey, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was bringing live music to a halt. For French audiences, the wait had been even longer: Dion had not performed a full concert in France since her Live 2017 tour, which ended its French run in Nice that July. Her performance of Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” from the Eiffel Tower during the 2024 Paris Olympics had marked a spectacular return to public performance, but sustaining a full concert — and now a Paris residency — while living with stiff-person syndrome was something else entirely. Dion described the road back as “rocky” and longer than expected, with stops along the way. She had held onto a ray of light, she said, because she believed in it. Now, “the sun is here in front of me.” That night, she said, she wanted to sing “for you, for me, and sing life.”

There was no disguising the effort behind the triumph. Dion sometimes seemed vulnerable, sometimes completely in control, and the audience could see her moving between the two.

Montreal-born creative director Willo Perron divided the show into four acts. Stone was everywhere: huge grey monoliths, brutalist arches and slate surfaces against a largely black-and-white stage. The structures rotated, parted and opened like theatrical scenery, gradually revealing a pianist, strings, musicians and, eventually, a gospel choir. Even the massive screens often extended that same architecture, multiplying arches and walls of stone until the physical stage and its projected landscape seemed to merge.

Between acts, films directed by French filmmaker Thibaut Grevet developed that visual language into something more narrative. In one of the most striking, Dion walked alone across a desert landscape toward an enormous stone structure, somewhere between the otherworldly scale of Dune and the immaculate elegance of a fashion film. For someone whose own body has imposed new limits on movement, the landscape carried an obvious resonance. She was walking through a world made almost entirely of stone. And then the stone began to move. Walls shifted, arches opened, and musicians emerged from structures that had seemed immovable only moments before.

A later film offered an almost opposite image. Dion appeared with a contemporary dancer and moved with him, the emphasis now on the body rather than the landscape, on contact, gesture and physical freedom. After years in which illness had imposed new limits on her movement, the image inevitably suggested a reclamation of the body. That idea then spilled onto the stage itself: later in the show, during a playful disco sequence, Dion danced.

This was not Vegas transplanted to Paris. The visual language owed as much to contemporary opera and Paris fashion culture as to the arena spectacular. Fashion runs through Perron’s work, from projects with Beyoncé and Rihanna to Chanel. It showed here. Black and grey couture, diamonds and sequins dominated Dion’s looks. Even the gospel choir entered with the precision of a runway procession. At times, the 35,000-seat arena almost disappeared; some scenes had the intimacy of opera. But intimacy was precisely its gamble.

And then there was the voice. It was not always predictable, nor did Dion behave as though it should be. At moments it wavered; elsewhere she seemed almost startled by the sustained notes and high reaches she could still command. Her intricate vocal runs could still make the human voice sound almost like a wind instrument, a display of formidable technique. Live performance has always contained risk. For an artist who has spent much of her life demanding almost impossible perfection from herself — and whose audience has learned to expect it — perhaps the more radical gesture was allowing that risk to remain visible. At one point, Dion forgot the words, laughed softly, apologized and simply started again.

“I’m going to tell you three words,” she later announced in French. “I am well.”

She had learned to live with this fragility, she explained. By living alongside it, she had learned to tame it and turn it into her “life force.”

Throughout the night, Dion moved between two parallel careers: the global superstar of “The Power of Love,” “My Heart Will Go On” and “All By Myself,” and the French-language collaborations with songwriters including Goldman, Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon that are woven into the cultural memory of the francophone world.

“My Heart Will Go On” arrived after “Hymn to the Sea,” as another section of the set opened and a giant chandelier descended overhead, evoking the grand salons of Titanic. Later, a playful sequence moved from Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” through “I’m Alive” and “That’s the Way It Is” into Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Dion danced. Across the seated floor, people rose and moved together like a wave.

Then “Un garçon pas comme les autres (Ziggy),” the Michel Berger-Luc Plamondon song from the landmark French-language rock opera Starmania, became one of the night’s great communal singalongs, a reminder that some of Dion’s biggest emotional touchstones in France are not necessarily the songs by which America knows her best.

The final act moved toward gospel and opera. A choir filled the stage before Dion stood alone on a stone promontory to sing “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally, an aria famously associated with Maria Callas, while snow fell through the arena.

Then came “All By Myself.” Dion reached for its formidable high note and landed it. For an instant, she looked almost astonished herself. She wasn’t only proving it to the audience. For a moment, she appeared to be proving it to herself.

After “Pour que tu m’aimes encore” and “S’il suffisait d’aimer”, bringing Goldman back into the story at the very end, Dion gave an almost operatic company bow, stepping aside so each section of the troupe could receive its applause before kneeling toward the audience on either side. Something about that final bow captured the evening. Dion has spent a career giving her audience everything she had while demanding an almost impossible level of perfection from herself, a standard the world eventually came to demand from her, too. In Paris, she seemed to be freeing herself from some of that weight. Not from discipline or ambition, both of which remain formidable, but from the idea that every effort must remain invisible and every performance immaculate.

There was something liberating in watching her allow the tears, laugh at a forgotten lyric, test the limits of her voice, move her body again and occasionally appear surprised by what it could still do. The stage has always seemed central to Dion’s life; now, returning to it also seemed like a way of reclaiming that life on different terms.

Around the stands, conversations were already turning to what would happen after the show. A group of young women who had spent night after night waiting outside the Royal Monceau hotel were debating whether to head straight back there. Since arriving in Paris, Dion has repeatedly come down late at night to spend time with fans waiting outside, talking with them, dancing with them, sometimes simply staying for a while. When she has needed to preserve her health and her voice, she has asked them to leave records with security for her to sign instead.

Later in the night, outside, some of them were already heading back to wait for her again.

Céline Dion’s Paris residency includes 26 performances at Plenitude Arena: 16 shows from Sept. 12 through Oct. 17, 2026, followed by 10 additional dates from May 8 through May 29, 2027, added in response to exceptional demand.

SETLIST — Plenitude Arena, Paris — Sept. 12, 2026Act I• “On ne change pas”• “Destin”• “Because You Loved Me”• “Encore un soir”• “Les derniers seront les premiers”• “Tout l’or des hommes”• “The Power of Love”

Act II• “Hymn to the Sea”• “My Heart Will Go On”• “Beauty and the Beast”• “The Chase”• “J’irai où tu iras”• “Ne bouge pas”• “Dans un autre monde”• “I Feel Love / I’m Alive / That’s the Way It Is / Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”

Act III• “Dansons”• “Un garçon pas comme les autres (Ziggy)”• “Courage”

Act IV• “Love Can Move Mountains”• “The Prayer”• “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”• “Je chanterai”• “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana”Encore• “All By Myself”• “Pour que tu m’aimes encore”• “S’il suffisait d’aimer”• “Des milliers de baisers” (snippet)

Alma Rota is publisher and chief digital editor at Rolling Stone France.