Tommy's #1 SHANIA TWAIN SuperSite Message Board

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwQdzVrMyNc

Tanya wrote:

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Is this interview from 2004? I've never seen it. I wish there was a full version of it. :(

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 Based on her hairstyle, yes it looks like it's from 2004/Greatest Hits era.

Celebrities were making their New Year's resolutions last night during CNN's New Year's Eve coverage.

Video - https://twitter.com/allaboutshaniat/status/1080160482038894593

Shania Twain: "2019, this is the year I am going to meet Brad Pitt!"

The Spectacle and Sensation of Shania Twain

Robbie Fulks delves into how Shania’s impeccable pop-country sound came to be.

By Robbie Fulks | Talkhouse | February 4, 2019

How many of you kids want to hear a bedtime tale about the gaudy ‘90s, when Grandpa was a sapling? In those times, there was a beautiful princess with a sweet voice that beguiled millions, from all corners of the earth. She was showered with money and opportunity, and rewarded with love by the many-headed, those simple souls who always naively delight in euphony.

Yet her sound appalled the learned keepers of the tablets. They disdained the princess as a lightweight pretender (“A country gal from Canada in the great white-bread tradition of Anne Murray,” R. Christgau) and her siren song as catchy fluff (“Like ABBA without all the melancholy,” C. Willman), or worse (“generic and emotionless,” P. Matters). In the fullness of time, the voice dimmed, the many-headed moved on, and the learned returned to their Radiohead. But your dotty old grandfather stayed doggedly put. He felt that… Oh, is everyone already asleep?

So far, so true: I am a grandfather, and I love Shania Twain’s music. I love it despite its massive popularity, its lack of overt seriousness, its verbal infelicities, its critical disreputableness, and its moment having passed—not that I think that any of those metrics matter in the least in judging the success of an artwork. Positive contemporaneous reviews of Shania offered adjectives like “catchy,” “hooky,” and “polished.” Fair enough—but not enough. What about radically innovative, risk-taking, and industry-redefining? What about so immaculately and distinctively recorded as to boggle the ear? Critics, and many other listeners as well, zero in on lyrics, and these aren’t going to win her a Whitbread prize. Meanwhile, music that breaks sales barriers while challenging aesthetic presumptions and reimagining production protocols is rare. These records deserve attention from historians, scholars of psychoacoustics and neurophysiology, recording engineers, and—ahem—songwriters.

I come at Shania Twain from an unusual position, because I generally loathe the sort of thing she does. I mean megahit music that floods into shopping “Gallerias,” dental offices, and workout centers, and I mean music that’s nominally country but completely unconcerned with its traditions and implicit standards of craft. “You don’t like sports,” a sideman in my band once told me, “but you have to admire Michael Jordan, because that’s not just sports—that’s perfection.” Point taken. Though imperfect, Shania’s music is superior in some very meaningful respects, and incomparable in a few others. “Honey, I’m Home” is one of a few dozen songs that feel mind-blowingly great to me. (I’ll use less squishy words than “feel” as I proceed, but let’s start there.) One can also admire the plain audacity of her mid-1990s breakthrough, the creative destruction her success wrought upon the smoothly competent operators of Music Row.

I worked there at the time, as a staff writer. In 1997, when the album Come On Over became the biggest seller in the history of country music, the transmutation of values was head-spinning. Our job had hitherto been to devise stories about the lives and hearts of everyday Americans, loving and marrying and working and divorcing and struggling and coping, and to do it in an idealized version of conversational English, in which every word mattered, a sly and non-snobbish wit was especially prized, and a reflective and moral voice prevailed. Melodies and chords were secondary, and a lot of the record production was, frankly, by-the-book. If you’ve heard a single Shania song, then you know that its qualities are about opposite to the ones I just described.

To many of us who worked in the creation and selling of pre-Shania country, her rocket-like emergence was nearly as startling and out-of-the-blue as Donald Trump’s later was: You mean this is going to be the official standard now? No one could have foreseen that a Canadian woman and a South African metal producer, specializing in digitally manipulated girl power froth with light traces of country instrumentation, would upend the template completely. No one would have wanted to imagine such a thing. Country businesspeople are like any other, in their decided view that the thing that worked last month is the thing that works right now, and will keep working, world without end.

Our template was called “Garth Brooks.” In 1990 he yanked country into a febrile era of platinum sales and deep suburban infiltration. After that, no one wanted to return to the sleepy days when a huge hit record sold only a million copies. “No, let’s do the thing that sells twelve million records,” we all thought. So we—well, not me, but the best of us—wrote songs that began like this:

Just the other night at a hometown football game
My wife and I ran into my old high school flame
And as I introduced them the past came back to me
And I couldn’t help but think of the way things used to be

(“Unanswered Prayers,” by Pat Alger, Larry Bastian, and G. Brooks)

A bit of textual analysis, if you’ll permit me, will help highlight the scale of the shift from Garth’s model to Shania’s. Here is a capital-H hook, storywise. The writers intend, with a spidery deftness, to pull you into the situation. The details look precise but the story is anyone’s; surely twelve million people can identify immediately with this narrator (married, middle-aged, small-town, living mentally in the past), and feel impatient to know what happened next. The nested timeframes—the now of the narration, the recent “other night,” the grander and all-subsuming “the past”—place us in the unique zone of human consciousness, where all those times bounce around. The diction is colloquial, and the rhymes are exact. Sensing all this generous craftsmanship, a listener can relax and repose trust in the teller.

Now consider this first verse:

The car won’t start, it’s falling apart
I was late for work and the boss got smart
My panty line shows, got a run in my hose
My hair went flat—man, I hate that!

(“Honey, I’m Home,” by Robert John Lange and S. Twain)

Well, the rhymes are exact. But this is no story at all. It’s good-natured, banal griping. It’s as definitely gendered as the first lyric set but otherwise totally dissimilar. Character, narrative suspense, emotional shading—all laughed off as so much medieval etiquette. In place of song-length exposition, we get line-length declaration: I have a boring job! And a laundry list of first-world beefs! I’m shallow, and I don’t care who knows it! And you’ll notice that “the boss got smart” hits a false experiential note. It subordinates who’d “get smart”—a boss might say that of a mouthy underling but not the other way round.

Someone here is ignorant of the niceties and aspirations of country-lyric writing. Or perhaps is thumbing her nose at the old order while erecting a new one. Have a look at a more typical and even dopier lyric:

If elephants could fly, I’d be a little more optimistic
But I don’t see that happening anytime soon
I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic
But I don’t think that cow really jumped over the moon

(“When,” lyrics by Robert John Lange and S. Twain)

Do these writers know what “pessimistic” means? Not “credulous,” “childish,” or “mentally disabled,” as a literal-minded belief in nursery-rhyme imagery, expressed by a 32-year-old woman, would suggest. Do they know how ridiculous it is to rhyme optimistic with pessimistic?

In the next verse of “When,” craftsmanship hits rock bottom:

I’d love to wake up smiling, full of the joys of spring
And hear on CNN that Elvis lives again
And that John’s back with the Beatles and they’re going out on tour
I’ll be the first in line for tickets! Gotta see that show for sure!

This ungainly sack of syllables must have been thrown together in a tizzy of inspiration and never eyed critically afterward. And you can hear the effects of the slovenly writing in her vocal performance. When there’s so little prior attention paid to scansion, a singer is tasked with adding rests and cramming syllables; the least singable phrases she labors to pass off as relaxed and natural by breaking out of melody and into semi-musical speech. Luckily, she’s a strong, supple vocalist. But the best singing in the world can’t make “spring” rhyme with “again,” or turn “full of the joys of spring” into a phrase anyone born in the Anglosphere would utter. Most incredibly: John’s back with the Beatles? Did they hear that he not only left the quartet but was assassinated? Do they know that using the non-prospect of his reincarnation to juice up a larky song about impossible events is beyond bad taste?

It happens that the Statler Brothers also worked with this same conceit (I think of it as the Hell Freezing Over Conceit). Here’s what they came up with, back in 1981:

When you load up on a long shot and you win by half a nose
When the Fourth of July parade is called because it snows
When the waiting room is empty, and the doc says, “Come right in”
When Christmas comes before New Year’s, I’ll be coming home again.

(“Don’t Wait On Me,” Reid/Reid)

Overlooking that the scansion is a tad loose, there’s a ton of skill lightly embedded here. “Half a nose” is a delightful idiom. “Nose/snows” is an elegant and exact rhyme made even nicer by the spelling contrast. The four-”when” anaphora. In/again: a rhyme achieved via Southern accent, always welcome. Comes/coming: my rhetoric book says this kind of repetition with alteration is adnominatio—but a sharp tool by any name.

This is just to show how two writing duos, one careful and one less so, can start at the same point and end very far from each other. Shania’s references to Elvis and CNN are non-specific specifics that fail to dress the scene; the little scenic strokes in “Don’t Wait On Me,” by contrast, mount until every listener who has lost a bet, waited to see a doctor, and lives in America is nodding along in sympathy.

The Statlers were working in a tradition of logophilic country that was old even 38 years ago. In 1927, Jimmie Rodgers shot poor Thelma just to see her jump and fall. A generation later, Hank Williams watched the moon hide behind a cloud to hide its face and cry; and after Hank, several dozen brilliant wordsmiths (Dallas Frazier, Roger Miller, Jimmy Webb, Willie Nelson, Leon Payne, Rex Griffin, Liz Anderson, Merle Haggard, Harlan Howard, Sonny Throckmorton, Bob McDill, and Bill Anderson, to name a few giants) kept the love affair between earthy music and heavenly language burning hotly. The consistent hallmarks of all of these writers’ efforts: economical language, sharp character strokes and other piquant specifics, logical progression from beginning to end, universally relevant stories.

All of this lyrical skill and historical tradition is what Shania’s success bulldozed. We’re still feeling the effects today, in the amazingly awful lyrics of modern country. No names.

“Well, does everything have to be about nerdy writing-workshop mumbo-jumbo?” you might say. “What about dancing and fun?” And you’d be onto something. For one thing, Shania’s lyrics, when they crossed the wafer-thin line from patent ineptness to playful inanity (“I’m looking for some real estate, and I’m gonna get me some land” and “not even Dr. Ruth is gonna tell me how I feel” are two that make me laugh), reconnected country music to something that its clock-punching pros and cowboy-philosophes had lost touch with: Dumb Fun. Countless standards, from “Take An Old Cold Tater And Wait” through “Tiger By The Tail,” even up to “Achy Breaky Heart,” had proven an audience appetite for goofy, nutrition-free songwriting. Shania replenished the bowl, and with all sweets. It was frankly a relief, after the vegetative meaningfulness of the Garth years.

Pre-Shania country was lacking in another quality, too. Since the early 1980s, digital studio technologies were steadily gaining power, influencing how songs were constructed and how they sounded. By the end of the decade these technologies were reshaping audio qualities in most popular genres—for instance making snare drums, in productions both costly and cheap, sound like a video game dropped in an oil drum—and aggressively interacting with the evolution of others, like hip-hop, electronica, and metal. Effectively limitless editing capabilities were latched onto by musicians and producers who were less interested in a track that simulated a lifelike performance than one that arrested the ear with superhuman standards of time and pitch and speed, with crystalline shapes and sharp edits, with don’t-touch-that-dial pushes and inversions and manipulations. There were pockets of resistance, to be sure, yet the pro-digital, anti-naturalistic tropism acted like a tide pulling all boats on the sea of commercial music in one direction. Increasingly, sounds heard on records were sounds heard nowhere else, sounds that could only be heard on a record, because their authors weren’t musicians but audio engineers.

As the recording model gradually shifted, so too did the role and definition of “producer,” from musical and repertoire overseer and life-coach for neurotic singers to master manipulator of sound fragments. Through the shift, Nashville lagged. In a profitable and relatively novelty-resistant market where story and voice reigned and elite players often directed their own performances, the absence of cutting-edge mixers felt beside-the-point.

Enter Robert “Mutt” Lange. I’ve delayed the introduction of this Steve Bannon-esque figure for an indecently long word count. If you know anything about Mr. Lange, it is probably that he produced seminal, sharply sculpted music by AC/DC and Def Leppard back in the day, and that in middle age he plighted his troth to the Ontario-born Eilleen Regina Edwards, and eventually cheated on and divorced her. All of these are things I don’t care about. I only want to know how the Shania records that Mutt’s mind dominated came to sound as they did.

Do you remember a few paragraphs back when I said a lot of nasty and judgmental things? That part of the article is over. Here comes the feel-good. Because words matter, but music matters more. Music, or sound (I use them almost interchangeably), encompasses timefeel, tempo, percussive intensity, inter-player communication, audio clarity, equalization, balance, and a hundred other ineffable inputs that are sweet to the ear. By its sound does a recording fly or fall. That’s not to say that lyrics can’t contribute a lot—they can. But if your words have excellent meanings and don’t sound very good, you’d do just as well to sing in Esperanto. The three Shania records that Mutt produced—The Woman In Me, Come On Over, and Up!—are like behavioral science experiments, hypothesizing that a general audience will happily accept maladroit verbal information if presented in a context of enveloping, intensely pleasure-activating sound. The results confirm what the Pied Piper demonstrated in a related experiment: Sound has the edge and the power.

Here’s an interesting thing I noticed. Shania’s voice enters a song on average at the four-second mark. It’s not only notably early—three seconds ahead of Garth’s average, according to my small-sample study—it’s before the lyric. Before any story is offered, we are greeted with an off-the-cuff remark, or a cutesy little body-noise: “Let’s go, girls!” (“Man! I Feel Like A Woman”), “Mmm…yeah” (“You’re Still The One”), “Ow!” (“That Don’t Impress Me Much”), “Cool!” (“Don’t Be Stupid”), “Mm-rrlll” (“Ka-Ching!”), or “Oh, na-na-na-na-na-na-na” (“She’s Not Just A Pretty Face”). This is a valuation of feeling over meaning. It’s sexy. It indicates that someone was thinking: Hey, amid the current of sounds that creates the listener’s first impression, why not insert our star?

After those opening seconds, the current gains power and the song progresses downriver, carrying the listener effortlessly along its nitid surface. Like a theme-park water ride, it feels a little risky, although almost nothing along the trip is accidental. I’m close to saying that these productions are mere manufactures, soulless exudations of late-stage capitalism. Given that every individual peep and click is auditioned, performed and re-performed, mulled over, compressed and equalized and balanced, lifted and lowered and effected and edited, “manufacture” seems apt. Tellingly, it’s a term no one would use on Hank Williams or Thelonious Monk. What we’re after is music, not fragments stitched into a simulated performance, converted to wave forms, then mediated by a hundred audio experts, data crunchers, outboard effects, and market-fresh algorithms. That’s no outcry of the heart.

But the complicating fact is that what my ear tells my brain about a Shania song, as it’s playing, cancels out my skeptical presumptions about its method of manufacture. My brain, poor organ, is overwhelmed by beauteous swirls of pleasure. And it senses, correctly or not, a higher kind of worker than “mechanic” behind the sounds—more an auteur than a Wizard of Oz, so to speak. The listening experience, in the moment, is multihued and mesmerizing. I’m swept away by Paul Franklin’s easeful pedal steel work; thrilled by Jonathan Yudkin fiddling in triplicate (on “Don’t Be Stupid” his part evokes George Martin’s double-time, quasi-classical harpsichord on “In My Life”); impelled to jump in the air by startling pushes and whipsaw modulations. Even with all that’s constantly going on, I’m never unsure about where to direct my attention; the little detailwork is sharply focused but so, somehow, is the big picture. I don’t want to make crazy claims for the stuff, but I do feel it to be actual music, and as such it captures and fills my imagination in the same way a Doc Watson or Annette Pea**** record does, though I feel a little funny saying so.

Sometimes I’ll try to listen as a music producer rather than a consumer or fan. But the records vex me, because I can’t easily reverse-engineer them, can’t altogether map what I’m hearing onto the known experience of record-making. “She’s Not Just A Pretty Face” opens with a vamp that sounds exactly like people having a good time messing around casually—kinda doubt that happened! The surprising half-bar rest between the third channel and last chorus of “Man! I Feel Like A Woman” is the kind of eccentricity that you can’t accurately gauge until baking it into the track and hearing it back; what offbeat thinking led to the move and what was the Plan B if it hadn’t worked? Convincing music rides on a stream of happy accidents, but are these glossy productions really accident-lined? The records blend human performance and insanely elaborate forethought in a particularly dense and analysis-resistant way, and I’ve spent useless and embarrassing hours trying to reconstruct the workflow.  

To clarify my thinking, I decided to call George Massenburg. He knows more about commercial production and engineering techniques than any other person I know. George’s career started in the two-track era and continues on into the iPhone age, and his engineering and production resumé includes amazing, groundbreaking music by Little Feat, Linda Ronstadt, Herbie Han****, Weather Report, James Taylor, and many more. He’s also a lab nerd whose innovations in parametric EQ and automation have reshaped the industry. And George lived a long while in Nashville, so he was very familiar with the records in question, by proxy anyway. “We listen to Shania a lot, because my wife really loves the three records,” he said, or admitted. ”And I’ve listened to a lot of Mutt Lange, back from the first AC/DC. If I had to synthesize what he did: It’s a body of work, typified by his obsession to get things in the moment, sounding great, and maybe original. Because a lot of the things on those records we hadn’t quite heard that way before. The combination of instruments, or instrumental or vocal parts, and above all, the mixing.”

George stressed the mix, and, equally, patient labor. “Mutt, it could be said, was obsessive about detail. When you listen to [his records], everything’s perfectly in place. That’s a mix. The clarity in his mixes comes from him saying, bar by bar, and note by note, ‘I can’t hear that, I want to hear that’ or, ‘That’s too loud’ or ‘That’s distracting from the vocal’ until every note is just the right level. Because that’s the technique that we grew in the 1980s and into the 1990s, until it was abandoned because nobody would pay us for it. But back then, they were willing to put the effort into making something that you could listen to a hundred times.”

I asked George how the tech of the 1990s might have specifically come into play in the three records. “You remember the 4000E [SSL] console? When it was finally tricked out, it had two equalizers in the center that you could automate. Mutt was the first person to go through vocals in a mix and EQ word-for-word. With a vocal that really has to sit just right, the classic way, and still basically the best way, is actually moving a fader, with your hand. That’s gotten more and more accessible with some of these modern control surfaces, where they really are responsive, almost to the point of being an analog feel. Moving a fader, then if a syllable is low, turn it up. Just like we used to do on analog automation. And there’s automation everywhere, but it feels organic and open—I think the production feels organic. One idea follows the next, in a lovely and easy flow.”

I had always been strongly impressed by the invariability of the Shania records across a wide range of playback systems, small and cheap to big and fancy. George agreed: “If you listen to the way Mutt balances kick and bass, it’s perfect, and works on any system. It’s hard, and I did it on some of these records that still sound good in supermarkets or earbuds. Like Earth Wind & Fire, although I was just learning how to do mixes…and still am.”

George suggested I get in touch with Jeff Balding, who had worked as an engineer under Lange on Come On Over. By email, Jeff confirmed many of George’s observations. “Mutt looks at every little detail and works to present it in a way that sounds fresh. Everything in music has basically been heard before, so the trick is figuring out how to present it in a way that sounds fresh to the listener. Each small detail adds up to make a noticeable difference in the recording. On Come On Over, we spent a lot of time on before we started recording on getting sounds. Not only making sure each instrument had its own space but making sure the tones were spectrally even within the instrument’s frequency range—especially the kick and bass. I remember using a 32-band graphic EQ on the kick, doing subtle frequency adjustments throughout its tonal range. To me this allowed it to be more compatible in playback across different speakers since there were no protruding frequencies in it.”

This was fantastic intel to get. After twenty years of puzzlement and speculation, I was receiving detailed first-hand information. It took a little of the mystery out of why these mixes sounded more buttery-smooth than most others, and it confirmed that I wasn’t imagining the phenomenon of Shania’s records sounding markedly consistent across a variety of platforms. Jeff continued, on the subject of obsessiveness: “On Come On Over we spent a lot of time making sure every sound was set evenly ‘on the front’ of the monitor. This was not just miking and EQ, but it was every detail down to how the guitar players held the pick and where they struck the string. When you combined those details with a very tight track that has the right parts and inversions, and a great feel, it created a sonic space that opened up and allowed everything to be heard.”

We’re getting to a level of nerdiness now that might lose readers who don’t work on mixes, but anyone who has or does will love what follows. “I can remember on a project I mixed with Mutt where we used the SSL automated EQ. We spent a day and a half automating the EQ on the lead vocal.  Tweaking every syllable so tonally the vocal was even all the way through the mix. It’s a lot of work but when a vocal sits that even in a mix it becomes a real focal point and is almost hypnotizing to listen to. It’s almost like your ear and brain relax because listening to it is so easy to digest sonically. Of course now, with DAW’s, we can automate every plug-in on every track….”

Two questions came now to mind. One was who decided to pay for this unusual extravagance and why. I never learned the answer. The other was how one maintains a stable perspective after ducking down this rabbit-hole of insanity. For a normal brain there are investment issues: These drums sound great not because they sound great but because I just spent a thousand hours laboring on them under an attractive theory of how to make drums sound great. “Of course,” said Jeff, “how deep you go into some of this depends on the music you’re working on and your vision for it.  Sometimes things can get too perfect and the music loses organic appeal. My experience with Mutt was he also recognized this side of it. Several times after working on something and hearing it in the mix, he would say, ‘I think it lost something. Let’s go back to the original.’”

After talking to the two engineers, the question of the provenance of the sound no longer seemed so existential and out-of-reach. There were the financial and human resources—I had always imagined those, of course. I had also pictured, though not with the fine-grained detail that Jeff’s account provided, the sort of drudgery involved. That last piece of information, though—he also recognized this side of it—made a nice clicking sound in my mind. Deep machine knowledge, extreme patience: rare qualities, but not super-rare. It’s the disposition allowing you to calmly throw away a mountain of work based on an instinctual reappraisal that’s rarer than hen’s teeth. Put the three together and now you’re in a chalet in Switzerland, looming over all mortal competitors.

Koan: the ideally rigorous theory must include an ongoing wariness of its own limits and potential failures.

For me, the drudgery may be the dealbreaker. I’ve fooled around now and then, simulating sounds and aping mix precepts from the three records, trying for textures as sexy and smooth as Shania’s. Needless to say, I don’t have the money that Mutt had. But I can take out a home equity loan, and I can dial up Jonathan Yudkin and Jeff Balding; and maybe I can find a woman with terrific pipes and a twenty-inch waist to sing my songs; and maybe I can will myself into the frame of mind where work is perpetually unfinished, and just discard and discard. I bet I really can do all that. It’s the drudgery I can’t do. Drudgery has always seemed to me contradictory to the proper record-making spirit.

Yet it’s something almost everyone with experience in commercial music has known intimately. Once I ran into the mandolinist Sam Bush, shortly after he’d done a session for The Woman In Me. I told him of my interest in the mechanics of Shania’s productions, and begged for some juicy details from the session. “Four hours of the same sorta beginner’s rhythm chops, over and over,” he said. “Take after take after take. Mutt kept going after these little variations, and I tried doing what he wanted.” He shook his head sadly. “But I was never quite sure what he was going after, or hearing.”

“If you didn’t get it,” I said, “then who would? There isn’t anyone alive that could have done better than you.”

“That’s true,” he said, without false humility. This suggested to me that Mutt Lange may have yet another extraordinary ability: a willingness to rob everyone of pleasure on the way to actualizing his vision of music. You hear from various sources that he’s a decent enough fellow, with a gentle and kind manner. What you never hear is that his productions are fun to work on. This is true of performers who track for him, and I suspect it’s truer yet of the engineers who slave over his mix sessions (those poor souls don’t ordinarily have much fun anyway). Lynn Baltzell was 39 years old when he slumped suddenly across the board and died, in the midst of working on mixes for The Woman In Me. The album notes have a dedication to him.

There’s more than one way to make a record, and some of them even involve having a good time. My friend, the late Jack Clement, produced artists like Charley Pride, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Lee Lewis, Doc Watson, U2, and Louis Armstrong—all people of deeper talent than Shania Twain. I wonder—sincerely—how those records will sound in 100 years, and how Come On Over will sound. Jack’s “approach” was almost no approach at all, in the older Nashville-producer tradition: get a great song together with great performers, hit the “record” button, listen hard, keep out of the way. His legendary typed-and-posted “Band Member Rules” included “be on time,” “don’t be shy with your playing,” “don’t ask for headphones,” and “remember, it only takes three minutes to make a hit record.” Those conventions would never have squared with things like 70 takes and word-by-word automated vocal mixing. (The headphone rule alone would have prevented Jack from making anything that sounded remotely like a Shania Twain record.) Under this approach, a session was an event, a performance, and the recording documented it. In method and outcome, it’s about as far from a Mutt Lange production as you can get.

Consumers love spectacle and sensation, and, since they care little about the complex interconnectedness of performance and recording, are unlikely ever to demand more records that sound as though headphones weren’t used. For this reason, and against my own interests, I predict the “spectacular mix” model will prevail over the “performance event” model in the years to come. Reaching for a tool or using a state-of-the-art method is a lot easier than proceeding as though neither tool nor method exists. Isolated performance, no-hands mixing, autotuning—all these create ease and efficiencies for engineers. All are affordable and none is inherently wicked. But it’s the mind, not the machines, that makes the difference between patterns-in-time and music. Absent a deliberate commitment to interpolate an eccentric and overbearing mind into the process, a Mutt Lange or a George Massenburg, we might expect the commercial music of the future to be rather impoverished and dull.

Because I love music that’s old, and sometimes raw, the music I’ve been writing about is challenging to me, cutting against my biases and obstructing easy analysis. Shania’s records were probably no fun to make, but they’re definitely a hell of a lot of fun to hear. Whether you like them or not, you should give them their due as engineering triumphs, admirable attainments of late 20th-century science. Each song is, like the Frankenstein monster, a convincingly living thing, compelling our interest, created in a laboratory by a singular dark genius. But let’s not lose sight of the more traditional method of creating life. F*cking: it’s simple, natural, and 100% fun.

https://www.talkhouse.com/the-spectacle-and-sensation-of-shania-twain/

Robbie Fulks is a musician—country, but also strongly attracted to jazz, bluegrass, gospel, experimental musics—living near Chicago. He has made a dozen solo records, the latest of which, Gone Away Backward, came out in 2013 and features small acoustic string groups playing sad songs about modern American life.  His website is here.

The 61st annual Grammy Awards are tonight. 20 years ago Shania performed "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!" and won 2 awards (Best Country Song ~ "You're Still The One" and Best Female Country Vocal Performance ~ "You're Still The One").

Tenille Townes Made Her Debut on Stage With Shania!

By Lauryn Snapp | CMT Cody Alan | February 20, 2019

Tenille Townes is hitting the road with Dierks Bentley on his 2019 ‘Burning Man Tour’ and for good reason. Have you heard her? The “Somebody’s Daughter” may have moved to Nashville from the winter landscapes of the Canadian frontier, but her voice is warm with a unique ambiance.

Before she heads off on Dierks' tour, Cody Alan had to discover which country star was the fire starter to put her on a path toward a career in country music.

Spoiler Alert: It was none other than Shania Twain who lit the initial flame. Moreover, Tenille was nine years old.

“Ill never forget standing next to my hero and next to this black curtain of the lights of 18-thousand screaming people,” says Tenille.

Watch this Cody Alan interview to hear the whole story as only Tenille can tell it. Tune in and catch this rising star as she joins as Cody’s guest on CMT Radio Live tonight. Find your station by clicking HERE.

Click Link Below To Watch Interview.

https://cmtcody.iheart.com/featured/cmt-cody-alan/content/2019-02-20-tenille-townes-made-her-debut-on-stage-with-shania/

Avril Lavigne Shares How She Wrote New Music While Fighting for Her Life

Avril Lavigne talks about new music, dealing with Lyme Disease, and how she won a contest when she was 14 years old and met Shania.

Eric Church, Joanna Cotten Hail ’90s Country Queen Shania Twain in Toronto [WATCH]

By Bobby Moore | The Boot | March 14, 2019

During a Friday night (March 8) show at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Eric Church and backup singer Joanna Cotten paid tribute to country superstar Shania Twain -- an Ontario native -- with a harmony-filled duet version of her hit song “No One Needs to Know.” Readers can press play above to watch the moment.

“No One Needs to Know” was the sixth single off of Twain’s sophomore album, The Woman in Me. It spent a week at number one in July of 1996. Although it’s less obvious than some of Twain’s later hits, the catchy tale of a cautious yet idealistic lover is likely still etched in the minds of even the most causal ‘90s country music fans.

Church’s dual role as a guitar-slinging troubadour and an arena rock showman suits a song from Twain’s incredible run of commercial success. Cotten, fresh off a live duet of the Beatles’ “Come Together” with Church that caught plenty of press attention, reminds us that she’s a vocal powerhouse capable of doing Church’s covers repertoire justice.

That’s not to paint Cotten as nothing more than Church’s on-hand cover song interpreter: She contributes live to such Church standards as “Kill a Word,” “That’s Damn Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Over When It’s Over.”

Church's Toronto stop was part of his ongoing Double Down Tour. He’s playing two-night-stands at arenas across North America in support of the 2018 album Desperate Man. The tour, which also included a March 9 show at Scotiabank Arena, continues through June.

https://theboot.com/eric-church-joanna-cotten-shania-twain-no-one-needs-to-know/

Warryn Campbell Helps Sidibe Put an R&B Spin on Shania Twain’s “Still the One”

You Know I Got Soul | April 4, 2019

We’ve continued to feature the music of emerging r&b artist Sidibe over the past few years, and she hasn’t let us down yet. The singer originally came on our radar after legendary producer Warryn Campbell began working with her, and quite frankly the two have cooked up magic.

That trend continues on Sidibe’s latest single “Still the One” which is a beautiful remake of the Shania Twain classic. Rather than create a straight up cover of the song, the singer puts her own stamp on this version to create something unique and fresh.

The song was produced by Nico Stadi with additional keys by Warryn Campbell. Stadi also produced Sidibe’s previous single “What Should One Do” which released last year.

In case you missed it, we originally featured Sidibe for her EP “You Got the Luck” back in 2016.

Click Link Below To Listen.

http://youknowigotsoul.com/warryn-campbell-helps-sidibe-put-an-rb-spin-on-shania-twains-still-the-one

"You're Still The One" and "Any Man Of Mine" were performed on "The Voice"  tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmR1thUAMcM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hYVOcR0rhk

How Did Shania + Dolly Inspire Kelsea Ballerini For ‘Miss Me More Tour’

By Lauryn Snapp | CMT Cody Alan | April 30, 2019

Kelsea Ballerini is headlining her first-ever arena tour, and there is a “lot of glitter and lots of shine.”

Kelsea recently glowed as she shared details behind her tour with Cody Alan. The "I Hate Love Songs" singer shared that she loves legendary country divas and pulled her creative inspiration for this tour based on a series of questions that she would ask herself. “What would Shania do?” or “What would Dolly do?”

Kelsea admits that this tour is a dream come true, so much so, that she became heavily involved in every aspect of its production. “I made mood boards for every single song,” shared Kelsea. “From what I wanted the content to look like to what colors would pop when, and on what lyric.”

Kelsea hopes that her creative ideas for her "Miss Me More Tour" will allow her to build a deeper connection with fans. She tells Cody, “It’s this opportunity to create a world and a mood for people to walk into for 75-80 minutes and feel something with you.”

Listen to the full interview by tuning into Cody Alan’s Cody Cast Podcast by clicking HERE.

Want to see Kelsea and tourmate Brett Young on the road? Show details and ticket information can be found by visiting KelseaBallerini.com.

https://cmtcody.iheart.com/featured/cmt-cody-alan/content/2019-04-30-how-did-shania-dolly-inspire-kelsea-ballerini-for-miss-me-more-tour/

Lauren Alaina Leads All-Female Cover Of A Shania Twain Hit At iHeartCountry

By Hayden Brooks | iHeart | May 4, 2019

It’s no secret that women in country music deserve more shine and the 2019 iHeartCountry Festival presented by Capital One® made sure to do just that when Lauren Alaina, Tenille Townes and Caylee Hammack came together for a variation of a guitar pull at the all-star Austin event on Saturday (May 4).

After some appropriate introductions from "Bobby Bones" co-host Amy Brown, the trio of country names appeared on the Frank Erwin Center stage for a 25-minute set, which made sure to make its point loud and clear: Women matter. While Hammack kicked off the set with "Family Tree," Townes opted for "Somebody's Daughter" and Alaina went for her 2018 single, "Ladies In The ‘90s," as well as her ultimate anthem for the haters, "Road Less Traveled." After showing love to each of their respective material, the trio saved the best for last when they churned out a playful duet of Shania Twain’s iconic 1997 smash, "Man! I Feel Like A Woman."

“I have a question: Where all my girls in the crowd tonight? Tenille, Caylee, y'all come out here and join me on this one. I need a little help," Alaina said from the stage. "Alright, ladies, let's have some fun. Let's go girls." With their sparkling ensembles, the three-piece danced around stage, offered up some refreshing ad-libs to the number and, most importantly, repped their womanhood to the packed audience.

If you liked what you saw from the Bobby Bones-hosted festival, head on over to iHeartRadio.com/CountryFestival to see all the happenings on stage and backstage of the star-studded show!

https://www.iheart.com/content/2019-05-04-lauren-alaina-leads-all-female-cover-of-a-shania-twain-hit-at-iheartcountry/

Flashback: Shania Twain, Alison Krauss Sing ‘Forever and For Always’ at CMT Awards

Backed by Union Station, country-pop superstar reimagines her song at the 2003 Flameworthys

By Stephen L. Betts | Rolling Stone | June 5, 2019

When CMT debuted the genre-mixing concert series CMT Crossroads in 2002 with Americana darling Lucinda Williams and English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello performing each other’s songs, the network established a musical mutual admiration society that continues to this day.

A year after CMT Crossroads premiered, the network was slowly but transitioning from primarily a music-video channel to one occasionally featuring special programming. Music videos became the focus of their annual fan-voted awards show, then called the Flameworthys, which remains one of the channel’s highest-rated events and continues to present one-of-a-kind artistic collaborations.

Such was the case when globally recognized country-pop superstar Shania Twain teamed with acoustic bluegrass-country band Union Station, fronted by Alison Krauss, at the 2003 Flameworthys. Twain’s dystopian clip for “I’m Gonna Getcha Good” won for “Concept Video of the Year” the same night, but for her performance of the ballad “Forever and for Always,” the Canadian stripped away the glossy production of the original and allowed the breezy, unplugged instrumentation to take center stage. With a band that features Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Dan Tyminksi and Ron Block on guitars, Barry Bales on bass, Larry Atamanuik on drums, and the angelic-voiced Krauss on fiddle and harmony, Twain shines in a glorious performance that keeps her seated throughout, even as the crowd’s excitement and appreciation reaches its crescendo near the song’s end.

Krauss and Union Station would join Twain later in 2003 for Up! Close and Personal, an in-concert video album which took much of its inspiration from Elvis Presley’s ’68 Comeback Special. It was released on DVD in 2004. Among the songs covered was “You Shook Me All Night Long,” from one of Krauss’s favorite bands, AC/DC, whose 1980 recording of the song was produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange,” Twain’s then-husband and producer.

Collaborations in the spotlight at tonight’s CMT Music Awards include Video of the Year finalist “Coming Home,” by Keith Urban and Julia Michaels, as well as Brandi Carlile and Tanya Tucker, Brett Young and Boyz II Men, and Toby Keith with Cole Swindell. The show airs Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. ET, live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/shania-twain-alison-krauss-forever-and-for-always-cmt-awards-844766/

Belfast's Grand Central Hotel celebrates first anniversary [Photos]

Belfast Telegraph | July 5, 2019

Hastings Hotels celebrated the one year anniversary of Belfast's Grand Central Hotel last night. The hotel has welcomed Their Royal Highnesses Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, Irish President Michael D Higgins and a host of stars from around the world including Shania Twain, Jodie Kidd and Jamie Dornan.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/galleries/entertainment/belfasts-grand-central-hotel-celebrates-first-anniversary-photos-38285205.html

I wonder if it was when Shania was singing "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!".

Scots mum says Shania Twain gig ‘gave her orgasm’ as she suffers from rare Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder

A SCOTS mum has told how she "gets an orgasm driving over potholes" and even climaxed at a Shania Twain concert due to a rare condition that's "wrecked her life".

By Jonathan Whitelaw | The Scottish Sun | July 23, 2019

It's reported that woman, from East Dumbartonshire, suffers from Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder.

And she's been battling the condition for almost two years.

The Evening Times reports that the mum of three claims she has the condition as a result of a botched smear test.

She said: "There are times where it’s a tickle all day, but then there are times when something sets it off and it’s a full-blown orgasm.

“Driving over potholes, aircraft turbulence, escalators, the vibration from violins.

"I don’t know how many women could say they went to a Shania Twain concert and she made them orgasm.”

The mum claimed that her ordeal started not long after a routine gynaecological examination in Glasgow in September 2017.

She claimed that the doctor "wasn't focussed" and "rammed this speculum into me."

And afterwards her genitals became painfully swollen.

She's then started experiencing the symptoms for the first that October.

Eventually she was diagnosed with PGAD, caused by damage to her pudendal nerve.

A spokeswoman for NHS GGC said: “We have explored and exhausted all treatments available locally for this patient and have been unable to relieve their symptoms.

“Therefore, we have offered to refer them to a specialist consultant in London.”

A spokesperson for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "We have explored and exhausted all treatments available locally for this patient and have been unable to relieve their symptoms.

"Therefore, we have offered to refer them to a specialist consultant in London".

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/fabulous/4516404/shania-twain-orgasm-persistent-genital-arousal-disorder/

Kelsea Ballerini interview: 'I was so naive at the start, but I had Taylor and Shania to look up to'

By Tom Eames | Smooth Country - UK | September 16, 2019

Kelsea Ballerini is one of the most successful and exciting stars in country music today.

Since releasing her debut album in 2015, she has scored several huge hits, and will soon unveil her long-awaited third studio album.

Kelsea dropped by the Smooth Country studio while on her UK tour, and she revealed where she's up to on her latest record, her ultimate country idols and advice to up-and-coming stars.

Watch Kelsea's full interview with Eamonn Kelly above.

Talking about her next album - which will feature her recent single 'Homecoming Queen?' - Keslea said: "I have to have intentional cut-offs for songwriting. If I keep writing, I will just redo the record 85 million times, and I’ll just never have a done album.

So my cut-off was like two weeks ago. So I’m done writing. I have to be done. And I have like 200 songs. And now I have to sort through it all and be like, 'OK, what’s good enough?'

"I’m taking my songwriter hat off for a couple of months while I finish the album so that I don’t confuse myself, because I’m going to write something and be like, 'The whole album’s wrong. I have to redo everything.'"

With Kelsea starting her career at 19, she had some advice for anyone starting out in the industry today: "Well, the cool part about the music industry, and the frustrating part about the music industry – one of them – is that there is just not a rulebook. There’s no set way to make it happen.

"That’s why there’s shows that people go on, and some people break young, and some people break older. Sometimes, it takes a certain song, and you’ve had three records. It just depends.

"And I think that’s really frustrating, because you don’t know where to start, but when it does work, it’s so custom. It’s so unique to you and your path. I would say: if you love writing, write as much as you can. I think songwriting, for me, is the reason I have the opportunity to be an artist.

"If I wasn’t a songwriter, I don’t think I’d have this career. So I’d say that if you have something to say, I would write until you feel you’ve said it."

When asked how she managed to break through the noise, Kelsea explained: "I was so naïve. I didn’t know. I was so young. And luckily for me, I had Taylor [Swift] to look up to. I had Carrie [Underwood] to look up. And Shania [Twain].

Kelsea Ballerini with Shania Twain in 2016.

"There were so women in country music at that point that I just thought, 'Of course I can do this'. I didn’t know at the time, really, that there was a gap of women that weren’t on country radio. But I was naïve to it. I didn’t think that that was going to be a conversation.

"And so when we ended up putting the first single out, and it started charting and doing well, that’s when people were like, 'Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you have a single that’s working on the radio'. I was like, 'Really? Why? All these other women have done it.' I was just naïve. I think it’s the greatest gift I had."

Kelsea also singled out Shania Twain as one of her heroes, saying: "She gets me in the right mind-set, because not only was she so bold with her music – and she wrote it all – but she was just bold in the way she dressed, and the way she performed, and did music videos, and all of that. She was just a trailblazer."

Kelsea Ballerini's new single 'Homecoming Queen?' is out now.

https://www.smoothradio.com/news/music/kelsea-ballerini-interview-video/

Queen Latifah and Shania Twain discover an overnight internet sensation CJ Stain

Press Release | Digital Journal | September 19, 2019

Ontario, Canada - C.J. Stain is an Ontario, Canada-born R&B singer, whose song “One” is generating significant buzz on YouTube. The song’s message about gender equality, tolerance, and perseverance has garnered acclaim by the music community on the popular social network, but the highest praise came from hip-hop legend turned singer and actress Queen Latifah (real name Dana Owens), who is an LGBTQ+ icon, ally, and advocate.

“I see you O! My how you’ve grown! Keep doing You!” the legend responded to the new song, adding a wink face emoji to the direct message.

Stain, who also considers himself an actor as well as a musician, has received numerous other endorsements for his work. Most notably, the producer has created remixes of “Cold Water,” the successful pop hit performed by fellow Canadian Justin Beiber, as well as his own interpretation of Sage the Gemini’s “Good Thing” remix featuring Nick Jonas.

Another Canadian singer and songwriter, Shania Twain, also has expressed an interest in and appreciation of C.J. Stain’s variety of production and singing, but had especially strong compliments for Stain’s ability as a wordsmith.

“You’re a great songwriter, CJ,” said the Queen of Country Pop.

Stain’s style blends pop, R&B, rap, and soul. His artistry and vision in both original productions and remaking popular hits shows the versatility and commitment to contributing great art to the music community. That his music also offers a message of advocacy lends even more credibility to his status as an artist to keep an eye on.  

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4450326 

Sideboob Performs At Northwest String Summit 2019: Pro-Shot Videos

By Scott Bernstein | JamBase | October 10, 2019

Sideboob is an all-star supergroup led by Shook Twins, Yonder Mountain String Band‘s Allie Kral and Mimi Naja of Fruition that formed a few years back for a set at the Northwest String Summit. The group’s sets have gone on to become a yearly tradition at the festival in North Plains, Oregon and JamGrass.TV shared pro-shot videos from their performance at the 2019 String Summit.

The musicians bonded over their love of 1990s R&B and loaded their set with songs from the era. For their 2019 set, Shook Twins, Karl and Naja formed a core band with Alexis Mahler, Alex Radakovich, Kat Fountain and Megan Letts. Sideboob was joined by Anna Moss for their rendition of Shania Twain’s “Man I Feel That A Woman” that kicked off the set. Then, the group performed Jennifer Paige’s “Crush,” Donna Lewis’ “I Love You Always Forever,” Natalie Merchant’s “Carnival” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle.”

Sideboob was augmented by Ley Line, Sweet Lillies and Five Letter Word for En Vogue’s “My Lovin’ You’re Never Gonna Get It” before Moss and Lindsay Lou helped out on a Fugees style “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” A string section joined in the action for a rendition of TLC’s “No Scrubs” before Sideboob performed “Dreams” by The Cranberries.

The strings returned for a cover of Macy Gray’s “I Try” and then Allie Kral led a take on Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch.” Finally, Sideboob loaded the stage with all of their guests, dancers, AC Sapphire, Sarah Clarke and Melly Fances to conclude the set with a rousing rendition of Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.”

Watch the Sideboob set from this year’s String Summit in the playlist below:

https://www.jambase.com/article/sideboob-string-summit-2019-videos

***Sideboob could be the coolest name for a band ever.

Surrey's BRIT winning producer Jake Gosling on working with Ed Sheeran and signing an exciting Guildford singer

By Jamie Jubert | Surrey Live | October 20, 2019

One Direction fans flooded Windlesham

When One Direction went to work with him, fans caught wind of the boys' whereabouts and showed up in their droves outside Sticky Studios.

Gosling says the hoards of Directioners ordered Domino's pizzas outside the studio's perimeter while paparazzi sneakily tried to get pictures through the studio windows.

Sticky Studios is a rather unusual recording venue that in recent years has welcomed the best in the business. It's a converted summerhouse with earth, not concrete, beneath the floorboards.

But according to Gosling, this is part of its chilled charm. He said: "Shania Twain enjoyed hanging out in Windlesham because it's so chilled, the studio is very relaxed."

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ed-sheeran-producer-jake-gosling-17092930

The Morning Show @morningshowca

What @ShaniaTwain did in Toronto that shocked @ladyantebellum MORE: https://globalnews.ca/video/6204781/lady-antebellums-new-album-ocean #TMS @carolynglobal @jmacspeaks #LadyAntebellum @BigMachine @HillaryScottLA @charleskelleyla #DaveHaywood

Shania takes Uber!  | VIDEO - https://twitter.com/morningshowca/status/1197973203991314432

3:20 PM ET - 22 Nov 19

http://twitter.com/morningshowca

Tommy wrote:

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I wonder if it was when Shania was singing "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!".

Scots mum says Shania Twain gig ‘gave her orgasm’ as she suffers from rare Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder

A SCOTS mum has told how she "gets an orgasm driving over potholes" and even climaxed at a Shania Twain concert due to a rare condition that's "wrecked her life".

By Jonathan Whitelaw | The Scottish Sun | July 23, 2019

It's reported that woman, from East Dumbartonshire, suffers from Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder.

And she's been battling the condition for almost two years.

The Evening Times reports that the mum of three claims she has the condition as a result of a botched smear test.

She said: "There are times where it’s a tickle all day, but then there are times when something sets it off and it’s a full-blown orgasm.

“Driving over potholes, aircraft turbulence, escalators, the vibration from violins.

"I don’t know how many women could say they went to a Shania Twain concert and she made them orgasm.”

The mum claimed that her ordeal started not long after a routine gynaecological examination in Glasgow in September 2017.

She claimed that the doctor "wasn't focussed" and "rammed this speculum into me."

And afterwards her genitals became painfully swollen.

She's then started experiencing the symptoms for the first that October.

Eventually she was diagnosed with PGAD, caused by damage to her pudendal nerve.

A spokeswoman for NHS GGC said: “We have explored and exhausted all treatments available locally for this patient and have been unable to relieve their symptoms.

“Therefore, we have offered to refer them to a specialist consultant in London.”

A spokesperson for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "We have explored and exhausted all treatments available locally for this patient and have been unable to relieve their symptoms.

"Therefore, we have offered to refer them to a specialist consultant in London".

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/fabulous/4516404/shania-twain-orgasm-persistent-genital-arousal-disorder/

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Mum who suffers from uncontrollable orgasms denied medicinal cannabis treatment she says would change her life

By Brittany Vonow | The Sun - UK | January 18, 2020

A MUM who suffers from uncontrollable orgasms has been denied medicinal cannabis treatment she says would change her life.

Maria, 61, climaxes when driving over bumps on the road, taking the escalator - even having an orgasm at a Shania Twain concert.

But now the mum, who says the condition was triggered during an NHS check up, has been left devastated after being told the health board won't fund the medicinal cannabis to help her.

This means she will have to fork out £1,000 a month for the treatment herself.

The widow, from East Dunbartonshire, told the The Herald: “Why should I be paying the bill when I didn’t cause the problem? This was inflicted on me by the NHS, so the NHS should be paying for it.

"It’s been recommended by the very specialist they sent me to – that I had to fight to be sent to – and now they’re ignoring his advice.

"The condition has calmed down a lot. My own GP says she’s never seen me looking better in the past two years than I do now. They’re the only thing that’s worked. For me, it’s amazing not to have feeling down there."

Maria believes the condition was sparked during a routine check at Glasgow's Stobhill Hospital in September 2017, claiming a consultant "rammed" a speculum into her.

In the weeks after the examination, Maria said she started to notice distressing symptoms, which were eventually diagnosed as PGAD, caused by damage to her pudendal nerve.

And she said she was furious after it was a NHS consultant who recommended the treatment, with the board now not paying.

Other treatments, including numbing gels, pelvic floor physiotherapy and steroid injections directly into her clitoris, have proved ineffective.

Previously, the mum opened up about the condition - saying she first began to notice distressing symptoms in the wake of her smear test.

Maria said: "I just didn't know what was happening.

"You've got this great arousal but it's not going anywhere or triggered by anything.

"Most of the time I feel like I am sitting on an ant's nest.

"There's times where it's a tickle all day, but then something sets it off and it's a full-blown orgasm.

"Driving over potholes, aircraft turbulence, escalators, the vibration from violins - I don't know how many women could say they went to a Shania Twain concert and she made them orgasm.

"Ninety per cent of my life has been wrecked and the other ten per cent is not so great either.

"I had to give up volunteering because just moving can set it off.

"One of my friends said to me I'd become a recluse."

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10768264/mum-uncontrollable-orgasms-denied-medicinal-cannabis-treatment/ 

idolator @idolator

On this day in 1999, @ShaniaTwain became the first female artist to get consecutive diamond album certifications 💎💎

https://twitter.com/idolator/status/1249366991175122944

12:01 PM ET - 12 Apr 20

http://twitter.com/idolator

Hackers Threaten to Publish Legal Information on Celebrities

By José Rodríguez | IHODL | May 8, 2020

A hacker or group of hackers have managed to access almost 1TB of legal data belonging to stars around the world, including singers and actors such as Lady Gaga, Elton John, Robert DeNiro and Madonna, and have threatened to make it public if they do not receive a payment, probably in Bitcoin.

They have reportedly managed to access this data after breaking into the system of a popular New York law firm.

In particular, the law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks has been the victim of a REvil ransomware attack (also known as Sodinokibi) in which the hackers have gained access to 756GB of data.

The hacked information includes confidential contracts, phone numbers, email addresses, personal correspondence, non-disclosure agreements and more.

Even though the amount the attackers are asking for has not been disclosed, it will invariably be paid with Bitcoin.

It looks like the attackers plan to publish the information gradually in order to increase the pressure on the victims and make sure the payment is made.

It should be noted the firm represents a large number of celebrities such as AC/DC, Barbara Streisand, U2, Madonna, Maroon 5, Robert De Niro, Shania Twain and companies such as Facebook, IMAX, Sony and HBO.

https://ihodl.com/topnews/2020-05-08/hackers-threaten-publish-legal-information-on-celebrities/

Louise Parker Covers Shania’s ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’

By Nick Cantwell | Belles & Gals | May 23, 2020

Today we’re delighted to feature a brand new track from Louise Parker, a wondeful cover of Shania Twain’s ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’. The song was recorded for a segment on Country Hits, so you’ll notice that Louise has changed some of the names, with three UK famous DJ’s mentioned in the track. Listen to the very end for one of the mentions – if it doesn’t put a smile on your face, nothing will.

Louise Parker:

‘When Matt (Spracklen) First told me about the home-made country hits segment I knew I wanted to be involved straight away. I wanted to pick a song that was upbeat and sassy, that I could have fun with and people would singalong to. As a huge Shania Twain fan one of her songs was the obvious choice. What I love about ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’ is that you don’t have to be a country music fan to know and love that song, it breaks boundaries and connects people from all walks of life.’

Facebook.com/louiseparkermusic

Twitter.com/louisepmusic

Instagram.com/louiseparkermusic

https://www.bellesandgals.com/2020/05/23/louise-parker-covers-shanias-that-dont-impress-me-much/