A New Day Has Come [Special Edition]

Disc 1
1	I'm Alive 3:30
2	Right in Front of You 4:13
3	Have You Ever Been in Love 4:08
4	Rain, Tax (It's Inevitable) 3:25
5	A New Day Has Come Radio Remix 4:19
6	Ten Days 3:37
7	Goodbye's (The Saddest Word) 5:19
8	Prayer 5:34
9	I Surrender 4:48
10	At Last 4:17
11	Sorry for Love 4:10
12	Aun Existe Amor 3:52
13	The Greatest Reward 4:04
14	When the Wrong One Loves You Right 3:49
15	A New Day Has Come 5:42
16	Nature Boy 3:45
Disc 2
1	All Because of You DVD
2	Coulda Woulda Shoulda DVD
3	I'm Alive International Video Version / DVD
4	Las Vegas Show Preview DVD

Barnes & Noble

A New Day Has Come marks Celine Dion's return to recording after a lengthy maternity leave, and charts the pop diva's growth as an artist and as a woman. Although Dion's songs have always been about the power of love (she wasn't mincing words when she titled her 1997 blockbuster Let's Talk About Love), maternal rather than romantic sentiment fuels her fire this time out. As she gushes on the uplifting title song (penned by '80s one-hit-wonder Aldo Nova), "Where there was weakness I've found my strength/All in the eyes of a boy." And Dion's lovefest with motherhood doesn't end there. On the heartfelt, country-tinged "Goodbye's (The Saddest Word)," the chanteuse muses, "There is no other love like a mother's love for her child," and on the anthemic, gospel choir-accented ballad "Prayer" -- which recalls Faith Hill's equally poignant "There Will Come a Day" -- she describes children as "the light" and "truth of spirit in flight." Along with newfound maternal instincts, the new songs reveal a more spiritual and edgier Dion. The songbird with glass-shattering chops sounds a bit like Sheryl Crow on the bluesy, honky-tonk rocker "Ten Days," but the lyrics still reach skyward: "Ten days I've seen the rain/Comin' down on a sunny day/But all I've got to do is pray and pray." Dion, however, hasn't stopped singing about romance altogether, and the soaring ballad "Have You Ever Been in Love," as well as her solid renditions of Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" and Etta James's "At Last" should satisfy her lovelorn fans. It's obvious that for Celine Dion, A New Day Has Come. Tracy E. Hopkins

All Music Guide

Like politicians, pop superstars staging a comeback need to be on message, devising a story line and sticking to it from conception to completion. Celine Dion's message is a simple one -- one that would be evident to anybody paying the slightest bit of attention. After a ballyhooed semi-retirement following 1999's semi-collection All the Way -- a retirement where she gave birth and tended to her manager/husband's recovery from cancer -- it was time to begin a new chapter in her life, something made explicit in the title of the comeback, A New Day Has Come. Of course, the new day is the new chapter of Celine's life -- she's still a caring, loving wife and mother, but she's ready to return to music with a vigor, including a three-year stint as the main attraction at Caesars in Las Vegas. Life -- or at least opportunists -- has a way of interfering with even the best-laid plans, and the week A New Day Has Come hit the stores, it was revealed that Dion's husband was the center of a dubious civil lawsuit claiming he raped a woman in Las Vegas in the late '90s, but the delivery of the message was so strong, so well-conceived, that this barely made a dent in the media blitz (no mention of it in a USA Today cover story the day of release, for instance). No matter your musical taste, you have to admire that feat, and to a certain extent you have to admire the construction of this album, as well, since it's about as perfect as it could be. That doesn't mean it's a perfect album, but it does exactly what it should do -- it doesn't deviate from Dion's mainstream audience, yet it dips its toe into modern music, particularly dance, while subtly addressing her status as a working mom (which somehow translates as she's a survivor), while keeping hip ("Nature Boy" at the end was surely included because of its prominence in Baz Luhrmann's pandering swill, Moulin Rouge). It's savvily sequenced, too, with the radio remix of the title track arriving before the original version! It's so carefully assembled that even stumbles like the bizarre "Rain, Tax (It's Inevitable)" wash away without much effort, which is a testament to how well-made this record is. There's really nothing to fault it on, actually -- it's more ambitious than it needs to be, covers more stylistic territory than any other Dion record, while never abandoning the middle-of-the-road; it's a balancing act that nobody since Barbra Streisand has been able to pull off. If there's any problem with the record, it's that the songs just aren't that particularly memorable, even after several spins. The mood shifts effortlessly, it never seems to stay in one place, but it never catches hold, either. Surely, some of these songs will define themselves through repeated plays on the radio, but oddly the lack of memorable songs doesn't hurt A New Day Has Come much at all, since the fact that it succeeds without real songs makes it all the more impressive. That's what staying on message is all about -- delivering the surface and the overall theme without delivering in the details -- and, in 2002, Celine Dion does that better than any of her peers. [A Sony bonus DVD features four videos, including a preview of Dion's Las Vegas show.] Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Entertainment Weekly

"Having taken time off to give birth to her first child, Dion is back to celebrate the joys of motherhood, and you won't catch me knocking that. Indeed, grappling with something other than her own emotions and her perennial theme, recovering from heartbreak...has been good for her music." Ken Tucker