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crowd of 10,269 Twain superfans. Many of the lucky ones were able to reach up to the stage and have the star bend or kneel for one of the countless autographs or high-fives she handed out. Twain is back at the centre for another sold-out show tonight. Among the many fans who held up signs, Twain seemed to get the biggest kick from a woman whose sign said yesterday was her due date. "I went to an AC/DC concert when I was about seven months pregnant," Twain smiled, wishing the mother-to-be well. "This is the baby's first Shania
concert."
~Becca~
Thursday, May 13, 2004
By Lorilee Craker
The Grand Rapids Press
Shania Twain can't seem to make up her mind if she's a little bit country or a little bit pop 'n' roll. Maybe that's because there was
only one radio station in the wee mining town she called home. Over the airwaves in Timmons, Ont., a listener could hear helpings of
Led Zeppelin and Willie Nelson in the same half hour. It was all formats, all the time. Maybe all those Loverboy covers she sang in hole-in-the-wall bars as a young girl soaked in on some cellular level. It's also feasible the mega star's eclectic stylings are a result of her marriage to Mutt Lange, the wildly successful producer who got his irresistible hooks into millions of record buyers via Def Leppard and Bryan Adams. Or maybe Shania can get away with a grab bag of twang, bass hooks, glossy synth -- you name it, she's got it -- because one of the best-selling female recording artists can do whatever she pleases. Or can she? Can the 38-year-old continue her unprecedented rise to world pop domination? Is the sky the limit for Shania, or are there signs she may have peaked?
"There's so much hype she can't possibly live up to it," said Kim Carson, music director at WLHT-FM (95.7). Hype? That seems so-un-Canadian somehow. And one label that surely sticks to Twain is Canadian. She's a songbird who flew south from the
True North with a hoser accent and a passion for hockey. She's a red-hot mama who prefers a cold snap to a warm front any day of the week, eh? The Northerner even knows what icing means, as in pucks, not cakes. Just ask her. But hype there is, great shakes of the stuff -- from her debut album, 1993's "Shania," which sold a modest 100,000 units, to her most recent, 2002's "Up!." Still, Twain may be headed down from fame's stratosphere, industry insiders say. "It may be a case of overexposure," said Den Vogel, program director at Muskegon's WEFG-FM, Kickin' Country 97.5. " 'Up!' sold phenomenally, but the singles haven't done as well. I think it's undeniable she's cooling off a bit." Of the two singles most recently released, "Forever and For Always" has fared best. "The song hasn't caught on as much around the country as it has here," said Ken Evans, program director at WVTI-FM (96.1), which
plays adult-contemporary hits. "We play it 25 times a week. I think for our format, we lead the country in spinning that song. People in this area just love her." And Shania knows it. The "Up!" tour returns Sunday to Grand Rapids for her second show in seven months at Van Andel Arena. Her sold-out October appearance drew 12,569 fans. "Forever and For Always" is an example of Twain's talent for zigzagging genres without alienating her country fans. "Up!" was mixed three ways. The "Red" disc is all synth-driven pop and hooks a la Def Leppard. "Green," meanwhile, is banjos and fiddle-riddled cowboy music, and "Blue," promoted heavily in Asia and Europe, is suffused with sitars. But the album's newest cut, "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing," just may tank, especially with the pop crowd. "A lot of people like Shania when she's whooping it up," Carson said. "With summer coming, people like a song (they can jam to). This song is slow, without a good hook. It's just not a feel-good song." Carson has a point. Without the rah, rah, rah! verve that inspired women and men to sing along lustily to "Man! I Feel Like a Woman," for instance, Twain's new ballad might not float many boats. Vogel, for one, wonders if country fans will cotton to a sound that's straying more and more from the rural and the rootsy. "I always preferred Shania's early stuff because it was more country, like 'Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?' and 'No One Needs to Know,' " he said, adding he still gets plenty of calls to play Twain. "She's brought a handful of people into country music, but the difference between Shania and Garth Brooks is that the people he brought stayed. The people she brought -- young girls -- change the station as soon as anything twangy comes on." Even if the new singles don't rank as highly as past hits, Evans predicts Twain is here to stay. "How many artists can fill an arena back to back?" he said. "It's a pretty short list."
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grpress/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/1084459577129330.xml
TIMMINS, ONT. -- 'I voted right away," says Tracy Hautanen, on her way to a quick smile. "It's my job." Her job is Shania Twain. Hautanen is the manager of what is surely the most American attraction in all of Canada: the Shania Twain Centre. The centre, $5.5-million worth of curving concrete, display cases and a video theatre, sits in the southeast corner of a gold-mining town that used to bill itself as "Canada's largest municipality" (covering more than 320,000 hectares of Northern Ontario) but now thinks of itself as the hometown of the biggest-selling female solo recording artist in the world.....No matter that Shania Twain was actually born Eileen Edwards in Windsor, Ont., nearly 39 years ago. She calls Timminshome, and this is where her country-singing career began. There is also a great deal of Canada, even though Twain has long since been a Nashville star and lives in a 46-room chateau in Switzerland. In a back room of the centre, Hautanen is preparing a brand-new exhibit to feature sports: Twain's Ottawa Senators gown worn for a concert in Ottawa, the nearly kinky Maple Leafs outfit she wore in Toronto, a football from the Grey Cup. "I'm a Canadian through and through," says a blown-up quote in one display. "And I'm very proud of that." So, too, is Tracy Hautanen, and the "vote" she was talking about was cast for Twain to be named one of the finalists for the CBC's "The Greatest Canadian" contest, which came to a close two days ago.
~Becca~
