Review: A confident, ageless Shania Twain is still the one for Toronto fans

Shania Twain

June 23 at the Budweiser Stage, Toronto

Probably the last thing Shania Twain expected while hosting her “Queen of Me” party for 16,000-plus fans was to participate in a gender reveal.

Yet, midway through her two-hour set of the first of two weekend shows at Budweiser Stage, Twain read a sign being held aloft by a woman from Newfoundland making the daring request in the hopes that her idol would notice.

She noticed, all right, and invited the trembling woman onstage in what could only be a pinch-me moment for the expectant mother.

“So what do I gotta do?” the Windsor-born superstar asked, and was handed the sealed results of an ultrasound. Twain kept up the suspense a few seconds after opening the envelope, serenading the woman with a few a cappella couplets of “From This Moment On” and sneaking in the lyric that it was a baby girl that the future mother of two was carrying.

“That one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever had onstage,” Twain said afterwards — and it was one of many surprises — including an appearance by Toronto Maple Leafs right winger Mitch Marner and his fiancée, Stephanie, who cut a rug to an abridged rendition of “Up” and a presentation of a plaque by Twain’s record company to commemorate her status as the bestselling female country artist — that would make the night a memorable one for the veteran Grammy and Juno winner.

Another surprise: that despite some 2018 vocal surgery and worries expressed by the singer that her voice has considerably changed, there was no discernable difference between the Shania of old and the 2023 model. At 57 seemingly going on 30, the ageless and glamorous beauty — in a red wig and a dress slit up to her right thigh — sang the majority of her 19-song set confidently as she fronted a six-piece band that included a guitarist/fiddler and two male backing singers/dancers.

The only blemishes were when she ventured into a low, quiet register and was drowned out by the band, but those are technical equipment misfires: overall, Twain delivered a performance that was more hit than miss and divided between eye-popping Vegas glitz and intimate, living room hang.

The crowd response for the majority of the show ranged from ecstatic and feverish to, in one particular spot, indifference though, heading into the concert, the odds were clearly in Twain’s favour.

With the inestimable collaborative input of her ex, production mastermind “Mutt” Lange — who wasn’t mentioned — the duo revolutionized country music with a fashionable upgrade that also did wonders for exposing it globally and establishing Twain as a crossover superstar in both pop and rock.

Forging snappy, exceptional melodies into some of the happiest, most upbeat love songs in existence and empowering women in the process, Twain’s intriguing rags-to-riches back story and radiant personal warmth forged a trail-blazing path that has imbued Canadians with a sense of national pride as much as ownership.

So “Team Shania” responded to such hits as “You’re Still the One” and especially “Any Man of Mine” with full-throated celebratory glee, and totally lost it with the encore anthem finales of “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.”

“Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” “Rock This Country!” and “(If You’re Not in It for Love) I’m Outta Here!” lived up to their exclamation marks in high energy fun, and the shuffle rhythms of “Forever and For Always” seemed a little more vibrant than the recorded version.

There were also opulent visuals — there was a lighthearted, although inexplicable theme involving aliens and saloon destruction that played on the backdrop of the two-tiered stage throughout the evening — and Twain had the stage transformed into a nightclub of sorts, with fans gathered around tables as she waltzed with one of her backing singers.

But the powerful impact of the splendid material from the Twain/Lange albums “The Woman in Me,” “Come On Over” and “Up” revealed the Achilles heel of the singer/songwriter’s current set: her newer material.

Following their personal and creative divorce, Lange’s spectre is notably present on the songs he didn’t co-write: “Giddy Up!” and the disco-driven “Number One” are passable, but not memorable.

The most telling moment was ending the main set on “Queen of Me,” the title track from her latest, with a thud: if that song was supposedly the rousing finale to whet appetites for the encore, it failed miserably. It didn’t seem to register with the crowd that the main body of the show was over.

Twain should either switch the order of the set to perform it earlier or replace it with one of the bona fide hits she left out,.

You can’t substitute quality for quantity and expect people not to notice.

This quibble aside, Twain — who next performs in Toronto at Scotiabank Arena on Oct. 22 — declared near the beginning of the show that she was having a lot of fun these days.

“I’m living my best life!”

With the enthusiastic response that the adoring audience pledged to their version of musical royalty, you’d better believe it.

Although the show opener, Calgary’s Lindsay Ell, played a disjointed set that seemed to have a lot of stop-and-start to it, she did pull off a first: she used a vocoder for a couple of lines of a song.

But what sets her apart from other country ingenues is that she comes from the Suzy Bogguss school of guitar heroes, albeit more rock-driven: the highlight of her show occurred when she flopped on her back, head dangling over the edge of the stage so she viewed the crowd from an upside-down vantage point and proceeded to rip an electric guitar solo of which Jimi Hendrix would be proud.

Maybe, instead of hosting “Canada’s Got Talent,” Ell should enter the competition: she’d have a real shot at winning it.

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