Shania Twain's "Come On Over" - THE POLL

great poll

it's a tough one, i'll put it on tonight and let you know

only know the singles but loool @ the title "If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask!"

"If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask Chaki!"

hahahaha

thte titles are key "Whatever you do! Don't!"

Does anyone else remember the Ontario tourism commerical that had Mounties singing "Come on Over"?

actually all the ! points are hilar

also i gained mad respect for her after readin her wikipedia page - such strife, such heartache, such cans. i would treat her so tenderly~~~~~~~~

"Don't Be Stupid (You Know I Love You)" has the right amount of sass.

voting 'you're still the one'

hated the singles until i heard the country versions

Voted "Love Gets Me Every Time" for the tongue-twisting line "I dog-gone gone and done it."

yeah that's a great line

"You're Still the One" means a lot to me.

I haven't decided whether this or Hysteria represents Mutt Lange's peak as producer-songwriter.

Indisputably the greatest album of the 90s, obv

I believe that this is wholly disputable.

Alex do you just love the taste of bait or something

You hadn't figured that out by now?

altho i will agree with alex for a 2nd time today that it is definitely disputable

This album is my own personal poison.

Like, not in the good way.

lol so mysterious!

she means in the bad way

not that mysterious

ok maybe not

but it's like, does she hear it at her friends' house and feel poisoned? on the radio? or does she put it on when she feels like being masochistic? you know it's kind of open to interpretation

i don't want to shock you but you are ~~overthinking some shit~~

― I wanna change your name to mrs. smash (some dude), Saturday, April 4, 2009 8:08 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3

"You're Still The One" has some awecome backing vocals in the chorus, so I go for that one. I liked the hit mix of "That Don't Impress Me Much" too though.

the backing vox make the song, to be real

"Black Eyes, Blue Tears" is the best dance song, probably, but I think I'll go with "Come On Over," for ingeniously crossing Dionne Warwick's "Hasbrook Heights" with Mungo Jerry's "In The Summertime."

Favorite Shania song ever is "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under," I think.

ME TOO

i just put that on

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Man, I'm trying to like Shania Twain like the good little anti-rockist that I (sometimes) am. Thing is, music like Twain's is part of the reason I'm not a wholehearted anti-rockist (or "poptimist" as Christgau says) like I'd like to be. The stuff just seems so forthrightly bland; it's so relentlessly chipper and smoothed-over that the airless harmonies and hooks feel coercive - the songs sound like commercials for themselves (and I know some might counter that that's how pop works, but nevertheless it's rarely so obvious as it is here). I blame Mutt Lange, who's clearly some kind of pop genius but whose post-AC/DC work largely suffers the same problems (could he be the Michael Bay of pop? A tad more artful, I'd say- Bay's movies leave no doubt that they're big-budget nothings, lowest-common-denominator pandering schlock, whereas Lange keeps you wondering); it's somehow grandiose and banal all at once; it's designed to blow up but the dynamite isn't there (terrible metaphor, I know); it's so airbrushed, processed and fussed-over that it's almost anti-human. These are all criticisms that "rockists" and lazy critics lob at pop music generally, especially the objections to the polished and prefab, so I try to avoid them, but I find I can't avoid them when I try to listen to Shania. Note I haven't even gotten to the lyrics - they seem clever enough, but the surface of the music often annoys me so much that I really don't care what she's singing about. I know how much "fun" it's supposed to be, so how come I'm n ot smiling?

Maybe it's that, for me, pop fun isn't actually that much fun unless there are some kinks in the formula - odd harmonies, rhythmic eccentricity (Timbaland and MJ are obvious examples), a found hook, inspired uber-minimalism or -maximalism, etc. It's the same reason why I have a tough time with so much of the neo-Eurodisco that is contemporary pop music - love a number of isolated examples here and there, can't stand it when the same hooks and 4/4 thump-thump-thump beats and chord changes are recycled ad infinitum without a little weirdness up top, positively cannot listen to top 40 radio where marginal distinctions tend to evaporate and you have to take the bad with the good (or a lot of the humdrum with a little of the inspired). Am I crazy?

Oh yeah, and I actually do like some of Shania Twain's songs, but I disliked "You're Still the One" so much when it came out (I was about 15 at the time) that it probably put me off of her for a good decade. Usually I'm a sucker for good ballads.

Maybe it's that, for me, pop fun isn't actually that much fun unless there are some kinks in the formula - odd harmonies, rhythmic eccentricity (Timbaland and MJ are obvious examples), a found hook, inspired uber-minimalism or -maximalism, etc.

Yet this is how memorable music works. Genre's got nothing to do with it. No genre is intrinsically interesting.

And Hysteria is Mutt Lange's greatest production.

the megamizes of a few songs from Up! that someone on ILM made when that album came out (layering all 3 diff't pop/country/international mixes over each other) are still some of the greatest shit i've ever heard and have kind of singlehandedly ingratiated Shania's music to me.

megamixes

Of course no genre is intrinsically interesting - I guess the things I listed were what every sentient person and certainly what every critic looks for in any kind of music. I still think some genres or at least some genre communities are more formula-bound than others - it's arguable that formula is what makes pop "pop" - with "pop", a fairly strict formula is (usually) a given. Which is why, even more than with less accessible musical styles, it's important that there's some sort of formal wrinkle.

I think the word that I'm looking for here is "tension" - pop release requires some sort of tension, melodic or rhythmic or emotional or timbral or what have you. Well, no shit - perhaps I'm belaboring the obvious here. But when I don't hear one or the other - when a song is all tension or all release, all darkness or all light, all pain or all pleasure - I usually don't get what the fuss is about in the instance that other people, whether they be critics or fans, really like it. I don't hear that tension in Shania Twain's music. It's all "Up", to name one song/album, but when there's no "down" to speak of the "up" is, I dunno, kind of blah. I realize I'm probably changing my argument here, but I'm trying to figure out why this stuff doesn't appeal to me and, conversely, why it appeals to a lot of smart music fans as well. I was actually going to mention Def Leppard in my first post as a Mutt Lange production that I DO get - I used to hate "Pour Some Sugar On Me," but as a '90s teenager I wasn't acclimated to '80s pop metal, and I kind of love it now. I always liked "Photograph" (not from "Hysteria" - but still a Mutt Lange production - I know) which has hooks that don't hang on its obscene production budget. There are maybe five other Def Leppard songs that I know well enough to pass judgement, not all from "Hysteria," but yeah, I get it. Shania, though - still not happening for me.

man i feel like a woman is in my top 15 songs all-time. it's just layers of country instruments at their most beautiful. and some great melodies. it's all done with such pop sensibility it might as well be considered appropriation.

and it taught me what the best thing about being a woman is

{fyi the prerogative to have a little fun)

i'll take your word for it

i'm pretty sure if i had ever heard "from this moment on" in live performance i would have burst into tears and pissed myself

you're still the wufs

The “man I feel like a woman” video hommaging Robert Palmer (and maybe Tone Loc?) has always struck me as a stroke of genius.