Shania makes her appeal

You’ve gotta love Shania Twain.

No, really -- you have to. If her audience didn’t, heaven knows what she’d do. One big reason she’s the top-selling female singer ever, maybe even more crucial than her arsenal of hook-filled songs, is the way she absolutely, positively refuses to let one fan walk away from a concert or an album without feeling as though she’d done it all just for him or her.

So during her two-hour show Tuesday at the Arrowhead Pond, the Canadian pop empress beamed that multimillion-dollar smile, donned Mighty Ducks and Angels jerseys, signed autograph after autograph, ventured into the crowd to bestow hugs, punctuated songs with explosions, enlisted local teenagers for a musical drum-along and brought fans onstage to sing as well as to give them her humble thanks.

Oh, yes, there was music. In fact, at one point, when yet another fan caught her eye with a homemade sign asking for permission to come up and sing along, Twain apologetically told her, “We’ve gotta play some music between all this other stuff.”

But “all this other stuff,” for which she was assisted Tuesday by nine band members, several of whom did double duty as dancers, goes a long way toward ingratiating her to fans weary of pop stars who act indifferent or even put-upon by their success. Like a politician in full campaign mode, Twain energetically and without appearing callous or superficial excels at turning even a sports arena’s worth of people into putty.

That’s not to discount her hits. She and her producer-husband, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, have mastered the Top 40 song, as witnessed by the numerous country and pop hits that have pushed her album sales above 27 million in the U.S. during the last decade.

The formula is masterful in its inclusiveness. It’s the musical equivalent of a sports highlight video that lets fans skim through a game or a season with only the most exciting plays and none of the boring stuff in between.

Such Twain hits as “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” “Up!” and even some without exclamation points gave the crowd lots of “yoo-who-whos,” “la la las,” “oh-oh-ohs” and “yeah-yeah-yeahs” to sing along with, strategically placed spoken lines to keep attention from wandering and snappy catch phrases often passing for lyrics.

They frequently incorporate the grabber guitar riffs of a Stones classic -- minus any disturbing emotion -- and more key changes than a locksmith.

She channels the physical energy of a Garth Brooks show and adds plenty of natural sex appeal. Yet she stops well short of the soft-porn excesses of Madonna, Britney and so many other contemporary female pop idols -- thus not risking alienating the youngest and oldest segments of the record- and ticket-buying public. And she exhibits enough independence to let female fans feel empowered, but not so much that males will feel threatened.

Calculated? Sure, but the ones doing all the calculating are Twain, Lange and their bankers. Lange was once quoted by an associate saying, “It doesn’t matter whether music is good or bad, as long as it’s memorable.”

And memorable her songs are. Their bottomless pit of vocal, instrumental and lyrical hooks almost defies a listener to lose interest before each song is over, just as they confound the more studious observer trying to figure out just what any or all of them add up to.

Twain can be refreshingly honest when talking about her music in interviews and why she doesn’t dare be so honest in making her music: She won’t release the songs she considers her best and most personal work because she’s afraid they wouldn’t sell. Given that she makes no bones about commercial success being her primary goal, you’ve gotta admire her forthrightness.

No, really. You have to.