Whoever thought of getting Céline Dion to record a dramatic power ballad for the Deadpool 2 soundtrack should absolutely get a raise.
It’s a perfectly on-brand move – somewhere in between “ironically” enjoying earnest cultural kitsch and shrugging because f**k the haters, a great song is a great song, whether it’s Céline, Neil Sedaka or DMX.
And let’s be clear: ‘Ashes’ is great. It’s simple, builds beautifully with the help of those strings and heroically huge drums, and there’s a heartbroken bleakness, with a core of hope, in the refrain of “let beauty come out of ashes” that feels sincerely relevant for the world in 2018.
It’s instantly up there with the best of the slow-burning power ballads that played over the credits of all the biggest 1990s movies.
And just think about how many of these were huge radio hits: Trisha Yearwood’s ‘How Do I Live’ from Con Air (forever superior to the LeAnn Rimes version, sorry)! ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’! ‘Everything I Do (I Do It For You)’! Remember how ‘Iris’ by The Goo Goo Dolls was actually from City Of Angels? Remember how The Goo Goo Dolls were a thing?
TFW u bleed just 2 know ur alive
And Dion was, of course, responsible for two of the all-time great super-emotional movie-themes: ‘Because You Loved Me’, from the more-of-a-downer-than-you-remember romance Up Close & Personal, and of course, ‘My Heart Will Go On’.
The clip for ‘Ashes’ is actually a loving and straight-faced tribute to the clips for those songs, which would always confuse you when you were watching it weeks before the movie came out, and often actually spoil major plot points (looking at you, Aerosmith and Armageddon).
There are no such spoilers here – just shots of Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin looking at each other lovingly and making out, epic slow-mo snippets of Julian Dennison (AKA Ricky Baker) gazing at a futuristic aircraft as it lands and creates the mandatory wind-machine effect, and a few other out-of-context clips.
Of course, there’s also Céline –who just turned 50 and looks f**king amazing – singing the bejesus out of this epic song in an empty theatre, while a very sassy Deadpool dances out his feelings around her. (It’s almost certainly not Ryan Reynolds himself, judging by the expert spotting and splits he does in stilettos, but he’s very committed to this franchise, so who knows?)
At the end of the clip, Deadpool applauds from the middle of the empty auditorium, and tells her to go from the top. “That was too good. This is Deadpool 2, not Titanic. You’re at like an 11 – we need you to be at like a 5, five and a half tops. Phone it in.”
(Céline’s response: “This [pointing to herself] only goes to 11. Beat it, Spider-Man.”)
But the thing is: this is exactly the movie that should have a towering, epic Céline Dion power ballad all to itself. The big blockbusters aren’t buying that Diane Warren brand of monumental, blandly overwrought emotional pop any more – they’re getting Kendrick Lamar to curate whole albums of bangers, making “mixtapes” that exist in-universe, or are finding success with more upbeat pop singles like ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’ and ‘This Is Me’.
And that’s a shame, because I know you know every word to ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’, and it kills at karaoke, and singing along to a balls-out ballad in the car is one of life’s great pleasures.
You should enjoy a song like ‘Ashes’ without ironic distance or patronising labels like “guilty pleasure”. If Deadpool can respect the hell out of Céline Dion’s artistry, so can you.
