Yikes…
Honestly, the idea of Shania Twain, the queen of country pop, and one of the greatest rock bands of the modern era, Foo Fighters, getting together on a song sounds pretty damn awesome. Both broke out in 1995 with Foo Fighters releasing their debut, self-titled album that year, and Shaina Twain releasing her first Gold single, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” that year as well.
Shania took some time off after battling Lyme disease, but for the most part, both acts have managed to sustain their respective careers for decades, still packing out venues with thousands and thousands of adoring fans.
Dave Grohl is a music icon, Foo Fighters guitar player Chris Shiflett has a few country records of his own that are pretty damn good, and we all know that when it comes to the ’90s and early 2000s, Shania Twain was on top of the music world, one of the best selling acts EVER… in all of music.
So a collaboration sounds pretty cool, right? Wrong…
Austin City Limits Music Festival kicked off this past weekend down in the Lone Star State, and features the likes of Foo Fighters, Shania Twain, Mumford and Sons, Kendrick Lamar, The Lumineers, and many more performing over the course of this past weekend, and again this coming weekend.
Foo Fighters headlined this past Saturday, with Shania Twain directly preceding them in the lineup, but Shania stuck around until the end to hop on stage with Dave and company for a duet of their 2005 hit “Best Of You,” right before they closed out with “Everlong.”
And I’ll just come right out and say it… it wasn’t good.
Now, I’m not trying to bash Shania at all. She’s the queen of pop country for a reason, and she’ll forever be one of the greatest performers in all of country music. And I’m not gonna lie, she’ll forever be one of my first crushes. However, it was pretty brutal to say the least.
During her appearance on stage with the Foo Fighters, you can see her awkwardly hugging lead singer Dave Grohl while wearing a red wig as he begins the song. And when they jump into the chorus… again, yikes.
It appears that Shania missed the lyrics or wasn’t very familiar, because it just sounds like some strange mumbling. It sounds off key… the song just sounds way out of her range at the moment. So, it’s not just me being a jerk here, the entire internet seemed to agree.
Twitter (now called X) laid it on pretty heavy in the comments, and this is just a small piece of the conversation… find any video, on any platform of the performance, and you’ll hear fans echo a similar sentiment.
It’s not pretty:
And trust me, there’s plenty more… I just don’t want to make this blog six miles long. Of course, earlier this year a number of Shaina fans complained that her Nashville concert was a less than stellar experience as well.
That being said, here’s the full performance… you can be the judge:
And the original… just for fun:
And we can wash the taste out of our mouths with a little Shaina Twain and “Any Man Of Mine” from back in 1998: