Shania Twain

Everybody knows that Shania Twain and Mutt Lange got married forever ago (did you see the picture? Mutt looks like Patrick Swayze with Melissa Manchester's perm, so it's no wonder Behind the Music keeps using that one photo), but did you know that they freaking live in Switzerland!? I fully didn't, but I've listened to the lead single from Up!, Shania's new one, about 60 times, and I can see why they went with Lake Geneva and not Michigan or Superior (or Huron!): "I'm Gonna Getcha (Good)" is total tax-shelter pop, which means that the instruments sound like icicles sliding down a swan's throat but more important that its constituent parts arrived at Mutt's cozy, cocoa-colored studio complex fresh from more exotic locales, calfskin checkbooks flapping in the clean Alpine air and yellowed-ass passports revealing peripatetic session-dude histories.

As an American, what I keep hearing first is the vaguely Arabic slide-guitar line that arcs over the verses like a sad-eyed Tomahawk missile, how it sounds out of place until Shania enters and twists it into standard-issue Nashville shrapnel, the kind that don't impress me much. But then a banjo comes creeping from behind a dune and I wonder if George Clooney got marooned on the Three Kings set, then the violins gently weep for peace in the Middle East, then Shania pulls on her boots and we're in some disco where Gloria Gaynor not only survived but got herself elected shah. There's even a Fleetwood Mac chorus that the Dixie Chicks couldn't dream up.

And Ms. Lange's Thang, confident in her unbridled purchase power, snug in leather pants and Swiss Miss shimmer, dares you to bet your bottom dollar against her feminine wiles, as if you've got one left to bet after getting all the damn way here. It got me (good). It'll getchoo, too.