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)

Shania Twain 'That Don't Impress Me Much'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

Sometimes, the reviews just write themselves, don't they?
This wasn't one I was especially looking forward to making myself listen to, and it's compounded by the fact that I had to go through several search results to try and find the version that was actually released in Europe (I try to link to official videos where possible, but Universal have only uploaded the country version for some reason). At least it's a song I've been subjected to often enough before that I didn't need to play the thing more than once. And there is a nice car in the video.

You might have guessed, if you read between the lines, that I'm not really a fan of this, the fourth of six UK hits from the huge Come On Over album. It's another in the line of trite, self-consciously perky songs she co-wrote with her then husband "Mutt" Lange. This one amps up the forced jokiness even more than usual, but what makes it exceptionally irritating - other than its lengthy chart run - is Lange's clumsy production on the pop version that was released here. He's evidently working outside his idiom in trying to tackle dance here, so we get some already-dated beats and what sounds like a synthesised bagpipe, which merely exacerbate the general shrillness of the track. The best I can say is that Twain sounds like she's enjoying herself: I wish I was.

Also appearing on: Now 39, 45, 46
Available on:Greatest Hits