Shania Twain is the third and final Canadian in the top ten. I am one of the rare birds who is a fan from her first, self-titled album back in 1993. She did not make much of a splash then, but a couple songs like “What Made You Say That?” and ’You Lay a Whole Lot of Love on Me” are still favorites on the rare occasion I hear them anywhere.Twain skyrocketed to fame when her producer husband Mutt Lange turned her into a sex symbol for her second album, The Woman in Me. The rest has been history. Her 1997 follow up album, Come On Over, is the best selling album by a female artist and the best selling country album of all time.
Over the years, she has racked up 65 million albums sold, won five Grammys, and 27 BMI songwriting awards.
She gets a mixed reaction among country fans. On the one hand, many blame her and Garth Brooks, with their rock influences, for ruining country music in the early ’90’s. on the other, she is considered like Elvis--ot so much country, but still embraced by country fans anyway.
I am firmly in the latter category. While I grew up listening to my parents’ country music, I liked rock up until rap, hip hop, and grunge took over the airwaves. There was not a place for much of the music I liked--Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor, et al--in rock, so any similar artist moved over to country. I was comfortable with country becoming less traditional. I was very comfortable with Twain.
She has gotten a little strange in recent years. She has always been a little odd because of her tough upbringing. She was orphaned in her teenage years and had to take care of her younger siblings. Having to grow up fast does things to you mentally and emotionally. She moved to a chateau in Switzerland, become a devotee of Sant Mat , a philosophy of meditation and vefetarianism, and swears by a beauty treatment is using an ointment applied to cow udders.
I still love her.
