Various "Come On Over" Reviews

In attempting to live up to the expectations created by the remarkable success of her last album, "The Woman In Me," Shania Twain and her collaborator/producer Mutt Lange have successfully created the same thing, only more so. Not the same album, but the same sorts of unexpected turns, the same punchy pop country. These 16 songs (totaling just over an hour) reflect the day-to-day preoccupations, interests, and concerns of a young woman: her takes on the many twists of life and love. In translating those into modern country, Twain and Lange continue to test the limits of country music and sometimes go far beyond them. In a very real sense, this is the future of power pop merging with country. In the process, country's traditions are being reinvented and redefined.
Billboard, Nov 15, 1997

Rolling Stone's "Come On Over" Review

The first thing you notice about Shania Twain's "Come On Over," once you get past her pretty pictures on the cover, is how the titles have way too many exclamation points: "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" "Whatever You Do! Don't!" So does the music. Almost every high-gloss song opens with a bubblegum-glam cheerleader shout ("C'mon, girls!" "Cool!" "Kick it!" *"Owww!"*), then blasts into radio-ready rapture with offhand vocal interjections -- *doot-doot-doot* scatting, do-si-do rapping, sexy squeaks, sarcastic Alanis Morissette asides. Twain bombards you with plastic hooks as tight as her trousers; the only reliable concessions to country tradition are all the fast fiddle-breakdown interruptions, and even those usually sound closer to classical fugues than to square dances.

On 1995's "The Woman in Me," Twain and her producer-husband, Mutt Lange, stretched '90s line-dance-country until it snapped, crackled and popped (they sold 10 million copies for their efforts). On "Come On Over," their songs are speedier and more concise, hopped up on the exact same sassy little chassis of synthesized sound and big-bam-boom bleacher beats that Lange pioneered on '80s records by Def Leppard and the Cars. Twain warbles about Dr. Ruth and Brad Pitt, men's shirts and short skirts, pantie lines and platonic friends, flying elephants and domestic abuse. She double-entendres out a cheeky mock-moral lesson called "If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask" that Sir Mix-a-Lot might appreciate. And in "Honey, I'm Home," she's returning from a "worse than PMS" day at the office, telling Mutt that he better be ready at the door with a cold beer and a foot massage. All that, and guitar riffs stolen from "Spirit in the Sky," "La Grange" and "In the Summertime," too. A model modern marriage or what? (RS 775) CHUCK EDDY, Rolling Stone

The doubly exclamatory opening track--"Man! I Feel Like a Woman!"--makes it immediately clear we won't be getting any less of The Woman in Me from Twain this time around. "A lot of songs on this album do have a woman's perspective," she asserts. Consider the country feminism of "Black Eyes, Blue Tears" (about abuse--has she met Salt-N-Pepa?), "Don't Be Stupid (You Know I Love You)" ("about the way men get clutchy and possessive"), and "If You Want to Touch Her, Ask." Says Twain: "It's all about respect. It's light, though; I'm not spitting on anybody." Speaking of respect, this 16-track album ought to command plenty; her last release sold nearly 10 million in the U.S., the highest mark ever for a female country artist. (Nov. 4)-Entertainment Weekly, Fall Music Preview

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