Global Pop Dominatrix

There's even a third version, a "blue" Bollywood remix, produced in Mumbai, India, with lots of sitar and tabla: It's fun for a few songs but hurts your brain after seventy-three minutes. (The blue record replaces the green one in Asia and Europe; American fans can download a few blue tracks from Twain's Web site.) "It's a rhythm record," Twain says of the blue disc, noting that her favorite version of the ballad "When You Kiss Me" is the blue mix. "It's so unfair to categorize songs," she protests, in a way that makes you feel like she's talking about herself. "You don't know what that song's capable of."

Some things you might want to know about Up!: Fully forty-seven percent of the songs have exclamation points in the title. The song that sounds the most like Def Leppard, in a contest with close competition, is "Nah!" The record's hookier than a fishing-supply store. It piles vocal hooks on top of guitar hooks on top of bass hooks -- with some keyboard hooks thrown in for good measure. The viewpoint of most of the songs is that of a feisty, independent woman with a tender side -- a girl who wants to hose her man down when he ogles someone else in a restaurant ("Waiter! Bring Me Water!"), who presses on despite a bad day when she forgets to gas up the tank ("Up!") and who's sexually forthright ("I'm Not in the Mood [To Say No]!"). It's a fun-loving persona that doesn't have much to do with Twain herself. The songs that reflect Twain's real emotions: She puts those away in a box and sometimes doesn't even let Lange listen to them. "They're musical thoughts or musical emotions," she says. "Sometimes it's even gibberish." Lange and Twain often bring half-finished songs to each other, but she ends up writing most of the lyrics and melodies.