Cultural conservatives can be forgiven their overenthusiasm for Celine Dion. Dignified, classy, and talented, she embodies public virtues long absent from mainstream pop. Married, maternal, and monogamous, she embodies private virtues too. And her lyrics are as free of expletives as her flesh is of tattoos and piercings. What more could Republicans want in a diva? In a word, art-performances that meaningfully integrate form and content instead of perfecting the former at the expense of the latter. Except for the standards "Nature Boy" and "At Last," the material on A New Day Has Come (Epic), Ms. Dion's first new album since the birth of her child, consists of clichés inflated to proportions that even by the standards of Epic Records are pretty epic. References abound to prayer, faith, miracles, heaven, and being "touched by an angel," but the generically "inspirational" contexts in which they occur rob them of their specificity and, hence, their power.