"Man! I feel like a woman!" screamed a guy dancing in place with a beer in one hand and his girlfriend in the other, while Shania Twain vamped through the title refrain of her girly party anthem at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday.
At once down-to-earth and ultra high energy, the country-pop star's nearly two-hour concert encouraged such fun-loving twists on reality, much as Twain's music blurs the lines between newfangled country and good old-fashioned hard rock.
In fact, it was sometimes hard to remember that Twain is a country artist. Sure, her nine-piece band featured a pedal-steel player and several fiddles, and there was a certain twang to just about every song. Reflecting the Canadian singer's diverse influences, however, there was also a distinctly pop-metal tinge to the sing-along choruses and the guitarists' crunchy solos.
Dashing between band and audience on a runway that extended through the first section of seats and out to both sides, Twain tirelessly worked the crowd during a mostly upbeat set of tunes from her multimillion-selling album "Come on Over," along with such earlier hits as "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?"