Tuesday 13 November 2012

Shania Twain 'Don't be Stupid (You Know I Love You)'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

'Don't Be Stupid...' is a great example of the insightful and fun-loving sense of humour Shania Twain displays in her song-writing... The track is lifted from the multi-award-winning album Come On Over which has sold in excess of 27 million copies to date world-wide!

It was of course assisted by the barrage of hit singles, of which this was the sixth and last in the UK; an amazing 11 tracks from the album were released as airplay singles in the US alone. It's a remixed version of a track that was released in North America as long ago as 1997, and the images in that video are fifteen years old this week. As you can see by the confusion among YouTube users, it was fairly heavily retooled for European tastes (somewhat in the mould of the popular 'That Don't Impress Me Much' remix) but because there are fiddles all over it, it's also one of her most country-oriented hits here, the result being an odd mixture closer to the Rednex version of 'Cotton Eye Joe' than to the work of Hank Williams or the Chemical Brothers.

Even in all the years since it was written, though, nobody seems to have got round to sorting out the lyric, which does sound very like it was scribbled on the back of an envelope while the studio engineers were setting up the microphones. The music isn't much less perfunctory and as usual Twain sings like she has a rictus grin and determination to make everything upbeat because everything's fine, mmmkay? It does seem a bit greedy to release a sixth single if that's the best you've got in the cupboard, but the lure of tipping the album over 2 million UK sales must have been too strong: they succeeded, by the way. It does make a bit of a change to hear a woman after the overdone masculinity of the previous two tracks though.

Also appearing on: Now 39, 44, 45
Available on: Come On Over (New Version)

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