Shania Twain has become one of country music’s–and more impressively, one of popular music’s–most valuable commodities. In April, with sales of 17 million in the United States, and 26 million worldwide, Come on Over became not only the best-selling country album of all-time, it also displaced fellow Canadian Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill as the best-selling album by a female artist in any genre.

In spite of her earth-shattering success, Shania has remained remarkably grounded. Sure, her relationship with husband/ producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange continues to provide fodder for the tabloids, but so far, she’s not fallen victim to a “Chris Gaines”-like transmogrification. Perhaps the only thing that’s drastically changed about the singer born Eileen Regina Edwards is her name.

“I’m no different character-wise or personality-wise than I was when I was 10, 16, 18 years old,” Shania said backstage at the CMA Awards show last September. “I’m exactly the same performer and entertainer. My roots and the basis of my entertaining style, which is very communicative, very energetic, that’s just always been there. I think what changes over time is obviously the production.” Though she was most likely talking about her records, Shania could have just as easily been referring to her music videos. Though her hairstyles, costumes, sets and concepts may have evolved through the years, the one constant on the set of a Shania video has been the high energy level.

In this SPECIAL REPORT we present, in her own words, a look at Shania Twain’s impressive collection of music video performances over the past seven years, including several never-before-published portions of her 1996 CMT Showcase and 1999 CMT Video Bio.
Plus, as an added bonus, we evaluate each clip’s “sizzle” quality, on a scale from 1 to 10, to indicate just how much Shania heats up the small screen in each individual video.

“WHAT MADE YOU SAY THAT” 1993
ACTION: Shania dances around South Miami Beach in various outfits, with a handsome young man. Words from the song flash on the screen throughout.

SHANIA: I think it was ahead of its time for country music videos then. At the time, what I wanted to do, and the way I wanted to express myself visually was very overt for country television. Everybody was saying, “Oh, I don’t know–you ought to be a little more conservative.” And I said, “Yeah, but as an entertainer I’m not conservative. As a person I’m very conservative, but when I perform and entertain, I want people to be entertained. I don’t want them to feel like their aunt is singing to them. I’m one of them. I’m there to get into the music.

Even though I was kind of going against the grain at the time, in the end it was the best thing I ever did–not being intimidated by the fact that it might be a little risqué. The concept’s not brilliant; it’s very simple. There’s really nothing to it. But it’s got a young energy to it that made it very sexy and fun.
SHANIA SIZZLE-METER RATING: 7

“DANCE WITH THE ONE WHO BROUGHT YOU” 1993
ACTION: Shania’s first experience playing dual roles in a video. The concept, developed by actor/director Sean Penn, was the depiction of a long-term relationship. Filmed in a dance hall in Los Angeles.

SHANIA: Sean Penn directed [it], and he managed to get [actor] Charles Durning to be in the video. Just such a sweet personality. It was a great day for me, just to be around and watch real pros work. I just tried to be the sponge and learn as I go. It was really cool to get to know Sean Penn. I didn’t get to know him over a long period of time or anything like that, but the few days that we spent working together, I’ll never forget. He was a really terrific person. He’s close to my age, and we just really got along well.

I was more involved in how I wanted to be portrayed, and we just kind of pieced it together.
I have a lot of very old-fashioned ways of looking at love and life and marriage. I believe very much in marriage and family and all that kind of stuff. I think [the video] is very sweet, especially the more rare it becomes to see long-lasting relationships like that. I had a lot of fun going back in time and playing the young bride. It was a new experience for me, getting into a role of some kind.
SHANIA SIZZLE-METER RATING: 5

“YOU LAY A WHOLE LOT OF LOVE ON ME” 1993
ACTION: Romantic “French postcard” feel. Second Shania video directed by Steven Goldmann. Shot in the streets of Montreal. This song was a top 20 country hit in 1980 for Con Hunley.

SHANIA: [This] was a very romantic video. I have to laugh now, though, because I looked kind of funny in that video. Just being in Montreal really portrayed the song well. It was the perfect place to go and do it. It was kind of like a little mini-movie. The vignettes were set up so that I was getting my first little taste of getting into a role. It was a good experience for me. We were drinking cappuccino in this café, and we were just playing with the froth, and it was just very sweet.

Montreal has lots of old buildings, and when the French came over to Canada and built that part of Montreal, they built it very much in the same style that they would have built in their home country. So, it really does have the European structures.
SHANIA SIZZLE-METER RATING: 7

“WHOSE BED HAVE YOUR BOOTS BEEN UNDER” 1995
ACTION: First Shania\”Mutt” Lange songwriting collaboration. Improbable scenario has Shania being ignored as she saunters through a diner full of men. Produced by Bo Derek (whose 1980 film 10 made her an instant sex symbol) and her husband, John Derek, who passed away in 1998.

SHANIA: The people in the café were real. They were all real customers that go there every day. They were just real people who never acted before, and they did a great job of ignoring me, so it was a lot of fun. They sure had a lot to eat that day.
It’s definitely more the performer side of me, which is not a superficial side, I mean, it’s definitely part of my personality.

John Derek was the director and Bo Derek was the producer, and her sister Carrie was her assistant. It was a whole family affair. Bo’s mother, Norma, is actually a professional hair and makeup artist in Hollywood and does movies and everything. So she was my hair and makeup.
John didn’t really want to do it at first, because he [was] retired and not really interested. He[‘d] already filmed the most beautiful woman in the whole world. But Bo was interested in doing it. So that’s how it all happened. We had a meeting, and Bo convinced John to do it and in the end we all became great friends.

l wrote a lot of [this] song before I’d even met Mutt. And he kind of finished the whole thing with me. But that song was written in my cabin in Ontario in Canada. And it’s fun to listen to those writing tapes because you can hear the fire crackling in the background.

[The “cook”] with the big mustache–he’s really a cook. That’s what he does. And he was a real sport. He wasn’t an actor; he was a real guy, a real character. There was an older guy there who must have been 90-something years old. And he was such a sport, and he was so sharp. He really left an impression on me. He just had such a zest for life and I said, “What’s your secret? How can you be so energetic and cheerful?” And he said, “Well, I take ginseng every day.”
SHANIA SIZZLE-METER RATING: 6

“ANY MAN OF MINE” 1995
ACTION: Shania, in an entirely solo performance (with the exception of a few horses), dances around a barn and frolics in a field. This is considered the music video that turned Shania’s moderately successful career into an exploding rocket. Also produced and directed by the Dereks, with additional material directed by Charley Randazzo, and produced by Mark Kalbfeld.

SHANIA: My manager at the time, Mary [Bailey], she had just remembered seeing a lot of John Derek’s photography over the years with Bo Derek and Ursula [Andress]. So she just thought of me and the combination worked. It started out with John Derek doing the photography for the album. He did the album cover The Woman in Me, and Bo actually shot the photography that’s on the reverse side of the CD. That was just a shot she did from the truck, during the [video] shoot of “Any Man Of Mine.” And she just did behind-the-scenes snapping, and that became the back cover.

I’ve always been a singer. I’ve done a certain amount of things but never really, really knew myself on camera. John Derek [was] very straightforward and very bold and [was] not going to pamper anyone’s ego, not even for a second. Even if it means making you comfortable, he [was] not interested necessarily in making you comfortable by stroking your ego. As a woman, I mean most women are kind of sensitive about–if someone says you’ve got an ugly nose, you don’t really feel like stepping in front of a camera and showing your nose. But it really taught me a lot. It taught me to forget about my ego. So that was a really good lesson for me and a good introduction for really being involved with video and camera and all that kind of stuff. Because I’m not a model. I don’t know how to do those things. I’ve spent my whole life being a singer and a songwriter.

“Any Man of Mine” was done in two parts actually. It was done out in L.A. And John and Bo Derek had done a whole bunch of footage. And then Charley Randazzo directed another part of the footage. It all blended very well together. The performance stuff that’s mostly in the grass was done with Charley. And then the stuff all around the stable and with the horse, that was done at John and Bo’s ranch. So it was very interesting.

I was suffering from severe allergies that day. There was something in the air. My eyes were all puffy, and we had to delay the shooting and all that kind of stuff.

The horse part was my favorite part. I’m so in love with horses. I think they are gorgeous animals. And what it does, l think, for me is it calms me down. I’m a very high energy, do everything very fast kind of thing person. But when you’re around horses you have to move slowly, fluid. You can’t be flinging your arms and raising your voice. You have to be very calm, and it forces me to do that. It’s very therapeutic for me. So I just love being around them in general. I would never trade a horse for any guy.
SHANIA SIZZLE-METER RATING: 8

“THE WOMAN IN ME” 1995
ACTION: Horses are once again present, but this time in an Egyptian desert setting. Shania, shot mostly in soft focus, stands at the bow of a sailboat [pre-Titanic] at one point. Directed by Markus Blunder, produced by Greg Everage and Nabil Shalzi.

SHANIA: “The Woman in Me” was shot in Egypt, in Cairo, and it was the longest video shoot I ever did. It was a four-day shoot, and what a learning experience that was from a cultural standpoint. Of course, I had never been to Egypt, so I was kind of going as an observer of the culture and the country and just the whole thing. So that was really interesting. It was a little distracting because I was so interested in what was going on around me, it was hard to focus on working when you are just so amazed by everything that is going on around you.

The surroundings were very inspirational for me. It really inspired me and got to me. I was enamored and absorbed by the whole mystique of the place. I was definitely moved by my surroundings for the first time. We were in the oldest mosque in Cairo, so it was really special, and we felt it was special. This was sacred. It just gave a mood to the whole video and the performance of everything. And the people were so sweet and everything was so fun, and we couldn’t understand each other but just communicated perfectly...it was great!
I still have the scars on my ankles from the stirrups because all of their hardware is metal. It’s not just the stirrup that’s metal there. And it was blistering hot. The director had to climb up to the top of the pyramid. It took him quite a long time, with all the camera gear to take [one] shot. I don’t know how he didn’t just have sunstroke or something.

Obviously that type of location poses a few barriers. It’s a city of a thousand mosques. That’s what they refer to it as. So we had to include some mosque footage in this video. And I had to be–your shoulders, your arms, everything has to completely covered. You can’t go in there with anything past your wrist, and you have to take your shoes off.

To achieve the slow-motion movement and still be in sync when you’re singing, you have to sing in double time. You adjust the speed of the timing to how slow you actually want.
SHANIA SIZZLE-METER RATING: 8