Shania’s gonna getcha with pop-and-country ‘Up!’
Whether you prefer pop or country, Shania Twain has a new CD for you. Twain’s “Up!” boasts two discs, each with a different version of the 19-song collection. Shania Twain’s latest album arrives on Tuesday and has the same songs in country and pop.
These color-coded discs ó “red” for pop, “green” for country ó don’t just contain alternate mixes. Twain recorded the entire album no less than three times, with different groups of musicians on each session. (A “blue” disc recorded partly in Mumbai, India ó think “Shania goes Bollywood” ó is being packaged with the red version internationally.)
Because she doesn’t have to worry about striking a musical balance that will please multiple formats, Twain indulges herself. She loads the green disc with banjo and mandolin, instruments that rarely appeared on 1995’s The Woman in Me and 1998’s Come On Over. The red arrangements often take on the grandiosity of a modern-day version of ABBA ó especially C’est la Vie, the chorus of which sounds remarkably similar to Dancing Queen.
On some songs, the difference is largely a matter of instrumentation. On first single I’m Gonna Getcha Good!, for example, a pedal steel guitar may take the place of strings, but it’s still playing basically the same lines.
Other changes are more pronounced: On the green version of Thank You Baby! (For Makin’ Someday Come So Soon), a fiddle and pedal steel trade licks in an instrumental break. That break in the red version sounds as if Twain and husband/producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange lifted it from the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.
Not every song works equally well in both adaptations. I Ain’t Goin’ Down, a story from the viewpoint of a single mother, works best in its green version, where it sounds like something Dottie West might have recorded. The minor-key Ka-Ching! and Ain’t No Particular Way are better suited to red arrangements. But the album’s ballads ó particularly When You Kiss Me and Forever and Alwaysó are sure to become staples of both pop and country playlists.
Twain’s varying approaches to her music render moot any discussion about whether she’s country or pop. She’s both, she’s neither, she’s whatever suits her at a given time. Twain has always seen herself as a woman with unlimited horizons, and with the ambitious Up! she has just broadened them.
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