When Shania Twain ended her last world tour in 2004, the biggest crossover success in country music was at a crossroads. “I was feeling more pressure from my career, the bigger it got,” she told the Toronto Sun in 2011. “I felt the pressure to be better and better all the time. It just affected me.”
For the next eight years, Twain retreated from the spotlight. Besides the odd single on a greatest hits package or movie soundtrack, there was no new music. And following the 100-plus-date Up! Tour, there were no scheduled concerts. Then, on the heels of her divorce from producer Robert “Mutt” Lange, the unthinkable happened: The voice that had sold more than 75 million albums was gone.
At the time, a residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas was the furthest thing from possible. But a funny thing happened on the way to The Colosseum. Lionel Richie invited Twain to the Bahamas, where he was working on an album of duets that became the chart-topping Tuskegee.
“She walked into the studio and said, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ Richie told Canada’s CTV Television Network last year. But through his encouragement, she summoned the confidence to tackle her portion of “Endless Love,” the song Richie originally recorded three decades earlierwith Diana Ross.
“He was a great coach when I didn’t think I could, when I was not ready to sing anywhere,” Twain told Robin Leach last year. “Forget make a record. I was just like, ‘Oh no, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’”
That “can’t” became a “can” over the next year or so as the pieces began to fall into place for a residency at Caesars Palace that would find her back onstage for the first time in eight years, performing 60 concerts per year over a two-year span.
On Dec. 1, 2012, Twain made her grand entrance at Caesars Palace—lowered from the ceiling on a motorcycle to the opening riff of “I’m Gonna Getcha Good”—and the reaction was, in short, ecstatic. With the Twainiacs out in full force, she commanded the stage over an hour and a half of pure, unadulterated country pop.
That voice that had failed her years earlier gradually gained strength and confidence over the course of the show, through early hits like “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under” and “Any Man of Mine” and the show-closing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”
Most telling was a stripped-down acoustic miniset, where Twain, accompanied by her backup singers (including sister Carrie Ann), performed around a makeshift “campfire.” Shedding the gloss of her more poppy work, she looked relaxed as she, smiling, delivered “Come on Over,” “Rock This Country” and her most recent single, “Today is the Day.” Vegas, it seems, is suiting her and her voice just fine.
“I love Las Vegas; it feels like home to me there,” she told Robin Leach in October. “I’m having a great time. There’s nothing bad I can say about it.”
Caesars Palace, 7:30 p.m. Dec. 8, 10-11, 13-14, $55-$250 plus tax and fee. 800.745.3000 Ticketmaster
