Don’t take this as an invite to cease studying, however this complete evaluation may most likely be condensed into one phrase: “Yee-haw.”
As Shania Twain struts out onto Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, earlier than a bouncing human prairie tufted with kitsch cowboy hats, it appears like you’re about to witness the detonation of a hundred-megaton Weapon of Mass Camp.
Sporting an ostentatious pink coat and black sequined costume, and flanked by a procession of ornamental horse heads on raised sticks, the Canadian country-pop icon appears to gesture to her pre-announced intention to “borrow” a horse and experience it onto the competition’s largest stage. “I’ll have to search out out if I’m allowed,” she informed the BBC final week. We will solely assume she was not.
However even sin caballo, this can be a Legends slot with a wholesome splash of theatricality. Maybe essentially the most reliably entertaining fixture on the competition’s most important stage, the so-called fourth headline slot has in recent times been stuffed by such musical goliaths as Dolly Parton, Yusuf/Cat Stevens and Kenny Rogers.
By way of hits, Twain is as a lot of a Very Massive Deal as any of them: one of many elite strata of the most important promoting artists of all time. Her setlist is accordingly showy. From the thumping opening chords of “Don’t Impress Me A lot”, it’s instantly clear we’re in for a set of relentless, earwormish hits.
On report, Twain has a voice that’s sharp and singular, with the readability of reduce glass. It’s been altered considerably by her decades-long wrestle with Lyme illness – a situation that started when she was bitten by a tick whereas on horseback – but it surely’s nonetheless remarkably forceful. When she desires, she will nonetheless belt, albeit with a hint of wavering vibrato.
What important faults there are to be discovered within the set appear largely out of Twain’s management. “Up” is so bassy as to nearly drown out utterly her sensible backing band – the livewire, soloing fiddles being a specific spotlight.
The combo is significantly cleaner on “I’m Gonna Getcha Good”, and, after a number of refined interventions from Twain, the sound appears to enhance because the present goes on. “You’re Nonetheless the One” is carried out sitting down, and kicked off by way of a tuneful crowd singalong.
“Nation music” is usually a time period so broad as to be functionally meaningless: the concept that one style may embody one thing as light and soulful because the music of Gillian Welch, and as brash and plastic as that of Morgan Wallen, is absurd.
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However Twain’s sound manages to straddle the spectrum. Its poppier moments – the pulsating “You Win My Love”, as an example – are garish, positive, however in a means that’s joyous and buoyant. On tracks such because the infectious love ballad “Without end and All the time”, from the 2002 album Up!, Twain cuts by means of the spurs-and-Stetson artifice with a rendition that’s honest and stirring.
“I’m feeling frickin’ superb!” she screeches on the crowd, because the set canters in direction of its climax – an effervescent efficiency of “Man! I Really feel Like a Lady!” Regardless of the hangovers, sunburn and bodily exhaustion, Twain’s Pyramid Stage rodeo appears to have left just about everybody who watched it feeling the identical means.
