Shania Twain

In the mid '90s, a one-time lounge singer from Timmons, ON, who had suffered childhood poverty and the deaths of both parents in a car crash turned the country music establishment on its ear. Despite Nashville's need for a rags-to-riches backstory, Shania Twain was resisted at first by many in the Music City, not only because she was Canadian (and thus an outsider), but also because she often wore midriff-baring outfits which didn't fit the traditional image of a chaste country chanteuse.

At first, Twain was presented as a harmless novelty -- the cover of her first album portrays her in a fur-lined parka, next to a wolf, and the music is conveyor-belt Nashville fare, sung with a Southern trill. But then Robert John "Mutt" Lange, the architect of such multiplatinum hard-rock opuses as Def Leppard's Hysteria and AC/DC's Back in Black proposed a collaboration (Twain and Lange would eventually marry), and the result was The Woman In Me. Twain and Lange wrenched conventional pop-country from its genteel moorings by outfitting The Woman In Me with sexy come-ons, boom-boom-bap beats, and massed vocal choruses straight out of Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me." Singles like "Any Man of Mine" and "If You're Not In It For Love" not only rocked every line-dance club in the U.S., but the foundations of Music Row itself.

But Woman's achievements were chicken feed compared to those of Come On Over, the sixth biggest selling record of all time. Fiddles and steel guitar provide nominal country window dressing, but this album is pristine pop that boasts a Sistine Chapel–level of craftsmanship. Whether squeaking a la Cyndi Lauper or purring as if she were caught in coital bliss, Twain articulates various states of romantic satisfaction and dissatisfaction: She tells her man to quit micromanaging her ("Don't Be Stupid") or celebrates a relationship's endurance (the monumental wedding band staple "You're Still the One"). Unlike Garth Brooks, her only peer in the country crossover sweepstakes, Twain's music burns ahead without a touch of egotism or vague gravitas, and women around the world identified with her while humming the tunes.

Up! released after a five-year pause, contains two discs: one mixed for the country market, one for the pop market (an eastern mix is available overseas). Here, Come On Over's reach was expanded to ABBA tributes ("C'est la Vie") and Latin-pop ("Juanita"), but the album is also larded with filler. Still, Twain and Lange had managed a truly rare feat: making borderless, omnivorous pop from one of the most closed-off American idioms. (ROB KEMP)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide