Shania Twain is releasing her 5th album, Now, later this week, so I wanted to take a quick look back at her first 4 albums, 3 of which were enormous Diamond-selling blockbusters that are each among the most successful country albums of all time. A few weeks ago I wrote about Mutt Lange's other most famous work, Def Leppard's Hysteria, so it was interesting to kind of delve into these records and not some subtle similarities despite the different decade/genre/etc.

Shania Twain deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Nah! - Green version
2. Whatever You Do! Don't!
3. If It Don't Take Two
4. Waiter! Bring Me Water! - Red version
5. Black Eyes, Blue Tears
6. God Ain't Gonna Getcha
7. Is There Life After Love?
8. C'est La Vie - Red version
9. In My Car (I'll Be The Driver) - Red version
10. Raining On Our Love
11. If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask!
12. (Wanna Get To Know You) That Good! - Green version
13. Ain't No Particular Way - Red version
14. Juanita - Blue version
15. There Goes The Neighborhood
16. Leaving Is The Only Way Out
17. What A Way To Wanna Be! - Green version
18. Forget Me
19. Crime Of The Century
20. I'm Not In The Mood (To Say No)! - Blue version
21. I Won't Leave You Lonely

Tracks 6, 15, 18 and 19 from Shania Twain (1993)
Tracks 3, 7, 10 and 16 from The Woman In Me (1995)
Tracks 2, 5, 11 and 21 from Come On Over (1997)
Tracks 1, 4, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17 and 20 from Up! (2002)

Usually 4 albums is about the bare minimum for how big an artist's catalog has to be for me to be able to fill a deep cuts playlist, and Shania presents an unusual challenge because relatively few of her songs weren't released as singles. Out of 57 songs on those albums, 31 were released as singles, leaving just 26 to choose from that I whittled down to 21 for this mix. While i'm throwing out stats, those 57 song titles contain 14 exclamation points, and that punctuation that other songwriters would use sparingly that gets spilled all over her albums (especially, of course, Up!) really lends Shania's records this deranged quality, kind of the pop music equivalent of Tom Cruise's forced laugh.

Even with just those 4 albums, however, what did provide me with a lot of room to personalize this playlist was the fact that there are three versions of 2002's Up! that each have completely different mixes of every single song. By this point, it's not that novel for crossover artists to have one version of their hit single mixed to appeal to pop radio and then another one for country or rock or rap radio, etc. But Shania really went way beyond that, making 19 songs that each have come in three versions: country (Green), pop (Red) or a weird 'international' version full of tabla and other nods to Indian pop music and Bollywood soundtracks (Blue). Back around the time Up! was released, I remember a guy named Sean Carruthers made mixes of a few songs with the 'Green' and 'Red' versions played simultaneously, and it sounded really bizarre and wonderful, especially since some versions had longer intros than others so there would be a weird 'row row row your boat' quality to the vocals not lining up. I still have those mixes on my iPod and listened to them so much that I still really like "Nah!" and "Waiter! Bring Me Water!" in particular in any version.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 2:47 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.