Claudia
11-23-2002, 7:34am
Couple of points before you read it. You have to wonder about someone who purports to have actually counted exclamation points. The review was coupled with one for Tim McGraw's new CD, which was praised as being "performed, not concocted." And, once again...Dancing Queen.
Country stars take differing paths with new albums
By PETER COOPER
Staff Writer
For a mondo-successful recording artist, fame can empower or imprison.
The enhanced personal opportunities (movie roles, shopping sprees, etc.) are groovy, while the sometimes-crippling loss of privacy is not. And the pop culture glare can shine hot and hard in the studio. Once a career flowers and flourishes, a performer must make a hard choice: seek to replicate the winning formula or attempt to grow creatively and risk losing the elements that brought current fans to the party. (The Beatles managed this trick, while countless others have failed.)
New releases by two of country music's biggest cross-over stars — Shania Twain and Tim McGraw — illustrate polar methods of dealing with the accelerated hype, power and responsibility. Shania's Up! is a concerted attempt at being everything to everyone, while Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors finds the black-hatted singer using his star status as a musical bully pulpit.
In this battle for the Christmas-shopping, CD-buying audience, Shania's siren call is ''Bend me, shape me anyway you want me.'' McGraw's message is closer to the sentiments found in a 13-year-old Lyle Lovett song: ''Here I am, this is me.''
• • •
''We've geared the music to please everybody,'' Twain told Entertainment Weekly, referring to her and producer/husband Mutt Lange's decision to package Up! with two separate CDs. The first, which is ''red,'' has an ''electric, rockier-edged'' (her words) feel, and the other, which is ''green,'' arrives with what she calls a ''more acoustic, down-home feel.'' Same songs, same basic arrangements, different instrumentation.
As with her past albums, Twain's work is useless to critique. It exists in a (hermetically sealed) vacuum.
The songs are puddle-deep and attitude-rich, each one of them containing a slew of hooks and each one finished to so-clean-you-could-eat-off-it sonic perfection. Catchy? If you don't find this stuff catchy, you can't be caught. It'll stay in your head like the alphabet song.
When Twain uses her line notes to credit Kevin Churko for having the album ''recorded, engineered, programmed, edited, tweaked, constructed, deconstructed, numbered, backed up, copied, deleted, restored and saved in his hardest drive,'' she's not even half-kidding. There's not a note, coo or yelp among these 19 (or 38, if we add red to green) that isn't computer-perfected. As for the ''down-home'' disc, it's about as down-home as a resort spa massage.
The lyrics ... ah, the lyrics. If you dug the last two albums, you'll love this one. If you abhor lines like ''The daily grind can freak your mind/ But life isn't all that bad,'' or ''Ain't no need to plan it/ Jump right in and jam it,'' then you'd best stay away.
While Twain and Lange will trade electric guitars for fiddles (or vice versa) on demand, the superstar won't compromise her positivity. The CD booklet contains a potentially record-setting 80 exclamation points (83 if you count the enclosed ''Red vs. Green CD'' explainer card).
This is smiley music for the poppy, boppy populace. If the anti-commercialism sentiments in Ka-Ching! seem silly coming from this ultra-commercial entity, or if C'est La Vie rips the chorus from ABBA's Dancing Queen, then ... well, c'est la vie. And ka-ching, come to think of it.
http://www.tennessean.com/entertainment/cds/archives/02/11/25600774.shtml?Element_ID=25600774
Country stars take differing paths with new albums
By PETER COOPER
Staff Writer
For a mondo-successful recording artist, fame can empower or imprison.
The enhanced personal opportunities (movie roles, shopping sprees, etc.) are groovy, while the sometimes-crippling loss of privacy is not. And the pop culture glare can shine hot and hard in the studio. Once a career flowers and flourishes, a performer must make a hard choice: seek to replicate the winning formula or attempt to grow creatively and risk losing the elements that brought current fans to the party. (The Beatles managed this trick, while countless others have failed.)
New releases by two of country music's biggest cross-over stars — Shania Twain and Tim McGraw — illustrate polar methods of dealing with the accelerated hype, power and responsibility. Shania's Up! is a concerted attempt at being everything to everyone, while Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors finds the black-hatted singer using his star status as a musical bully pulpit.
In this battle for the Christmas-shopping, CD-buying audience, Shania's siren call is ''Bend me, shape me anyway you want me.'' McGraw's message is closer to the sentiments found in a 13-year-old Lyle Lovett song: ''Here I am, this is me.''
• • •
''We've geared the music to please everybody,'' Twain told Entertainment Weekly, referring to her and producer/husband Mutt Lange's decision to package Up! with two separate CDs. The first, which is ''red,'' has an ''electric, rockier-edged'' (her words) feel, and the other, which is ''green,'' arrives with what she calls a ''more acoustic, down-home feel.'' Same songs, same basic arrangements, different instrumentation.
As with her past albums, Twain's work is useless to critique. It exists in a (hermetically sealed) vacuum.
The songs are puddle-deep and attitude-rich, each one of them containing a slew of hooks and each one finished to so-clean-you-could-eat-off-it sonic perfection. Catchy? If you don't find this stuff catchy, you can't be caught. It'll stay in your head like the alphabet song.
When Twain uses her line notes to credit Kevin Churko for having the album ''recorded, engineered, programmed, edited, tweaked, constructed, deconstructed, numbered, backed up, copied, deleted, restored and saved in his hardest drive,'' she's not even half-kidding. There's not a note, coo or yelp among these 19 (or 38, if we add red to green) that isn't computer-perfected. As for the ''down-home'' disc, it's about as down-home as a resort spa massage.
The lyrics ... ah, the lyrics. If you dug the last two albums, you'll love this one. If you abhor lines like ''The daily grind can freak your mind/ But life isn't all that bad,'' or ''Ain't no need to plan it/ Jump right in and jam it,'' then you'd best stay away.
While Twain and Lange will trade electric guitars for fiddles (or vice versa) on demand, the superstar won't compromise her positivity. The CD booklet contains a potentially record-setting 80 exclamation points (83 if you count the enclosed ''Red vs. Green CD'' explainer card).
This is smiley music for the poppy, boppy populace. If the anti-commercialism sentiments in Ka-Ching! seem silly coming from this ultra-commercial entity, or if C'est La Vie rips the chorus from ABBA's Dancing Queen, then ... well, c'est la vie. And ka-ching, come to think of it.
http://www.tennessean.com/entertainment/cds/archives/02/11/25600774.shtml?Element_ID=25600774