Pink on writing for Celine Dion: 'She is like a magic light bulb'

Celine Dion is getting ready to release a French-language album later this year, but she’s already planning her next record after that.

Between wrapping her Summer Tour 2016 in August and returning to her Las Vegas residency in September, Dion tells EW she’ll start looking at songs to include on her next English-language LP. That album will follow this year’s upcoming Encore un soir and is expected to arrive some time in 2017.

Dion is keeping mum about her collaborators for now, but there is one she’s willing to dish about: “Pink wrote me a song that I’m freaking out about,” she says in the new issue of EW, on stands now. “You cannot be more excited than me, I’ll tell you. I am thrilled not only because I am a fan, but because I know her personally and have met her a few times.”

The admiration is mutual: “Celine possesses one of the most incredible voices that I have ever heard,” Pink exclusively told EW in a statement. “She is like a magic light bulb, walking around emanating light into the world. When I wrote this song, there was such a simple need to it. I know everyone wants to hear Celine wail, I wanted to hear Celine’s soul. She is just simply amazing, and getting to write a song for her is one of the biggest honors of my life.”

Dion says Pink approached her about the song while she was dealing with the losses of her husband and long-time manager, René Angélil, and her older brother Daniel, who both died within a few days of each other in January. “She’s a genuine person, and [it was] so generous of her to take the time to write a song for me during the most difficult time of mine,” Dion says. “People have a tendency to send me really sad songs, and we do want to sing the touching songs, but life is beautiful, and I really want to believe that René has a life after his life, that he doesn’t suffer anymore.”

Dion’s last English-language album was 2013’s Loved Me Back to Life, which featured collaborations with the likes of Ne-Yo and Sia. She’s hoping to recruit a similar roster of artists for her next project. “I can’t really talk about the other writers yet because nothing has been confirmed, but trust me, I hope that Sia and Ne-Yo and Bruno Mars and all the people that we love, oh my gosh, I hope they write for me,” she says.