After the enormous success of the Up! project, Shania Twain released a top-selling Greatest Hits album in 2004, which spawned three singles. She then embarked on an extended hiatus before returning in 2011 with a new single and a reality series on The Oprah Winfrey Network. In this set of retro single reviews, we’ll take a look at Twain’s six most recent single releases to date.
“Party for Two” (with Billy Currington or Mark McGrath) 2004
Peak: #7
The first single from Twain’s Greatest Hits package was her last Top 10 country hit to date, but only the second Top 10 hit for her then-up-and-coming duet partner Billy Currington. The premise is shamelessly silly, as are the spoken word intro and the “You’ll be sexy in your socks” line, but Twain and Currington sell it with flair. Twain delivers her verses with a flirty, playful performance, while Currington renders his with the same laid-back smolder that would become his calling card at country radio.
In the tradition of the Up! album, “Party for Two” was released in both a country and pop mix, with Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath appearing as Twain’s duet partner on the latter. Unfortunately, McGrath’s performance lacks the character needed to sell a song of this ilk, and the gaudy pop arrangement has aged poorly in comparison to the country mix, demonstrating that Twain was often at her best when keeping a toe in country waters.
Written by Shania Twain and Robert John “Mutt” Lange
The soft, dobro-driven arrangement is the perfect fit for this angst-filled ballad. Twain performs the song in an emotive almost-whisper of a delivery, while the evocative melody conveys regret and desperation with a tinge of hope.
Written by Shania Twain and Robert John “Mutt” Lange
The third and final single from Twain’s Greatest Hits fizzled due to lack of promotion. Quite possibly Twain’s countriest single since “No One Needs to Know,” “I Ain’t No Quitter” lacks the lyrical cleverness of Twain’s best work, but she elevates the song through her fun, laid-back performance. Likewise, the bouncy, fiddle and steel drenched arrangement is a delight.
Written by Shania Twain and Robert John “Mutt” Lange
A rare instance in which Twain worked with a team of co-writers in addition to her then-husband, “Shoes” was written for inclusion on a Desperate Housewives companion album, but the boot-stomping fiddle-laden arrangement would have not have sounded out of place on The Woman In Me.
The lyric draws on a series of humorous double-entendres comparing men to footwear. (“Some make you feel ten feet tall, some make you feel so small, and some you want to leave out in the hall or make you feel like kickin’ the wall”) The concept is pure novelty, but Twain pulls it off brilliantly with a catchy everywoman-sing-along chorus and an in-on-the-joke vocal performance.
Written by Shania Twain, Robert Johnn “Mutt” Lange, Tammy Hyler, Joie Scott, and Kim Tribble
In the wake of Twain and Lange’s divorce, “Today Is Your Day” was the first Twain single since the days of her debut album not to be produced by Lange. Unfortunately, David Foster’s production lacks the freshness and restraint of Lange’s work, with a clutter of instruments distracting from Twain’s performance instead of spotlighting it.
Twain’s vocal exudes sincerity, vulnerability, and age-earned wisdom, but struggles to overcome the fact that the lyrics amount to little more than a string of inspirational clichés. Add some unnecessary vocal processing on top of that, and Twain’s comeback single falls greatly short of the event that it should have been.
A remake of Richie’s classic 1981 hit duet with Diana Ross, from his country duets project Tuskegee. It starts out on a pleasant note, but gradually devolves into an overwrought shouting match that seems to go on forever as Richie and Twain attempt to force emotion into the song.
Of all Shania Twain’s gifts as a singer-songwriter, her ability to tackle heartbreak may have been the most under-heralded. That side of Twain was well showcased on several standout tracks from The Woman In Me, but of all the nineteen tracks on the Up! album, there was only one sad song in the bunch. But oh, what a beauty it was.
“It only hurts when I’m breathing
My heart only breaks when it’s beating
My dreams only die when I’m dreaming
So I hold my breath to forget”
That chorus is a straightforward, yet achingly effective portrayal of the emotional place in which one endeavors to move on after heartbreak, but the pain remains constant, never really going away - You don’t stop hurting until you stop breathing. The melancholy melody and Twain’s evocative almost-quiver of a performance only add to the record’s emotional heft. Such an ideal balance of emotional resonance with elegant simplicity is an example of Twain-Lange song structure at its top-notch best.
It’s a shame this single wasn’t a bigger hit. “It Only Hurts When I’m Breathing” aptly demonstrates the fact that Twain’s talents went far beyond delivering catchy pop hooks. Shania Twain truly was a great songwriter, and “It Only Hurts When I’m Breathing” is one of her best.
Written by Shania Twain and Robert John “Mutt” Lange
What do you do when you’ve already got so many songs that are wedding and anniversary staples?
Release another one, of course. Perhaps if it had come before “You’re Still the One” and “From This Moment On”, or even before “Forever and For Always” was a hit, “When You Kiss Me” might have become another signature ballad for Twain.
I love the lush production on the red “pop” version that was a moderate international hit. The green “country” version is so sparse that the subtle melody can’t provide the necessary elevation.
As was often the case with tracks from Up!, what we lose in creativity and surprise, we make up in astounding vocals. She’s never sounded more desperately in love than she does here. Highly recommended for those who want Shania to serenade them at their milestone occasion, but not with the same song she sings to everybody else.
Written by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain
No, wait. Scratch that. Her woman power best, as “She’s Not Just a Pretty Face” is about the wide range of indispensable and often unexpected roles that adult women play in our society, whether it’s the astronaut or politician that all of us see from television, or the woman pumping gas at night to make ends meet. That woman was Twain’s mom, by the way, who is sweetly immortalized in song here.
I also particularly love the warm steel guitar and the fiddle runs that run throughout the song. It just works better as a country song than as a pop one.
This is Twain’s most recent solo single to reach the country top ten, and also her fifth and final Grammy nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
Written by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain
Since bringing back Recommend a Track proved so popular, I’m resurrecting another CU oldie but goodie: the iPod check.
I’ve only recently discovered the Most Played feature on iTunes, since it never had any relevance until iPods were large enough in memory to sync all of my music. So going back to early 2011, I have a lengthy list of the songs I’ve played the most.
So today’s iP0d check: List your most-played song from twenty different country artists.
You can access this info by going to your own Most Played list and adjusting the number of songs on it – I use 500 for mine – or you can just go to Music and sort by number of plays. Or you can just pick twenty artists at random and list your most played song for each. We’re easy here. (This would also work in Spotify, from what I hear.)
Here’s my top twenty:
Pam Tillis – Deep Down (89 plays)
Keith Urban – I Told You So (81)
Dixie Chicks – Long Time Gone (71)
Taylor Swift – Mean (68)
Trisha Yearwood – Where Are You Now (63)
Patty Loveless – You Can Feel Bad (59)
Emmylou Harris – Easy From Now On (55)
Carrie Underwood – Undo It (50)
Lori McKenna – Lorraine (50)
Dwight Yoakam – Ain’t That Lonely Yet (46)
Sara Evans – Rocking Horse (45)
Sawyer Brown – Cafe on the Corner (45)
Reba McEntire – The Fear of Being Alone (44)
Shania Twain – Up! (43)
Faith Hill – Stealing Kisses (41)
Alan Jackson – So You Don’t Have to Love Me Anymore (40)
Crystal Gayle – Why Have Your Left the One You Left Me For (39)
George Strait – Meanwhile (39)
Lee Ann Womack – I May Hate Myself in the Morning (39)
Aaron Tippin – Whole Lotta Love on the Line (38)
I’m surprised that some of my most played artists overall, like Dolly Parton, Randy Travis, and Tim McGraw, don’t have that one big song that I play excessively. Also, at least half of the songs above aren’t what I would call my favorite song by the given artist. How about you?
Long before Anne Murray and Shania Twain achieved worldwide fame, Hank Snow crossed over the Canadian border and became a country music superstar.
Snow was a child runaway, escaping home at age twelve and finding solace in the music of Jimmie Rodgers. The four years he spent traveling before returning home laid the foundation for the realism that would bleed into the traveling songs he became famous for. Snow built up a following in Nova Scotia, and then made the move to Halifax. Living in the city caused great financial hardship for Snow and his young wife, but his unpaid appearances gave him enough notoriety to finally earn some paying gigs.
Throughout the forties, his success grew in Canada. He had several local country hits and became a popular radio performer throughout his native country. But it took him much longer to get a shot in America, where his RCA label refused to release his work until he became better known in the states. He got his stateside break when Ernest Tubb invited him to the Opry stage, and that was enough to convince RCA to release his music in America.
After many years of toiling in obscurity, he was a huge success out of the gate. Snow’s honky-tonk sound and worldly lyrics dominated the charts throughout the fifties, with many of his singles topping the charts for weeks on end. “I’m Moving On” is tied with two other hits as the longest-running #1 single in Billboard history, spending 21 weeks at the top, and “I Don’t Hurt Anymore” is close behind, spending twenty weeks in the penthouse.
He had many other classic hits in this decade, most notably “Yellow Roses” and “Let Me, Go Lover!” After forming a management company with Colonel Tom Parker, Snow was influential in encouraging Elvis Presley to record country music, and dabbled in some rockabilly himself, though he rarely strayed too far from his country roots.
Even as the Nashville Sound began to dominate, Snow remained relevant, scoring big hits throughout the sixties and early seventies, most notably the #1 hits “I’ve Been Everywhere” in 1962 and “Hello Love” in 1974. Snow released many LPs that were united in themes like traveling and tragedy, and also many that paid tribute to his musical influences like Rodgers and the Sons of the Pioneers.
As his career winded down through the latter half of the seventies, Snow was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1979. In 1981, he parted ways with RCA after forty-five years, but he remained an active performer on the Opry stage well into the nineties, before his death in 1999 at age 85.
The song with the ridiculously long title was released as the fourth international single from Up! It performed respectably in some markets, but did not match the success of the previous singles from the project.
It also reaffirmed Twain’s affinity for parentheses, which apparently ranked as her second-favorite punctuation mark behind only the exclamation point.
“Thank You Baby!” retains many of the usual qualities of a great Shania Twain single. Twain’s vocal delivery brings a sense of warmth and genuineness to the lyric, which details a woman’s search for love, as well as the deep satisfaction of finally having found it.
Where it falters is in its lack of an immediately accessible, memorable hook. The arrangement isn’t as crisp or fresh-sounding as usual, and just barely escapes sounding dated. Likewise, the melody doesn’t quite match the sonic stickiness of Twain’s past efforts, which may be one reason why the song didn’t match the chart impact of its predecessors.
It’s a generally enjoyable effort, but not as satisfying as the delicious pop confections that preceded and succeeded it.
Written by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain
Shania Twain reached her creative peak on Up! , and it’s reflected in the singles released from that project.
Completely drenched in just the sweetest steel guitar, producer “Mutt” Lange manages to get a gorgeous pop sound out of the most country of instruments.
Yet it’s easy to overlook the instrumental perfection, thanks to what still stands as Twain’s finest vocal performance ever committed to tape. Even her most ardent fans had always praised her for vocal style more than range. But unless you were familiar with “Amneris’ Letter”, you’d never have suspected she could pull of something so dynamic.
A beautiful song, a powerful vocal performance, and so country by today’s standards that you can’t imagine country radio playing it now.
Written by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain
Grade: A
Next: Thank You Baby! (For Making Someday Come So Soon)
“Ka-Ching!” stands in such sharp contrast to her entire catalog that it’s something of a shock that she wrote and recorded it.
Even more shocking is that this biting indictment of consumer culture was originally written for her Christmas album, but she added it to Up! when that project was shelved.
Less shocking is that she chose not to release it in America, given that the bulk of her descriptions might resonate a little too deeply with her target audience stateside. The red “pop” mix is better than the green “country” one anyway, channeling all that is best about Abba without sounding dated. No wonder it was a huge hit in Scandinavia.
I hope that if she ever does come out with another album – almost ten years and counting – her observations are as razor-sharp and sing-along catchy as they are here.
Written by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain
The title track and second single of Shania Twain’s Up! album is arguably the finest and fullest realization of Twain’s signature positivity. It also perfectly exemplifies the sheer brilliance of the strategy behind the Up! album.
With Shania Twain having found a whole new worldwide audience thanks to the crossover success of Come On Over, she found an ingenious way to placate both her pop and country music fan bases with her subsequent album release. Each song on the album was recorded in three different versions – country, pop and East Asian rhythm. Thanks to that solution, Twain was freed of the need to carefully toe the line between musical styles. Instead, the pop versions could be even more pop than the songs on Come On Over had been, while Twain likewise had the freedom to fully amp up the twang factor on the country versions.
“Up!” is a charming song in any form, but by all rights, the country version spanks the others. The energetic banjo picking adds a whole new layer of personality to the tune as it mixes deliciously with the pulsing pop beat. Regardless, it’s ultimately Twain’s uninhibited performance that makes the record soar, as she delivers the hook of “Up! Up! Up! There’s no way but up from here” with ferocious conviction as well as infectious spunk and charmisma.
While the lyrics are simple, the magic lies in the fact that the melody and performance carry just the right “spark” to bring the song fully to life. It’s not so much about the words themselves as it is about the feeling created by the composite product, such that the spirit of the song goes so far as to transcend the song itself. That makes “Up!” one of those rare instances in which seemingly rudimentary ingredients combine with just the right musical chemistry to create something truly memorable and special.
Written by Shania Twain and Robert John “Mutt” Lange
2003 | #11 (U.K.), #17 (Austria), #20 (Germany)
on 
on 
on 
on 
on