Friday, October 27th, 2017

Shania Twain – Swingin’ With My Eyes Closed

That’s a good way to miss the ball, Shania! Perhaps you should open your eyes!


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[5.71]

Scott Mildenhall: “I’m swinging with my eyes closed” ranks alongside “snapping her fingers and shuffling her feet” as a description that conjures a more bizarre image than was probably intended. Quite a bit about this seems confused: celebrating summer in northern hemisphere autumn? Doing so with a suggestion of reggae? Once the latter aspect is buried in the mix, things improve, but the song’s biggest failing is its un-Twainian blandness. This sounds dangerously close to a party for one.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Shania crafts one deceptively daunting summertime anthem in “Swingin’ with My Eyes Closed.” Mighty as those guitars ring, she doesn’t build much of a sun-kissed fantasy. Instead she stares down a long stretch of a road where nothing’s certain but the season’s staples of beer and country radio. The chorus scales a mountain, though it’s unsure whether she finds any glory in it.
[6]

Leah Isobel: There’s so much happening in this song that I had to listen to it twice to even start figuring it out. Shania’s always been an ambitious musician, her warmth and charm belying the subtle brilliance of her cross-genre experimentation; “Swingin'” takes a go at adding reggae and Celtic strings to her usual melange of country and arena-rock. It doesn’t totally work, since there’s basically a different section for each style she’s including, but the end result is a lot of fun anyway. Chalk it up to her presence, the way she can still joyfully wrap her voice around words like few other singers can.
[7]

Rebecca A. Gowns: This doesn’t sound like a Shania Twain song. This doesn’t even sound like… music? There’s a ska beat in there somewhere, buried under the 200 compressed synthy sounds and the approximation of a “voice” that I can only assume is a bot who’s only been fed Shania Twain voicemails and spit this out.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Shania Twain’s comeback is the year’s most shattering disappointment: weak material, nip and tucked singing. This album opener promises a heady experience — a tour through Twain’s musical collection, from reggae and Def Leppard  in grandaddy mode to classical. When she asks “Can you taste the  freedom?” it’s one of the few times on Now that the song supports what she says.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Now is a dispiriting listen because Shania’s voice is ragged and unconvincing and every instrument sounds stilted and incapable of conveying much joy or movement or wit or charm, things her music formerly provided in insane, addiction-causing concentrations. This comes out of the creative process and factory settings applied to the songs on the album better than most because it’s not really a country song, so its artificial pineapple flavour doesn’t go down too badly. Shania sounds like she’s lobbing at the words with an eye to hitting you in the face with them, like when she adds the almost tossed-off “SWINGING!!!” at the end of each chorus, and it’s endearing. She’s only partially connected with the ball on this one though.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: When you think about it from a purely rational perspective, monogamous romantic relationships make no sense. While they satisfy our basic need for companionship, they tend to create more problems than they solve. We all know couples plagued by jealousy, or boredom, or never-ending arguments, or a million other issues big and small — and those are just the people who haven’t gotten married or had kids. When you know the dismal divorce statistics and you’ve heard more brutal breakup stories than you can count, why risk giving away years of your life to one person who might break your heart? What drives us to make that leap? I’ve been with my girlfriend for two years, and I’ve fallen down this mental rabbit hole in many anxious moments. This is the longest relationship I’ve been in, and definitely the healthiest, but I can’t help thinking of ways I’m going to fuck it up. Yet when I hear Shania Twain (a woman who’s no stranger to heartbreak) belt, “I’m swingin’ with my eyes closed/Only God knows how far it goes,” it’s a beautiful reminder of the inherent bravery in taking chances. The reggae-tinged verses, goofy as they may be, recall the bubbly excitement of first love, but that titanic chorus is the rush that comes when you take the plunge. Love can be shitty and painful and soul-sucking, but it can also be enriching and exciting and life-affirming. You’ll never know if you don’t give it a shot.
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4 Responses to “Shania Twain – Swingin’ With My Eyes Closed”

  1. I just cannot get past that voice.

  2. I know the voice is a major hinder but I feel uncomfortable criticizing it. She lost it in poor health and if you listen to her recent live performances, they’re exactly the same as studio. It’s literally how she sounds now so there’s nothing to be done about it. Good on her for doing another album at least.

  3. Some of the songs on the album are fairly good as songs – Shania’s a fantastic and underappreciated topline writer — but it’s pop without literal pop.

    Even the best songs on here would come about 15th or 16th best on Up! and would be right at the bottom of Come on Over in quality.

    Still love her so much.

  4. @James, I felt the same way which is why I refrained from reviewing the track… but I regret it. At least “Life’s About…” had some old Shania bounce – this feels DOA from when you hit play, but this just feels lazy and more like a quick cash grab.