Word: twains
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...shamelessly produced and guiltlessly enjoyed; it's easily the best pop album of the year. The contagious first single, I'm Gonna Getcha Good ("I'm gonna getcha while I gotcha you in sight/I'm gonna getcha if it takes all night"), is less a love song than Twain's declaration of intent to consumers, while Up!'s 18 other tracks back her claim with the kind of energy that reminds you how much fun the genre can be. If there's a weakness, it's that Twain is too busy standing everywhere to stand anywhere. Only she could write...
...which marginally talented young aspirants live in a house and vote one another out on the basis of their progress in becoming slick professional singers. (Imagine the cheese factor of Big Brother, Survivor and American Idol--in French.) But just a few hours after her edict about performing, Twain, 37, is singing her signature ballad, You're Still the One, in a duet with Jeremy, a young Frenchman whose penchant for accidental key changes augurs poorly for an extended stay at le Star Academy chateau. As Jeremy bludgeons the first verse, Twain closes her eyes and sways in a convincing...
...Overcoming any situation and performing at your best--that's being a professional," she says later of her battle with Jeremy's howl. "It was an obstacle, and I overcame it." Twain speaks in formal, syllogistic sentences, especially when the subject is her job. "I am a commercial singer. When I write a song, I'm thinking about the people who are going to be listening to it. The whole process is done with that in mind. I hear other singers say, 'What I do is artistic, and I do it for myself.' I don't get that...
...this unabashed commercialism (plus a great gift for pop hooks) that makes Twain the ruler of the vast collection of ears between Madonna and Garth Brooks. She began her career appealing to a country audience that was first scandalized and then hypnotized by her pop sensibilities--and her conspicuously bare midriff. Then in 1997 Twain recorded Come on Over, a brilliantly calculated mix of pop and country that has sold 19 million copies and is the most popular album by a female singer in American history. Twain and Whitney Houston are the only women to have two albums sell more...
Because her songs are aimed at a mass audience, they are built with the same focus on demographics and inoffensiveness as a political campaign. Twain will not record edgy, experimental or controversial songs. She will do universal ballads like You're Still the One and exuberant up-tempo tunes like Man! I Feel Like a Woman! that start with synth fanfares and cowbells and end--usually 3 1/2 minutes later--with a giddy repetition of oooh-yeah!s and uh-huh!s over a cavatina of power chords, leaving listeners with the wonderfully woozy feeling of having just eaten...