Global Pop Dominatrix

After dark, with the temperature fit only for polar bears and Canadians, Shania Twain climbs onto a stage. The following day, she'll be surrounded by hundreds of dancers and tens of thousands of spectators, but tonight it's just empty seats, some stagehands and her band, trying to ignore the thick layer of ice on their instruments as they mime her latest hit single.

Tomorrow the Canadian Football League will be playing the Grey Cup, its championship, in this stadium in Edmonton, Alberta. Twain, the star of the halftime show, runs gamely through a two-song set of country-flavored pop music, wearing faded bell-bottom jeans, a maroon baseball cap and, most important, a white down jacket. As she lip-syncs to "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!," she does a pogo dance -- mostly to keep warm, it seems.

Inside the stadium lobby, a production assistant mans the telephone, speaking in the urgent tones of a military commandant: "I'm calling from Commonwealth Stadium to order a burrito for Shania Twain. It's a bean-and-cheese burrito with nothing else inside. Salsa, guacamole and sour cream on the side. We'll send someone over now." They make your burrito a little faster when your last record sold 34 million copies worldwide, the most ever by a female artist. In the United States, that album, Come On Over, sold 19 million, tying it with AC/DC's Back in Black and the Beatles' White Album for sixth place on the all-time chart. The thirty-seven-year-old Twain has many pop-star assets: a sweet voice, good looks, a gift for melody and lyrical sass, and a compelling rags-to-riches biography. (Born Eileen Regina Edwards, she grew up poor in rural Timmins, Ontario. When she was twenty-two, her parents died in a car crash and she had to take care of her younger siblings.) As is so often the case, the public image and the private person don't match. Although Twain is famous for bringing sexy, midriff- baring outfits to country music, she has said that she is not really a sexual person. And although her lyrics depict a spontaneous, fun-loving gal, she's focused on her career with total tunnel vision. She married a fellow workaholic, producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who introduced her to the ascetic spiritual path of Sant Mat: vegetarianism, no alcohol, lots of meditation. (For more on Lange, see "Mutt's Golden Muzzle," on Page 43.)

In person, Twain is polite but brisk. Whether she's glad-handing retailers, doing interviews or making music, Twain is relentless, filling every minute of the workday, with barely a moment to relax. Her younger sister Carrie-Ann Brown says, "She's a perfectionist and always has been." Her brother Darryl has put it less kindly, calling her "a robot." Asked to describe herself, the first word Twain chooses is "impatient." When new security guards are hired for her, they're warned to be swift: As soon as the car stops, she's halfway down the block before anybody else has left the vehicle. "I calculate things quickly, and I tend to be ahead of everybody," she says. "I just wish people could read my mind a lot of the time." She sighs. "It's not a great quality."