Come On Over

Seven notes of hot, crackling guitar. Let’s go, girls. Three words, beamed forth
like a cosmic directive, spoken with the Mona Lisa’s suggestive sense of mischief.
Mother isn’t calling, but her fun younger sister sure is. Though it was the eighth
single from Shania Twain’s Come On Over, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” is the first
volley and thesis statement of the singer-songwriter’s third album. Celebrating
girls’ nights out and their grooming rituals, the song embodied the liberated
lady’s lifestyle with “the prerogative to have a little fun.” In the video, an
inversion of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” Twain gradually ditches layers of
her outfit amid a troop of synchrony-challenged beefcakes. The song revamped the
spirit of Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 hit for the blossoming bosslady feminism of the late
1990s—girls just want to have fun, but women go out and get it for themselves.
Released in November of 1997, Come On Over arrived on the high tide of the pre-
Napster Clinton economy, before the music industry could sense that the bottom was
about to fall out. Everything about Come On Over radiated enthusiasm, from the
invitation of its title to the six exclamation points sprinkled across its
tracklist. With its hard-charging hooks, sassy kiss-offs, and radiant sparkle, it
became one of the defining titles for the “I don’t like country, but…” crowd. With
Robert “Mutt” Lange in her corner as producer, co-writer, and husband, Twain set a
new standard for pop-country crossovers. She started a new chapter of the decades-
old grousing over who gets to be country and make country music, kicking open
opportunities for a new generation. For a record that had dramatic consequences for
Nashville, Come On Over had very little to do with the city itself. Twain was an
early-thirties singer-songwriter who’d grown up poor in Canada; Lange was a
hermetic South African-born producer whose pre-Shania credits were mostly big-
ticket rock records: the Cars’ Heartbeat City, Def Leppard’s Hysteria and
Adrenalize, plus the AC/DC hat trick of Highway to Hell, Back in Black, and For
Those About to Rock We Salute You. By some measures, Twain developed her success
from the hardscrabble hunger of her working-class upbringing, but by others, she
was a genre-wrecking false prophet who could nonetheless pull off a great smoky
eye. She had grown up in rural Ontario, developing her musical interest as a child
and playing gigs around town—including last-call appearances at bars—at her
parents’ behest. As a 21-year-old, she began to look after her four siblings
following their parents’ death in a car crash, supporting the family by singing in
a variety revue at a resort. Her aspirations were never limited to country music,
as she told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997: “I wrote every kind of music...I wanted
to sing rock’n’roll at 12 years old.” Still, she settled on a relative country
comfort zone for her first album, 1993’s Shania Twain. Lange brought his arena-
tuned ear to 1995’s The Woman in Me, which eventually sold 20 million copies after
a disappointing showing from Twain’s debut. The album’s boisterous singles toyed
with new country combinations, establishing Twain as a pop-forward up-and-comer:
the slick barroom swing of “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under,” the accelerating
stomp of “Any Man of Mine,” the rock edge of “(If You’re Not in It for Love) I’m
Outta Here!” She built steam in resisting touring for the record, and by 1997, she
had Springsteen star-maker Jon Landau as another asset in her corner. While
drenched in crimson-velvet glamor, Come On Over feels like a complete manifestation
of a small-town girl’s ambitions, where you’ve got a hold on yourself and a hot man
available for treats and foot rubs, and you’re also somehow able to be incredibly
sexy in bold red lipstick. It’s no small wonder that Come On Over sold 36 million
copies by the end of the millennium, still holding the distinction of being the
12th best-selling record ever in the United States. At 16 tracks, Come On Over is
hardly lean. But the hits are so potent that the duds mostly fail to register.
Lange’s fastidious attention to production makes Come On Over a power-couple
masterwork: Beneath its high-gloss finish sits an engine of uncompromising bridges
and choruses. It’s difficult to hit pause at any point in the album’s first four
songs, and after a few minutes of breathing room, Twain lunges into the unstoppable
three-song run of “You’re Still the One,” “Honey, I’m Home,” and “That Don’t
Impress Me Much.” That Twain is but a so-so singer becomes immaterial as she coasts
through her agreeable numbers—which are, as it turns out, very easy for a regular
person to sing along to. Come On Over is also assertive. It channels all the gusto
of someone living their dreams in real time, matching a blockbuster sense of
confidence with arena-size sounds and attendant energy. When Twain says “Let’s go
girls,” the answer is unquestionably, “Yes ma’am.” Her band of bruisers hurtle
along, with “I’m Holdin’ on to Love (To Save My Life)” picking up at a gallop from
“Man!”’s opening salvo. Its underlying early-rock rhythm jumpstarts a sense of
anticipation as Twain sings about the trials and triumph of true love. From there,
Twain and Lange make good on their then-indelible bond by transforming the phrase
“gol’ darn gone and done it” into an implausibly great earworm on “Love Gets Me
Every Time.” The record’s title track is loaded with pomp and hospitality, slowing
to a parade’s pace as Twain encourages relaxation and cutting loose. Aligning
Twain’s French-Canadian heritage with the day’s brief zydeco fascination, an
accordion gives the Acadian-flavored track a curious edge. Declining an invitation
so obviously ready to please, so unburdened of pretense—well, it would just be
rude. Twain put her foot all the way down with “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” a
killer cruiser that gleamed like a chrome bumper as it rode the Top 40 for 22
weeks. It arrives later in the record as a sharp dismissal of gasbags who can’t
keep up with her needs. Cars, looks, attitude: None of it compares to a man who
shows up where it counts. The song’s quicksilver guitar lead catches with the same
immediacy as “Man!”’s primary declaration, the spicy edge of Twain’s rebukes cooled
by the gliding guitar and smooth backing harmonies of the chorus. Twain applies her
all-in approach to every second of Come On Over. At their most capital-B Basic, the
songs at least respect the tradition by going full-tilt gushing romantic. “From
This Moment On” arrives as the first of Come On Over’s most saccharine ballads,
which feel like appeals to recently surrendered bachelorettes seeking a perfect
first-dance number for the reception. A duet with young Oklahoma crooner Bryan
White, it is a breathy vow with a Disney-level cinematic sweep. “You’re Still the
One” follows with a gauzy reaffirmation of the sentiment a few minutes later.
Though they offer calm between gales, they keep the record’s passionate throughline
running without sacrificing too much ground to the treacle. Fiddles are the key
element in transmitting Come On Over’s country core, one of the most hotly
contested qualifiers of the record’s gatekeeping detractors. The players are all
bona fide country pros: Larry Franklin (Asleep at the Wheel, Randy Travis), Rob
Hajacos (George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, Garth Brooks), Aubrey Haynie (Trisha
Yearwood, Clint Black), and the bluegrass-inclined titan Stuart Duncan. But in the
“Don’t Be Stupid” video, lines of hard-heeled steppers join Twain and a cadre of
plainly dressed fiddlers on screen, shoving the song into Celtic associations (and
hooking it to another intense late-’90s cultural obsession: Riverdance). Whether
swinging forward in a surge or skirting around a jock-rock stomp, the fiddles are
Come On Over’s Rosetta Stone, playing all sides into an appealing middle. With the
smeared edges of their production, Twain and Lange master the illusion of genre, as
if they fashioned Come On Over into a plastic lenticular print. Tipped toward the
honky-tonk hop of “Honey, I’m Home” or the unabashed twang of “Love Gets Me Every
Time,” Come On Over can boot-scootin’ boogie with the best; the glimmering facets
of “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and “You’re Still the One” bear the blinding
shimmer of full-strength pop. Twain could be anything to anybody, a principle that
bolted past genre as “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” spawned thousands of drag homages.
Twain drew criticism in the press for perceived shallowness. Garth Brooks’ shadow
loomed in almost every critique, having filled arenas by making a big deal about
his status as an affable everyman who also appreciated the occasional spectacle of
pyrotechnics. But where Brooks made an almost frightening display of his affection
for over-the-top production, Twain was more relaxed, leveraging Lange’s super-
producer abilities into melodies and hooks that just won’t quit.  Her lyrics, while
upbeat and assured, largely stayed away from any controversy. It’s clear from
Twain’s interviews around her work that she never claimed to be a brilliant genius
or the poet of a generation. She’s the first to insist that her songs are meant to
be fun, and it is OK to enjoy them on those terms alone. Twain and Lange were
funneling all of their energy into making a towering monument to their ability to
produce a direct and powerful kind of neurological pleasure. The inexplicable
appeal is by painstaking design. Despite dazzlers like Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire,
and anybody else who’s ever worn a Nudie Cohn suit, the country music industry has
long sagged under a masculinity-fueled obsession with a particular sense of
authenticity. In Christopher Cain’s 1992 drama Pure Country, celebrated Texas
gentleman George Strait stars as an ascendant (and distressingly ponytailed)
country singer named Dusty Chandler. Corrupted
by the demands and excesses of his rising fame, Dusty skips his big gigs in favor
of a temporary break on a stranger’s ranch. One overall message of Pure Country,
favored by a subset of fans and artists across decades, is that real country music
exists apart from pageantry. But the country music industry that allowed these
artists to achieve icon status, regardless of their angle, was established as a way
to market “hillbilly” music to a growing white middle class. It’s disingenuous to
insist on some sort of undefined ideological genre purity from Twain (or Brooks,
for that matter), who was pursuing one of the values foundational to country music
from its first shellacked 78s: selling stuff to white people. George Strait may not
have allowed himself to be hoisted by his britches over arenas full of his adoring
fans, as Garth Brooks did, but he still has his own line of Wrangler apparel. Hank
probably hadn’t done it that way, either. Twain sang about how women’s perceived
trifles are in fact serious business. That she draped them in contemporary charisma
and adapted them to the media of the day makes them no less meaningful. Come On
Over’s many visual counterparts—arriving in Pop-Up Video’s peak era—shaped the
public perception of country music while leaving an imprint on future stars still
in their tender years. Twelve songs from the record were made singles, and while
not all of them got videos, the campaign’s high femme aesthetics underscored
Twain’s sizzle. The airplay across VH1, MTV, and CMT cemented her in hearts and
minds with soft-focus semi-psychedelia, a tilted tophat, a pseudo-casual behind-
the-scenes shoot, blue beachy dreams, and even a questionably en vogue bindi. Her
head-to-toe cheetah look in “That Don’t Impress Me Much” sealed her as an icon of
the decade (not to mention the lipstick, the matching luggage, the bangs). As she
waits out a ride in the desert, she’s a damsel less in distress than disgust at her
lack of acceptable suitors. Still, ascribing Come On Over as some sort of major
feminist manifesto is an overstatement—for all of its finessed charms, it is the
result of major-label music-industry machinery humming along at full operating
capacity. Indeed, Come On Over curdles as it drops into its sloughable back
quarter. It begins with “Black Eyes, Blue Tears,” which presents escaping domestic
violence as a matter of self-worth and features Twain delivering a wispy, “Find
your self-esteem and be forever free to dream.” The track worsens with the footnote
that it was inspired by the O.J. Simpson trial. As the Chicks were revving toward
righteous murder plots and mattress dancin’, Shania’s politics were more muted and,
at times, contradictory. “I think we’re kind of spoiled in a lot of ways, with the
advantages we have. Feminists may not feel that way, but I do. It’s pretty darn fun
to be a woman,” she once said. And, true, “If You Want to Touch Her, Ask!” is too
clumsy to earn much credit as a victory for bodily autonomy, but Twain wrote it as
a sincere response to her own experience with handsy men. Within the major keys and
kicky romps, she still conveyed direct realities about life as a woman in the
middle of the road. “Honey, I’m Home” is a particularly forceful number, cribbing
the booming authority and jagged guitar of “Any Man of Mine” for one of Come On
Over’s more rollicking country-rock entries. While Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”
addressed workplace woes with chipper sweetness, Twain was content to declare that
work sucks, actually, and so does all of the other bullshit that comes with it.
“Honey, I’m home and I’ve had a hard day,” she crows, detailing her grievances and
escalating into a loud haze of heys. It’s one for when “Take This Job and Shove It”
and “Oney” are a little too heavy-handed, scorching with the sincere frustration of
everyday existence. Between the lines of its super-charged numbers, Come On Over
inadvertently outlines the ways that heterosexuality, like capitalism, is a scam.
Get past the various creeps, no-counts, and ain’t-shits that Twain warns you about,
and you still might end up with a guy who’s suspicious of your phone calls or gets
weird about your mail (“Don’t Be Stupid”). And then, some years later, he still
might cheat and leave you for your best friend anyway, which is what precipitated
Twain’s divorce from Lange that was finalized in 2010. But all that is what turns
“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” into an antidote against everything. Like the saucier
niece of Helen Reddy’s unwitting second-wave anthem “I Am Woman,” Twain’s stunner
strikes at a universal ache for self-determination and emancipation from a society
that still says you can’t. “I want to be free to feel the way I feel,” she sings.
Twain had taken her potshots at feminist politics, but that single line is the gist
of a lot of it. She drops three sharp, yelped exhalations before belting the
titular battle cry. It’s impossible to recreate quietly. One thing about feeling
like a woman is that, in addition to all of the nail polish and good gossip and
such, it involves a lot of feeling like the whole world is screaming at you all of
the time. The constant message is one of being too much and not enough, a criticism
repeatedly lobbed at Twain and Come On Over. There’s no right formula, and the
goalposts never stay put, if they’re even acknowledged at all. It’s exhausting. I
want to be free to feel the way I feel. Screaming right back—it feels pretty good,
when you can swing it. Though Twain maintained her status as a country favorite,
she continued to push further into pop aspirations. Come On Over got a remixed
“International” edition with pulsing club beats and other flourishes, further
juicing her popularity in Europe. Perhaps overestimating his capacity for mystique,
Brooks expanded his efforts to keep up with pop-music maneuvers through his Chris
Gaines alter ego in 1999. Though Brooks had his only Top 40 hit with Gaines’ “Lost
in You,” Twain played better to her charming strengths with more evenly applied
Lange-loaded hits. Her next record, 2002’s Up!, arrived in three different color-
coded editions: one pop-inclined (red), one country (green), and an “international”
reprisal, a blue iteration remixed by the English-Indian duo Simon and Diamond
Duggal. Sometime in the early or mid-2000s, Twain contracted Lyme disease, which
sidelined her singing career. She retreated without explanation after wrapping the
Up! tour in the summer of 2004, and eight years passed before her grand return, a
two-year residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas beginning in late 2012. As Shania
excused herself from public life, a teenage Taylor Swift began her ascent as a
wholesome young successor, releasing her self-titled debut thirteen years after
Twain’s. Though Swift pursued Twain’s pop-forward model most aggressively, the
pervasive influence of Come On Over stretched well into the 2000s and far beyond
any fussed-over boundaries of pop and country music. Harry Styles, Haim, Miley
Cyrus, and Sheer Mag have all kissed the ring with covers. Twain’s celebrity—and
the girl-power awe it inspired—was a series-long joke on Broad City that culminated
in her appearing in a 2017 episode. Halsey borrowed the cheetah look for “You
should be sad,” and Post Malone was belting along with her 2019 American Music
Awards performance. Despite Twain’s accomplishments, the country music industry
still struggles to recognize women’s talent in the moment on their terms, or cede
any power to those who might. Women have continued to face what seems like endless
sandbagging and howling egotistical storms, to say nothing of how Black women like
Mickey Guyton have effectively been shut out of the industry. Some radio
programmers have insisted that women artists just don’t have the same appeal to
audiences as men do; Twain’s enduring adoration has long been authoritative
evidence to the contrary. It was an excuse handed ad nauseum to Kacey Musgraves, a
direct heir of Twain’s sparkling empire who nonetheless followed her arrow toward
the commercial and critical success of 2018’s Golden Hour. Shania Twain reached the
rare stratosphere of country-music fame by trusting the unifying appeal of pop
music, by pointing at underseen, under-engaged women and saying “Yes, you, too.”
“Be a winner, be a star,” she declares on the title track. It’s a vague, ridiculous
proposal, but she makes it sound fun and feasible enough to try. Get the Sunday
Review in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for the Sunday Review newsletter here.

Strictly Come Dancing 2021: Shania Twain congratulates Aljaz Skorjanec and Sara
Davies on ‘beautiful’ routine in surprise video message

Sorry, this video isn't available any more. Strictly Come Dancing 2021’s Sara
Davies was left in awe after being delivered a message of support from the one and
only Shania Twain, after performing a Rumba to her song last weekend. Sara and
partner Aljaz Skorjanec have become a couple to watch this series and their dancing
has given everyone something to smile about. Last Saturday, the duo continued to
warm hearts after they performed the notoriously difficult Rumba to Shania’s track
You’re Still the One, netting them a score of 25. Things got even better for the
pair during an appearing on It Takes Two, when host Rylan Clark-Neal revealed he
had a surprise for them – a little message from the icon herself. In the video
message played on the show, Shania said: ‘Sara and Aljaz great job dancing to
You’re Still The One – it was beautiful. ‘Good luck on the rest of the series and
go kick some butt.’ The pair were absolutely thrilled with the surprise (Picture:
BBC) They were thrilled, with Aljaz saying: ‘That’s amazing, come on… brilliant.’
Sara added that she had an inkling the show might have contacted the hit singer,
telling Rylan: ‘You’ve made my night!’ Moving swiftly on after the excitement, the
host declared: ‘Shania’s now dead to us, because it’s a new week… we will send you
a copy.’ Sara and Aljaz performed a beautiful Rumba last weekend (Picture: PA)
Rylan went on to ask the pair about their upcoming Couple’s Choice routine, which
is Aljaz’s first-ever on the show, to Queen of the Night by Whitney Houston.
Reflecting on the week so far, Sara said: ‘I’ve really connected this week because
it’s been about channelling that inner power, that inner strength.’ ‘You’re going
to watch it and be like, that is not the Sara we know! My husband is coming down to
watch and the kids came to watch the dance on Thursday.’ Aljaz weighed in: ‘The
most solid three runs we got on the floor up until now was today. I was like, yes!
Let’s do it again. So we’re doing it again tomorrow.’ More: Strictly Come Dancing
Sara also teased the ‘chainography’ of the routine, telling fans: ‘You’re going to
have to watch to know what that is. ‘Thankfully, the kids didn’t really understand
what was going on there but thought it was really great, moving around wrapping
Aljaz in chains!’ Strictly Come Dancing airs tonight at 7.10pm on BBC One.   Got a
story? If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the
Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020
3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you. MORE :
Strictly Come Dancing 2021: Rose Ayling-Ellis believes ‘UK is behind America’ in
offering Deaf roles as she praises Eternals superhero Makkari MORE : Strictly 2021:
Will Judi Love return after Covid battle? Aljaz Skorjanec and Sara Davies have
‘fingers crossed’

Shania Twain Gets Candid About Being Called 'America's Best Paid Lap Dancer in
Nashville'

Photo credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin "Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission
or revenue on some items through the links below." Shania Twain has been singing
since she was just a toddler. It wasn’t until the release of her 1997 album, Come
On Over, that she became an international star. Leading up to that, she released
her 1995 album, Woman in Me, which earned jaw-dropping feedback—though, not in the
best way. Now, she reminisces on those early days and addresses the ugly side of
being a rising female country music artist in the 90s. One scroll through Shania
Twain’s Instagram feed and you might think she has it all together without a care
in the world. Heck, you might even think it all came easy to her. But, thanks to a
recent interview, fans are getting a firsthand look into what it was really like to
become the internationally renowned singer that she is today. “I was criticized as
an artist,” Twain revealed in an episode of Home Now Radio on Apple Music Hits.
“I’m surprised I ever had any hits actually when I read them now. So for example,
part of the quote from one of my reviews was, ‘She’s America’s best paid lap dancer
in Nashville. She’s hot, but can she sing? Is Shania just a flash in the pan? The
most famous midriff in Nashville.’ So yeah, I ended up having hits anyway. Very
satisfying. ‘Whose bed have your boots been under,’ release 1995. And what I just
quoted were all quotes based on that first single from the Woman In Me album. I
wrote the song. And I was a little bit hurt, I guess, at the harsh critics, not
focusing on the music.” Thankfully, Shania didn’t let those critics deter her from
her goal. At the time of her 1995 album, she was just 29 years old. While that may
not seem as young as the current TikTok singers-turned-radio stars, it’s important
to understand that it’s still a rather impressionable age and, had it not been for
Shania’s will to ignore the critics and focus on the fans lifting her up and
praising her vocals, we may never have been graced with hits like “You’re Still The
One” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” Story continues “The fans just wiped all of
that hurt away and made the song one of my biggest hits,” she said. “Thank you,
fans.” Imagine a world where those classics don’t exist. It’s difficult, no?
Thankfully, we don’t have to. Instead, we get to look forward to Shania beginning
her “Let’s Go!” Vegas Residency, which will take place at the Zappos Theater from
December 2-12, 2021 and February 11-26, 2022. You Might Also Like