The impetus of Shania Twain’s latest Las Vegas residency is a life force she’s been feeling, which is not all that different than the energy that drove the landmark album it’s named after. Twain released Come On Over, her third collaboration with producer and then-husband Mutt Lange, in November 1997. It was a deliberate departure from her first two albums, which were aimed at country music audiences even if they drew on pop songwriting sensibilities and rock production methods.
This time Twain drew on the spectrum of styles she absorbed while growing up as a performer, taking a chance she could expand her fandom without alienating core listeners, or further alienating the country music industry at large after her second studio album, The Woman in Me, enjoyed crossover success. “I got a lot of criticism questioning my authenticity as a country artist, and I was foreign,” Ontario-born Twain said on the April 3 edition of music podcast Song Exploder. “I wasn’t American, never mind I wasn’t Southern. So I was offensive to some of them and they made it pretty clear, but I knew I belonged there because those were my roots.”
Twain favored Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and George Jones as a performing preteen. “That is in me,” she said. “But I wanted to be my own artist, and the music was going to be a hybrid of all of my influences, stylistically—R&B, rock, folk and, of course, country.”
That hybrid came to full fruition with Come On Over. Hit singles including “You’re Still the One,” “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” and the title track contributed to it becoming the biggest-selling album by a female solo artist of all time, according to Guinness World Records. The video for “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” paid homage to Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video,” with an all-male backing band in place of Palmer’s iconic femme fatales.
At 58, Twain has seen Taylor Swift follow in her footsteps and take crossing over from country to places previously uncharted. She released her latest album, Queen of Me, a harbinger of the self-celebration to come, last year. Twain feels free to walk around the house naked if she wants, to dye her hair pink or wear a blonde wig, or to show off the results of a diet and exercise regime for a Haute Living photo shoot.
Twain’s previous Vegas residencies were hardly no-frills affairs when it came to set design and wardrobe, but this time she wants to contemporize her show in terms of tech and taste. She wants fashion-forward designs that will dazzle even in comparison to the elaborate couture she donned for her previous Planet Hollywood residency Let’s Go!
And she plans on mixing up the set lists and song orders night to night. Whatever is driving her, Twain is filled with the spirit that inspired her ascension to stardom and the resilience that kept her there. It’s that spirit that audiences will receive at Come On Over.
Planet Hollywood. ticketmaster.com
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