nds76
12-09-2002, 8:25am
Up! Mercury, $19.98 .
With Shania Twain, releasing two versions of her new album in the same package isn't just a marketing ploy, it's a philosophical statement.
She didn't put out one country and one rock account of the songs and let consumers decide which to buy. She put both the "red mix" CD and the "green mix" CD in the same case with one song list. She is no longer a country singer,
but embracing a bigger musical world. We are all one. One love. One Shania.
You don't sell as many records as Twain without penetrating the pop mainstream. Recorded in Dublin, Milan and the Bahamas -- a long way from Nashville -- "Up!" comes a careful five years after her worldwide blockbuster "Come On Over," her second multiplatinum pairing with husband, co-writer and producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, best known previously as the producer of the hard-rock band AC/DC.
With "Up!," Twain and Lange plot nothing less than world domination. There are even world-beat mixes of the songs available overseas and on her Web site, shaniatwain.com. Country music was just a launching pad for her. The "red mix" is the beefy pop CD; the country "green mix," with its judicious touch of fiddles, never really lights up the songs like the other disc.
The album is piffle, of course, but gorgeously decorated. Twain tends to sing in a shrill voice and Lange features her in a bright soundscape of sunny guitars. The material sounds more like Huey Lewis and the News than George Jones (Lange wrote the News' first sappy hit, "Do You Believe In Love").
Don't scratch this stuff too deep. "She's Not Just a Pretty Face" is Twain's idea of feminism and "Ka-Ching" is what passes for social comment. She hangs hooks everywhere over the songs and steals little bits from everywhere else. She and Lange betray a fondness for '80s rock throughout. But each song stands up like a crisp dollar bill. You can just hear them coming off the radio, one after the other.
-- Joel Selvin
With Shania Twain, releasing two versions of her new album in the same package isn't just a marketing ploy, it's a philosophical statement.
She didn't put out one country and one rock account of the songs and let consumers decide which to buy. She put both the "red mix" CD and the "green mix" CD in the same case with one song list. She is no longer a country singer,
but embracing a bigger musical world. We are all one. One love. One Shania.
You don't sell as many records as Twain without penetrating the pop mainstream. Recorded in Dublin, Milan and the Bahamas -- a long way from Nashville -- "Up!" comes a careful five years after her worldwide blockbuster "Come On Over," her second multiplatinum pairing with husband, co-writer and producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, best known previously as the producer of the hard-rock band AC/DC.
With "Up!," Twain and Lange plot nothing less than world domination. There are even world-beat mixes of the songs available overseas and on her Web site, shaniatwain.com. Country music was just a launching pad for her. The "red mix" is the beefy pop CD; the country "green mix," with its judicious touch of fiddles, never really lights up the songs like the other disc.
The album is piffle, of course, but gorgeously decorated. Twain tends to sing in a shrill voice and Lange features her in a bright soundscape of sunny guitars. The material sounds more like Huey Lewis and the News than George Jones (Lange wrote the News' first sappy hit, "Do You Believe In Love").
Don't scratch this stuff too deep. "She's Not Just a Pretty Face" is Twain's idea of feminism and "Ka-Ching" is what passes for social comment. She hangs hooks everywhere over the songs and steals little bits from everywhere else. She and Lange betray a fondness for '80s rock throughout. But each song stands up like a crisp dollar bill. You can just hear them coming off the radio, one after the other.
-- Joel Selvin