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Pastimes : Come Play With Me - 'Name That Tune' -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nittany Lion who wrote (10544)	11/27/2002 7:50:36 AM
From: Zakrosian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10709

I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with you on the visuals. Even more interesting is that there's a third CD with the same songs done in a "World" style that will be the other CD in international sales. You can listen to a couple tunes in both mixes at her web site: shaniatwain.com./music-audio.asp Here's a review that's more positive on the release: washingtonpost.com It's a shame that most discussions of Shania Twain revolve around whether her records should be classified as country music. Not only was 1997's "Come On Over" the best-selling album in the history of the idiom, but Twain's rural, working-class values -- an ethos born of a hard-knock childhood that's the Canadian equivalent of those of Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn -- are as down-home as country ham and red-eye gravy. This isn't to deny, as she sang on one of the tracks on "Come On Over," that Twain is out to "rock this country." Or that she doesn't relish pushing the boundaries of country music. Writing in the insert that accompanies "Up!," Twain's first album of new material in five years, she confronts the issue head-on. "Having the variety in styles is reminiscent of my youth when I used to listen to our local radio station and hear Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton, Supertramp and the Bee Gees all in the same hour." That omnivorous musical appetite is writ large on "Up!" -- a musical ecumenism that's as impressive as Twain herself. The album contains two CDs of the same songs sequenced identically: a "red" disc with a harder, rock-leaning cast, and a "green" one garnished with mandolin, fiddle, banjo and steel guitar. (A third set of "blue" mixes that bear a Middle Eastern stamp is available as a free download on the singer's Web site, shaniatwain.com.) In other words, "Up!" offers some Shania for everyone; alongside her patented turbo-twang are hooks, riffs and harmonies that recall records by Tom Petty, the Eagles, Buddy Holly, the Carpenters, Abba, the Pointer Sisters, Madonna, TLC and a handful of other pop, rock and soul hitmakers. The bumping backbeats and acerbic washes of strings on a track like "Ka-Ching!" even suggest that Twain and her husband and producer, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, have been taking cues from the thug reveries of rappers Jay-Z and DMX. Purists will no doubt balk at the expansive musical palette that Twain and Lange relied on to make "Up!" Yet Twain's influences are hardly that different from those evident in the music of such unassailably country stars as Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw -- or, for that matter, crossover records by Parton or Reba McEntire. More to the point, the bulk of the 19 tracks on both discs of "Up!" -- everything from electro-beat romps to sweeping ballads arranged and sung with imagination and command -- are, to invoke the title of an old hits package by the Who -- "meaty, beaty, big and bouncy." Granted, the ubiquitous exclamation points that Twain appends to her song titles can be grating, and her lyrics hardly run deep. Yet neither do those of Petty, Jay-Z or, for that matter, Vince Gill -- male stars who are rarely taken to task for their lightweight lyrics. And Twain's writing isn't so much insubstantial as accessible, if at times a little cliched. That said, she's also pro-woman ("She's Not Just a Pretty Face"), pro-intimacy ("Wanna Get to Know You That Good!"), pro-commitment ("Forever and for Always") and pro-self-determination ("In My Car I'll Be the Driver"). Only when she decries materialism and the marketing of beauty does she come off as somewhat disingenuous. Steve Earle once called Twain the highest-paid lap dancer in Nashville. Highest-paid, perhaps, but no lap dancer, not by half. A woman in command of her art, image and career is more like it. Well nigh unstoppable, too.