|
Will Shania Twain Ever Get Respect?
10/26/1998 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Lisa Zhito
Poor Shania Twain. She just refuses to behave.
She's been scorned by the critics, who said the hook-driven songs on her landmark second album, The Woman In Me, had the depth of a creek-bed in August. Would she listen? Nah--she instead released Come On Over, whose first single, "Love Gets Me Every Time," contained the irritatingly infectious hook, "I gol' darn gone and done it."
She's been slammed for her sex-kitten image, but would she cover up that famous belly-button? Nope: she chose to appear just a wind-shift away from topless on the cover of October's Rolling Stone.
And she's thumbed her nose at the Nashville establishment and its time-honored Way Of Doing Things, sticking by husband-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange (of Def Leppard and Bryan Adams fame). Lange garnishes his wife's records with more bells and whistles than a Christmas sleigh, but Shania just doesn't seem to care.
Even her label Mercury Nashville is on the defensive, pulling out bar charts and SoundScan stats at a recent reception to prove that no, the 5 million units sold of Come On Over is not a comparative disappointment to the 10-million-selling The Woman In Me.
Shania, dear, what are we going to do with you?
Truth is, Nashville's Music Row hasn't figured Shania out yet, and they probably never will. "I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that's making me successful," Shania points out--quite accurately, one might add.
Nashville's not an ecumenical sort of town, where one artist's success is applauded for its obvious benefits to the entire genre--especially when that artist has stepped outside the clearly-drawn lines of the Nashville Way. So while she may not carry home armloads of CMA Awards, she is blazing a crossover trail, landing on the top of Billboard's pop and country charts.
"I love it--I love it for music, and for myself," says the Timmins, Ontario native. "I grew up listening to all the best of all the genres, because I grew up in a town with only one radio station. And that is the way I've always seen music; I never really felt the necessity to differentiate from one genre to the next."
Shania defends her music as actually quite traditional. Songs like her current hit, "Honey I'm Home," which rocks more than it twangs, is "not really an ambitious song for country at all, actually. It is, maybe, for where country's at now. But I always use the example of 'Take This Job And Shove It'--you heard a lot of that type of music when I was growing up. It was much more frank, much more in-your-face, much more real."
She may be a maverick by Nashville standards, but creatively speaking, Shania says her success comes from "going with the flow," not plotting out a five-year marketing plan. Next year could be huge for her, as country's other mega-stars, Garth Brooks and LeAnn Rimes, have both announced plans to take 1999 off. But rather than trying to capitalize on being country music's global standard-bearer, she says she will instead focus on her music.
"I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write the next album, and Mutt and I are going to get together, and we're going to collaborate on what we've created independently," she explains. "I'm going to decide what's going on in my head, what do I want to say next time around, how do I want to say it, and what kind of personality do I want to give this next record.
"This is what dictates the way I look, the way the videos look, the order that the songs come out in--everything comes after that."
So listen up, Nashville: maybe it ain't so complicated after all.
|
