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Celine Dion ready with first single since husband’s death

NEW YORK: Canadian pop superstar Celine Dion has announced her first new song since the death of her husband and manager Rene Angelil as she mourns him through music.

The French-language song Encore Un Soir, which means One More Night, will come out on May 24 as the first track of her next album, Dion said on her website. The song pays homage to her late husband.

The bilingual star, one of the most successful artists of all time with more than 220 million albums sold, is also due to perform on Sunday at the Billboard Music Awards in her adopted home of Las Vegas.

Angelil died in January at age 73 following a long struggle with throat cancer. The music producer had been so struck hearing Dion’s voice when she was 12 that he took her under his wing and married her in 1994 when she was 26.

Dion returned to her concert residency in Las Vegas six weeks after his death in keeping with his wishes.

In an interview broadcast Wednesday with ABC’s Good Morning America, Dion said that she thought of her late husband when singing The Show Must Go On. She said that in their last conversation, she told him not to be concerned about her or their three children together. “I started to talk to him and I said, you know what, I want you to just go in peace,” she said. “I want you to not worry.”

Dion’s brother Daniel died of the same type of cancer two days later. “I said to myself, ‘For his birthday, my husband came and got my brother because my brother was too weak to fly on his own,’” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2016.

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