Fair to say the production budget for this is well down on her usual…
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[3.71]
Alfred Soto: Out to show that Gaga creature (not to mention a certain megaproducer ex-husband) who invented the big-footed country pop stomp, Lady Twain releases — well, it’s not “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” The mushy production on this opulent self-empowerment poster doesn’t help; she sounds like butter floating in a tomato bisque.
[4]
Ian Mathers: What the shit is this? Not only does Shania sound weirdly like Nik Kershaw (see the loved-only-by-me To Be Frank, which frankly is much better than this), but I already hated “The Climb.” I don’t need another “The Climb.” You’re a grown-ass woman, Shania, have some self-respect and stay away from the self-help books.
[3]
Matthew Harris: It’s a sign of how prolonged this recession is that people keep releasing songs of affirmation, and rather than critically sneer them away, I shout “More! More!” “Today” is from Shania’s new show about personal failure, and it’s called, in a Dot Parker-esque move, Why Not. So it’s not surprising Shania sounds like she’s singing through a Lorazepam fog as she fails to cheer us up. Screw Adele — pain doesn’t make you melisma out pretty notes like perfumed mouth farts; it bleaches your voice to an Auto-Tune shine and makes you mumble cliches.
[7]
Al Shipley: Hearing a Shania song without that Mutt sheen laminated all over it is like seeing a woman without her makeup for the first time in, oh, 18 years. But it’s not like this is exactly stripped down, and like Britney, it’s slowly becoming apparent that there’s something inherently robotic about her voice, with or without recording technology propping it up. Shania’s show on OWN is a more affecting bit of self-help babble than the resulting song.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: The divorce, vocal loss and TV gauntlet make this sweet, but they also make it like stopping by your gone-for-years best friend’s house and finding her curled up beneath a blanket with Chicken Soup books and Daniel Powter records.
[3]
Michaela Drapes: I only know a little of the backstory of Shania’s lost years thanks to the endless promos for Why Not? with Shania Twain that literally ran on every cable channel for weeks before the show’s premiere. But really, if she wanted to kick down some doors and return to her former glory, this sputtering, draggy “inspirational” number was the worst possible choice to soundtrack that comeback.
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Jer Fairall: All chorus without any connecting tissue to even give the illusion of specificity, and it’s a chorus that Hallmark would have considered underwritten. But she sings it awfully prettily, and when the grand crescendo arrives, it is nowhere near as overblown as threatened. It’s not the painful experience it would have easily been in other hands.
[5]
Jonathan Bradley: I preferred “Bubbly” before it had been cross-bred with Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.”
[3]
Alex Ostroff: Shania, what happened? In the days of my youth, you could always be counted on for campy pop-country, bhangra remixes and glittery dresses modeled on Canadian NHL uniforms. “Today Is Your Day” is sub-“Bubbly” tripe, with country signifiers (mandolin and ragtime piano!) that are even more tacked-on than Taylor Swift’s latest attempts to maintain country cred.
[3]
Sally O’Rourke: The banjo buried deep in the mix reminds you that you’re listening to the ex-queen of country music, even if the chord progression suggests John Lennon and the instrumentation is leftover from X&Y-era Coldplay. Shania doesn’t quite sound like she believes her own featherweight self-empowerment lyrics, but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I have always found Twain’s work to be exquisitely constructed in such a way that any biographical clue was meticulously scrubbed clean. The songs weren’t about anything. Even the sex songs refused narratives of the body. So we think that because of the show on the Oprah network, and because of the hiring of Swift’s producers, who make confessional work, and because of what we know of the divorce, that Twain has become more confessional. But it’s not true. This is slightly sadder than Come on Over, but it gives no new understanding of Twain. Artists don’t need to spill shit — we have no real knowledge of Toby Keith, who makes almost no attempt at the personal or the confessional — but an instinct toward the confessional seems to be required more of female artists then male. So part of me really admires the chrome sheen of Twain’s immaculate production, and part of me still finds it a little too bland to enjoy as a text or even to be used for the function that she assumes it will.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: It’s funny how even when Shania would sing about “I” or “me” in her songs, the songs still weren’t about her. She was playing characters and writing corny but nonetheless snappy monologues for them and with tunes resisted only by people who hate frothy fun. Here, she sings this song to you but it codes as self-empowerment, a statement that she’s still around post-divorce and has something to say. Your day? No, today is Shania’s day, damn it! But this low-voltage feel-good stuff is a lot less compelling than songs about rampant consumerism, ignoring idiotic come-ons in the bar or having your date ruined by a hot waitress, to name just three. It’s not that Shania, without Mutt, is a bad songwriter — her way with a tune is largely intact — she’s just indistinct without his outsize gimmickry. Each of the 19 songs on Up! was better than this by a tidy margin.
[3]
Hazel Robinson: This is a strange mix of the sort of giant, American Idol-friendly huge fuckoff ballad I’d expect from Shania and Aimee Mann’s version of “One (The Loneliest Number).” Unfortunately, what comes out at the end of that is something that will no doubt be important in the soundtrack of One Tree Hill.
[6]
Isabel Cole: I started thinking about all the things wrong here, or more precisely the complete absence of rightness, but I have a policy as of right now that I won’t put more effort into reviewing a song than went into recording it. So I leave you with my first and final thought: Shania Twain is not even trying anymore.
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