“I’ve got a cold, but who cares!” shouts Shania Twain from the stage at BST Hyde Park. “Can someone get me tissues?” She buries her head into them to blow her audibly snotty nose more than once, delaying the set. She sounds a bit like Monica Geller did when she got a cold on Friends, struck down in the “prime of lime.” (If that reference is lost on you, you’re a Gen Z Shania Twain fan, which to be fair is about half the people here.) Clearly full of cold, it doesn’t cross her mind to go offstage, because Shania Twain live is whatever Shania Twain is feeling like that day, and I’d imagine that’s why she’s still able to headline shows like this twenty-odd years after her heyday: she’s likeable, confident and shamelessly real.
Country music’s explosion of popularity has helped. Twain’s new cache means Harry Styles collaborated with her at Coachella, taking advantage of the timeless country rock glean of her turn-of-the-century bangers. The confidence helps, too: she believes in her ability to churn out the tunes and make them sound as good as they did then.
She is loads of fun. Coming on to Don’t Be Stupid, the hour-and-a-half-long set was interspersed with newer numbers. Giddy Up! from 2023 LP Queen of Me – again, that confidence – showed how she’s exploiting the current wave. It’s got a pop refrain that’s so delicious it’s concrete-set in your mind after just one listen. She charged through Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under, Honey, I’m Home and the ballad From This Moment On, pausing to have endearing little chats. She’s not saying anything in particular, other than throwing back to her last time playing Hyde Park in 2003, but it’s definitely, refreshingly unrehearsed.
She burned through Don’t Impress Me Much and I’m Outta Here (“but not quite yet!” she teased), before leading into Man! I Feel Like A Woman!, running the length of the stage to wave at every part of the crowd, pointing out – as she did at Glastonbury the week before – that she could see the sections at the back.
Pink merch with ‘let’s go girls’ on it was sold out; mannequins stripped so their tops could be flogged. She might be riding the country wave, but you suspect even without that, she’d still be here anyway. Someone should write a doctorate on Shania Twain’s brand of feminism, because it’s very fun indeed.
Adam sat in the Terrace at BST as a guest of ALL – Accor’s loyalty programme