She’s topped the charts around the world, has a legion of fans and has won countless awards for hits like Think Twice and My Heart Will Go On.
But one New Zealand town says it has had enough of Celine Dion, after car drivers joined a craze of blasting out her ballads at 2am. Residents of Porirua have launched a petition to bring an end to the noise.
But participants of the so-called siren battles say they are a way to express themselves. The battles involve groups of people gathering in an area with their cars, blasting music from sirens more typically used for emergency warnings. The idea is to play music from the sirens the loudest – and the clearest.
French-Canadian diva Dion has become the artist of choice not only because of her popular emotional ballads, but because much of her music – including Oscar-winning My Heart Will Go On, from 1997 film Titanic – has high treble, NZ website The SpinOff reports.
“Celine Dion is popular because it’s such a clear song – so we try to use music that has high treble, is clear and not much bass,” Paul Lesoa, one of founders of a group that runs siren battles in Auckland, told the site.
The cars can have anywhere between seven to 10 sirens, with competitions usually held throughout the night. They take weeks to prepare for, as participants source sirens online and solder speakers and amplifiers to frames that sit on cars. Mr Lesoa told The SpinOff he felt the stigma around the battles was unfair.
“We just love music, we love dancing, and doing this is better than night clubbing or drinking in a bar in the city, where there’s fights etc,” he said.
He said he had applied to Auckland Council for a permit but was yet to hear back.
“Basically everyone has a hobby and while our hobby can be quite disturbing and we understand how disturbing it can be, we just want our own proper, safe space away from people to do it.”
Wes Gaarkeuken – the author of a petition hoping to stop the siren battles in Porirua, on the North Island – said taxpayers are “tired of the inaction and dismissive attitude shown by the council and the mayor concerning this issue”.
The petition has amassed hundreds of signatures and calls on the Porirua City Council to stop people blasting the music all night. One man, Stephen Lewis, wrote next to his signature that “sleep is a basic human right”.
Another woman, Diana Paris, conceded that while she enjoyed listening to Dion “in the comfort of my lounge and at my volume, I do not enjoy hearing fragments of it stopping and starting at any time between 7pm and 2am”.
Porirua City Council had previously reached an agreement with those participating in the siren battles, which involved groups going to industrial areas and finishing by 10pm. But the battles have returned to the town.
Mayor Anne Barker told Radio New Zealand she was “sick to death” of the battles and wanted participants to return to areas where not everyone would have to listen to them.
“We haven’t got anywhere in our city where there’s not houses that would hear anything.”
RNZ recently revealed that police had received up to 40 reports of incidents between early February and early October this year.
Earlier this year, Dion cancelled all the shows she had scheduled for 2023 and 2024, telling fans she was not strong enough to tour after being diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder.
