shania.funurl.com

FIESTY SHANIA IS DEFINATELY UP!

.

The best-selling female singer in history reveals her tough side defending her music and popularity

By JANE STEVENSON
Toronto Sun
October 2, 2003

HAMILTON—It's barely noon on the first day of rehearsals for Shania Twain's UP! tour and already things are behind schedule.

The massive, in-the-round stage that will bring Twain within intimate distance of her many fans during a planned year of touring the globe has yet to arrive for assembly beneath the gargantuan, spidery lighting rig already hanging in place for the production's three-week test run in Hamilton's charmless Copps Coliseum.

So, while her 60-person crew mills about amidst the scent of hamburgers in a nearby catering room, the Timmins-raised superstar and current resident of Switzerland has deigned — with a visible lack of enthusiasm, but unwavering politeness — to sit through a few rare one-on-one interviews with the Canadian press to key up her first proper tour in nearly five years.

"It's daunting. It's very tiring. At the end of these three weeks, I'm going to be exhausted and the tour's just going to be started," says the 38-year-old Twain, curled rather fetchingly into an armchair in sweats and black ballcap while an enormous German shepherd named Tim sprawls nearby. "We're all very excited. It's like building a house. It's fun, and I've been very involved in the whole process."

The immodest UP! road show — featuring production design by Mark Fisher, the man responsible for the sets on the last few Rolling Stones tours and U2's Elevation extravaganza — kicked off in the Hammer on Sept. 25 and arrives in Toronto for a sold-out run at the Air Canada Centre tonight and tomorrow.

If Twain is excited about hitting the road again today, mind you, it's not showing. Then again, she's been flitting around the world since November of last year doing promotional chores for UP!, her fourth album, while trying to maintain some semblance of a normal family life with husband/collaborator Robert John "Mutt" Lange and their 2-year-old son, Eja. She has licence to be tired from time to time.

"I'd quit before I'd abandon my parental responsibilities," she says. "Anyone would say that. I would never compromise my parenting for my career. Ever. And that's why I decided to become a parent later in life. But it's working out great — I don't feel like anything's being compromised. I'm enjoying both ...

"He (Eja) has been around for all the promo and stuff. We've been travelling all these months. We've been on the road for a whole year. There's more of a pattern to touring than there is to regular promotional travel, so it's actually going to be easier."

For someone seemingly born in front of a camera, Twain, a remorseless populist raised on pop radio and greatest-hits compilations, is surprisingly guarded when it comes to talking about herself.

Indeed, it's even harder to get a read on her personality from an informal face-to-face chat than it is from her music, which on UP! steered itself away from its hugely successful "new country" beginnings into a whole new realm of faceless, "all things to everyone" commercial-jingle inoffensiveness. Three separate realms of commercial-jingle inoffensiveness, actually, since the record was released in collectible "pop," "country" and "world" versions to suit fans' personal tastes.

As the biggest-selling female artist in history — 1999's Come On Over sold more than 35 million copies worldwide, while 1995's The Woman In Me and UP! can both be found in around 10 million homes apiece — Twain is conscious of her crowd-pleasing nature and is unapologetic about it.

She's not in the business of challenging people or defying their expectations, she says; she owes her fans exactly what they want because she owes them her success.

"I'm in the business of entertainment," says Twain. "That's exactly what I do. And because it's gotten as big as it has — I don't know why, I don't think anybody really knows why; it just got really huge — people just want to find a reason why you shouldn't have it.

"The fans know what they like, and that's all that matters to me. That's who I'm trying to please. I want to please the fans. That's my goal. If you're gonna throw a party, you want people to go home and say: `That was a great party. The food was great, the atmosphere was great, the host was great.' Then you feel like you've gone through the effort for a reason. The more people who enjoy it, the better you feel, the more rewarding it is."

At this point, a hint of defensiveness, brought on, no doubt, by years of hearing herself criticized as a lightweight and, therefore, rather inconsequential artist, creeps into her voice.

"How can you not look at it like that? I can't even imagine looking at it any other way. If I just wanted to make music so no one would hear it, not caring who liked it or who didn't, I wouldn't bother recording it, would I? Why release it? Why have a record deal? Just sing in your bedroom, stay in your basement. Where's the integrity in that?

"I think that's the biggest problem a lot of critics have with artists who get really big — they just don't see any credibility there. But what's not credible about that? Tell the guy who proposed to his girlfriend to your song that there's nothing credible about it. Tell the little girl who's dying of cancer that Shania Twain is not credible. It's so ridiculous. People live their lives with your music and that's what I've always wanted: Real people to listen to and enjoy the music that stands for me."

This brief flare-up suggests there's some steel behind Twain's fluffy feelgoodery and begs the question whether, behind the scenes, she can be a bit of a tyrant.

"A control freak? I think I am, probably," she agrees. "I'm a typical leader type. I'm a hard worker ... I'm a multi-task person. I do it all. You just learn to function like that. I'm never not creative. I just say, `Well, this month I'm working on the stage design, so I'm not doing anything else.' I'm involved in everything — that's the thing. I don't just say, `Design me a stage and I'll just show up.' I have to be involved."

Although the UP! tour will extend almost to the end of 2004, Twain is already gearing up for the creative renewal that comes with a change of pace. Writing for a new album could commence on the road, she says, and touring will likely be followed by another extended period of hibernation while she focuses first on being a mom, then once again on something to keep the masses happy.

"I enjoy the break from the stage, actually," says Twain. "It's something I like going in and out of, and I think I appreciate it more and I enjoy it more because I do step out of it. I've done that twice now. I didn't tour at all during The Woman In Me — I stayed completely off the road during that time — and now again, I've had a break between these two albums. And I like that, I like pacing myself.

"I'm not an adoration junkie, either. I don't need my fix. I think a lot of people see it as their fix, their fix of adoration, and I don't need that. I just see it differently. I enjoy it. It's like a party, so when I get into `party' mode I enjoy that for as long as it lasts, and when it's over, I'm cool."

.