“That Don't Impress Me Much” by Shania Twain

An exceptional pop-country crossover from a Canadian music icon.

It's the end of the week, and I want to send everyone off into the weekend with the best vibes possible. That’s why the Daily Music Picks newsletter features a weekly segment called Fun Song Fridays! Regardless of era, genre, or style, the criterion is simple: it must deliver the joy and excitement we all need in our lives.

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Hello! 😊👋

Welcome to a new edition of the Best Music of All Time newsletter!

Today’s music pick throws it back to one of country and pop music’s all-time great cruisers.

Genre: Country, Pop

Label: Mercury

Release Date: December 7, 1998

Vibe: 👢🤠

For the record, here’s a comprehensive list of qualities that don’t impress Shania Twain:

• Having “being right” down to an art

• Being a “regular, original know-it-all”

• Holding the profession of rocket scientist (or believing you could)

• Carrying a mirror in your pocket for constant hair touch-ups

• Being Brad Pitt

• Being the kind of guy who “shines his machine” and “kisses his car good night”

• Owning a car, period

• Thinking you’re Elvis or something

What will impress her? If you’ve “got the touch” and can “keep her warm” at night—how you do so isn’t specified, but I’m sure you can intuit a strong methodology or two. The point is how playfully venomous and righteously feminist Twain could be as a songwriter in full-on hit-making mode. It’s hard to believe now, but “Impress” was the seventh (!) single off her best-selling album Come On Over, where it eventually became a Hot 100 staple for 22 weeks.

Even crazier—”Man! I Feel Like a Woman” wouldn’t take over the country and pop charts as single No. 8 until March of the following year.

Until that point in time, Shania Twain was primarily known as a tender singer of soothing ballads. Think “You’re Still the One” and “From This Moment On” from the same LP, both of which were hits in their own right. But, once “Impress” became a pop radio and MTV mainstay, casual fans and die-hard supporters saw a different side to her, one that wasn’t afraid to call out the small-minded men who weren’t able to fulfill her needs. As spicy as the lyrics are, the calm, almost laid-back instrumental communicates just how in control of her image and her world she really is.

Even the music video, in which Shania is all attitude and leopard-print attire, isn’t shy about letting you know how much of a badass she is.

Fun fact about the Brad Pitt mention to close this post: She wasn’t actually taking a dig at him personally. Rather, she couldn’t comprehend how leaked nude photos of him (an incident he later sued Playgirl for and won) had become a topic of such feverish public discourse.

Twain explained this to Billboard in 2017:

“I remember I had a girl friend visiting me and it was near Christmas and we were baking cookies. I was writing this album and there was a scandal of [Pitt] and Gwyneth [Paltrow] where there was naked photos of him [in Playgirl magazine]. And this was like all the rage. I just thought ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’ I’m like, well that don’t impress me much, I mean what is all the fuss. We see people naked every day. That’s really what I thought. I wasn’t picking on Brad Pitt. But that was just the association in that moment and things we make fusses about and whatever. Of course, it could have been any gorgeous guy.”

Shout out to Brad Pitt for having this as part of his legacy, by the way.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈