Long before Shania Twain’s set on the Pyramid stage, there were signs of building anticipation in the double denim and cowboy hats – either brought from home or quickly acquired from the stalls so as to feel part of the fun. The whispers going around Worthy farm was that Twain would arrive on stage riding a horse.
As often the case with Glastonbury rumours, it proved to have only the slightest, wonkiest bit of truth: Twain’s arrival is heralded by a procession of elaborate, larger-than-life hobby horses, held aloft by a motley group of dancers and drag queens, led by a whip-cracking ringleader. The crowd dissipates to reveal Twain, swamped with pink tulle and crowned, of course, with a rhinestone-studded black cowboy hat.
The coterie departs from the stage, leaving Twain alone with her band, and they launch into That Don’t Impress Me Much, one of her two biggest songs, received with immediate recognition from the massive crowd. With hot-pink animal print plastered on the screens behind her, the tone to the show is akin to a cowboy-themed drag brunch, or Nashville Pride – and when Twain reveals a tiny black minidress paired with fishnet tights, knee-high boots and elbow-length gloves, it’s clear she’s leaning all the way into her status as a gay icon with country glamour.
She is fabulously glamorous and impeccably put-together – like a Real Housewife, physically tiny and seeming to lack a single line on her face – and now a long way from the girl next door on the cover of Come On Over. It’s easy to forget, now, how huge that album was in 1997, back in the day when CD sales could create blockbusters. Today, in the festival’s legends slot, Twain seeks to remind us, following up That Don’t Impress Me Much with Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You), a sharp but loving rejoinder to a jealous partner.
The spritely fiddle gets toes tapping and Stetsons bobbing, and Twain seems thrilled by the reception, scampering round right to the edge of the stage to see the packed turnout more fully. “It’s such an honour to be invited,” she says, reiterating the gushing gratitude throughout her set (though her account of walking around the festival and peering into all the portaloos and tents are hard to believe).
But while, in appearance, Twain appears to have stopped time, her voice is missing the lovely suppleness that used to lend playfulness and bounce to her songs – and make her belting choruses all the more potent. Twain has spoken lately about her 20-year battle with Lyme disease and its deleterious effects on her voice; today she is singing tunefully but with a notably harsher tone that is slightly at odds with the camp pitch of the performance, and most pronounced on her perkiest tunes like Up! and I’m Gonna Getcha Good!
Of course Glastonbury’s legends slot is about honouring an influential performer, more than it is faithfully reproducing the songs that made them famous. As Twain points out, after sipping from an enormous (and on-trend) lilac Stanley cup, it’s been nearly 30 years since Come On Over, “the album that changed my life”, but its influence is obvious in pop’s recent embrace of country music and the winking, highly stylised take of performers such as Lil Nas X. Twain’s stage – referencing dive bars, hen dos and casinos, and peppered with visual imagery of sunsets and butterflies – invites the sense of an all-inclusive girls- (and gays-) night out that the throngs at the Pyramid are happy to match.
But while it’s a crowdpleasing show, the songs not from Come On Over don’t take off with the same heat as Twain’s enduring hits, and an attempt to lead the crowd in a cappella singalong of her wedding-song standard, You’re Still the One, comes too soon in the setlist and meets a muted response. The drift out of the audience over the course of the show is obvious, even as Twain kicks off a line dance for Any Man of Mine to reel them back in. The closer is, naturally, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! – introduced with “Let’s go, girls – and guys”. Twain sticks to the lower harmony throughout the chorus, and doesn’t attempt the highest whoops. But the crowd – full of, as ever, impressively melodic singers in their tens of thousands – is more than happy to pull their boots up and pitch in.
