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Shania's Tour has added two more dates to the third leg in North America: on June 11 Shania will give a second concert in Saskatoon, SK, and on June 26 she will have a concert in Lubbock, Texas. If you are a member of the Official Shania Twain Fan Club, there will be a pre-sale on April 28.
Check out CMT on April 30th to catch the premiere of Shania's video "When You Kiss Me"
Due to an extension of the Shania Twain European Tour, the Birmingham, AL concert originally scheduled for
Tickets for the June 30th show are on sale now at the BJCC Central Ticket Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, online at www.CC.com
Sassy pop (-ular) country singing cover girl Shania Twain brings her Up! Tour 2004 to the Colonial Center tonight. Twain is famous for "You're Still the One," "Come on Over," "I'm Gonna Getcha Good," "Up!" and "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!," but it was "That Don't Impress Me Much" that stamped "diva" on her forehead.Over a beat that could pass for pop as well as country, Twain curls a twang around lyrics like, "OK, so you're a rocket scientist/ That don't impress me much" and "OK, so you're Brad Pitt/ That don't impress me much."The message was easily understood: OK, so Shania's a diva and she needs more than brains, money and looks to do her right.We know these things don't impress Twain, but how about the things that make her so impressive that she can sell out arenas? Because man, she's one special woman. Da-da, da-da-da. Shania Twain was born in Windsor, Ontario. Her real name is Eileen Twain. Like many stars, she changed her name. "Shania" means "I'm on my way," according to Ojibwa dialect. (The Ojibwa are an American Indian ethnolinguistic group centered in the upper Great Lakes in Canada and the United States.)If the name change wasn't foreshadowing, what is? With the release of "Shania Twain" in 1993, it was apparent Twain would stay around for a while because she had great looks and a decent voice.It's been more than 10 years, and Twain is still flying high. But her staying power is evidenced in this tour. "Up!" the album was released in November 2002, and she is still touring to support it.But then again, she waited five years between albums and her fans remembered her. Man, it must be good to be her. Though she's not a braggart, Twain has every right to boast on her accomplishments. After all, she's alone at the top.Her third album, "Come on Over," is the most successful female solo album with more than 34 million sold worldwide. Now that's impressive. Twain has enjoyed the crossover success every mainstream artist longs for because crossing over sells more albums. The hits on "Come on Over" were played on country, pop and adult-contemporary stations. So what does Twain do for "Up!"? She releases three versions in three different colors. The green CD is for the Twain country fans. The red is pure pop. The blue CD, which has an international appeal, is a bit of a stretch with Twain's vocal over Latin and European beats."So it's like doing three albums in two years. No one will have done this before, and I'm pretty excited about it," Twain says on her Web site. OK, Shania, you think you're special. I know you think you're something else. Don't get me wrong � yeah I think you're all right, but that won't keep me warm in the middle of the night.� Otis R. Taylor Jr.
~Becca~
Last week at the CMT Flame Worthy Awards, Shania was asked about her favorite country artists. Shania was quick to say, "Keith Urban was uh, ooo.. really sexy. He just really plays a great guitar and I enjoy that a lot." Shania also mentioned Alan Jackson and Martina McBride as favorite performers.
Shania Twain is a country singer in the broadest sense of the term, which is to say she's a broad abroad. She grew up in Canada, did
time in Nashville, lives in Switzerland, is married to a South African best-known for producing the Australian heavy-metal band
AC/DC and has a son named Eja -- pronounced "Asia." All of which is to say that the authenticity questions dogging Twain
for the last decade simply aren't relevant. The rap on Twain is that she and husband/producer/svengali Robert John "Mutt" Lange don't make "real" country music, and it's true that her records bear a suspicious resemblance to some of Lange's rock productions
(especially Def Leppard). That has made her a target of derision for people like alternative-country singer/songwriter Steve Earle, who
once called Twain "the highest-paid lap dancer in Nashville." If Twain's version of country music doesn't sound much like Nashville, it sure does play well everywhere else. At a reported 34 million copies sold worldwide, her 1997 album "Come On Over" is the top-selling country album in history."To some extent, major artists can make their own rules," says Tom Taylor, editor of the trade magazine Inside Radio. "Although country tends to be the least-forgiving format. Country is always going through an identity crisis about what country is or isn't, and whether or not something is 'country enough.' You also had 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?,' where the question became, 'Is this too country?' And the other side of that would be, 'Is Shania Twain or Faith Hill still country?' "
Twain certainly provided fodder for that last question with her most recent album, 2002's "Up!" (Mercury Records). In a novel piece of cross-marketing, Twain tried to offer something for everyone by releasing the album's 19 songs in three versions, each targeted
toward a specific market. There's a green disc of "country" versions, on which Twain is shown wearing a cowboy hat; a red "rock" disc that pictures Twain tarted up like Christina Aguilera; and a blue "world" disc showing her in faux-Eastern drag, with sitars substituting for steel guitars on the songs. In the United States and Canada, the two-disc "Up!" package consists of the rock and country versions. In the rest of the world, the blue disc replaces the country one.Remarkably, these versions don't sound terribly different from one
another, because the only impression that lingers is Twain's relentless perkiness. "Up!" clocks in at an exhausting 73 minutes, and listening to it feels like trying to keep up with an android aerobics instructor. Nine of the album's 19 songs have exclamation
points in their titles -- and just so you know, she means it!"I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" sounds like something Thomas Dolby might
have done at the height of the '80s synth-pop era, and "C'est La Vie" is a dead ringer for ABBA's "Dancing Queen." While that didn't
endear Twain to country purists, the album was still a major success. "Up!" has sold a reported 19 million copies worldwide, and
Twain is one of the biggest touring acts on the road right now. "She hasn't lost her country base, but she hasn't changed her sound
that much over her last three albums, either," says Silvio Pietroluongo, who manages Billboard magazine's "Hot 100" chart. "Even with separate CDs geared toward country and pop, the versions on her latest album are not that different. So she's been able to keep her base at country while having mainstream success. She doesn't get so much top-40 airplay anymore, which is mostly a
function of that format going more toward rock and hip-hop. But the adult pop audience was still exposed to her music with TV. She's
always in the spotlight. And she also received a ton of airplay at country radio, which is still her bread and butter." Really, though, the whole notion of crossing over from the country market has become a lot murkier in recent years. Rock star Bret Michaels has been hanging around Nashville between Poison tours lately, trying to break into country. Country Music Hall of Famer Loretta Lynn just released an acclaimed new album, "Van Lear Rose" (Interscope Records), that was produced by Jack White from the Grammy-winning alternative-rock band the White Stripes. And Twain, Toby Keith and Dixie Chicks -- acts that critic Chuck Klosterman and Cocoa Puffs" -- are as big as any rock stars. "I think country as a format is moving closer to mainstream and farther from the niche it's been," says Lisa McKay, program director of Raleigh country radio station WQDR, 94.7-FM. "It's very pop-oriented music. 'Authenticity' is always a topic with critics and cutting-edge people, which is cool. But the majority of people either like something or they don't, and they don't get into it much farther than that. It's on a song-by-song basis. With Shania, I just appreciate her being an artist, and I think her fans do as well. Whether she's doing pop or country, in Switzerland or Nashville, as long as she's putting out stuff that the mainstream wants to hear in whatever format or genre, more power to her."
~Becca~
