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Bonjour and howdy. I'm Ray Castonguay, 32, born and raised in
Sudbury, Ontario, living in Windsor now, and I drive a truck for a living:
Windsor, Detroit, and anywhere in the Midwest they'll send me. That's a lot
of hours with the radio, and since November of 1997 about half of those
hours have been Come On Over.
Yes, I'm a guy with a Shania Twain page. The boys at the truck stop in Toledo have had their fun with that. Here's what I tell them: she writes real songs, she has the best-produced record on the radio, and every one of you knows all the words to "That Don't Impress Me Much." I have seen you mouth them. Don't deny it. |
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WHY SHE MEANS SOMETHING UP HERE Shania was born Eilleen Edwards in Windsor in 1965, and grew up in Timmins, a few hours north of where I grew up. Northern Ontario is not an easy place to grow up without much money, and she didn't have much. She was singing in bars as a kid to help the family out. When she was 22, her mom and her stepdad Jerry Twain were killed in a car accident, and she took care of her younger brothers and sister, singing in the show at the Deerhurst resort up in Huntsville to pay the bills. When they were grown, she went to Nashville. Everybody back home knows that story. When she made it, it felt like one of ours made it. My mother, who has never listened to a country record in her life, has Come On Over in her car. |
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THE ALBUMS Shania Twain (1993) — the first one. It didn't do much. Worth finding. The Woman in Me (1995) — the breakthrough, with "Any Man of Mine" and "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" Won the Grammy for Best Country Album. This is the first album she made with Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who produced it and wrote the songs with her. They got married in 1993. Come On Over (November 1997) — sixteen songs, all written by the two of them, and it has not left the charts since. Country radio, pop radio, dance clubs, weddings, my mother's car. See my track-by-track page for all sixteen. |
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THE GOOD NEWS FILE » Two Grammys this February for "You're Still the One": Best Female Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Song. I watched in a motel in Indiana and woke up the whole floor. » The videos. "That Don't Impress Me Much," out in the desert in the leopard print. And "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!," where she turns that old Robert Palmer video inside out and the band is all good-looking men with slicked hair standing there like furniture. My sister says it's the best joke of the year and I agree. » The tour. Come On Over is her first real tour, and she's been on the road since the spring of 1998. I saw it last summer, and I would drive twice as far to see it again. She sounded just like the record and worked that stage for two solid hours. Everybody who said she couldn't do it live can go sit in the truck. » "You've Got a Way" is in Notting Hill. Went to see it with my sister. Stayed for the song. |
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TO THE PEOPLE WHO SAY IT ISN'T COUNTRY I get this e-mail about once a week. There's fiddle and steel all over that record. There's also a big drum sound and hooks you could hang a coat on, and she isn't sorry about that, and neither am I. Country music has always had people who pushed it somewhere new. I've got Hank Williams and George Jones in the truck too, and room for all of them. Be nice or don't write. |
