Shania Twain Sings Through the Sniffles for an Unforgettable Headline Set at BST Hyde Park 2024

“I don’t care if they’re cowboy boots or wellington boots,” Shania Twain told the crowd before launching into ‘Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under,’ the first single from her breakthrough album in 1995. “We’re going to do some shit-kicking right now!”

Last Thursday’s Morgan Wallen BST headline show might have been a sea of Mossy Oak caps and mullets, but it was the turn of leopard print and pink cowboy hats to fill the streets of West London as the crowds spilled out towards Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon.

Taking the stage just as the sun was setting, the Queen of Country Pop brought a set of back to back hits to Hyde Park wearing a red printed Viviene Westwood jacket and skirt with a pair of silver lace-up boots.

A week after her Glastonbury Legends slot performance, Shania seemed more at ease on the London stage in front of her own devoted audience, switching up the set and opening with ‘Don’t be Stupid (You Know I Love You)’ and ‘You Win My Love.’

“I have a little cold but who cares, it’s just a little sniffle,” she admitted two songs in to the set, sipping from a Stanley Cup and asking for a tissue from her band, which included Lindsay Ell on lead guitar, turning her back on the crowd to blow her nose.

“You don't need to see where that goes,” she laughed.

Shania was in a relaxed, buoyant mood as she led the packed crowd through a legendary hour and a half headline set, which included her guiding the audience through an acoustic sing-a-long of ‘You’re Still the One,’ perhaps because of the aforementioned “sniffles,” before a joyful run through ‘Come on Over.'

“There have been a lot of people who have been with me since the release of this song,” she remarked before playing the title track to her third studio album, one of the 12 singles taken from the album when it came out in 1997. “Harry Styles listened to it, and his mum listened to it… It’s a compliment that the music spans generations.”

As the biggest-selling studio album of all time by a solo female artist, the best-selling country album and the world's eighth best-selling album of all time in any genre, it’s impossible to understate the influence Shania Twain, and Come On Over in particular, has had on the pop and country landscapes, not just on Harry Styles.

The Taylor Swift phenomenon, supersized as it was by the Max Martin produced songs on Red - with their mix of slick pop country and stadium sized rock dynamics - was a page taken straight out of the ‘90s Shania playbook.

Her influence extended to the openers at Hyde Park on Sunday with The Corrs setting the mood with their distinctive blend of Irish folk and country adjacent nineties pop, complete with a tin whistle and fiddle, after Anne Marie had taken to the stage in head to toe leopard print and encouraged some hat swinging of her own earlier on in the day.

Up against contemporary pop stars like Anne Marie, Shania has always been capable of holding her own though. Over 30 years on from her breakthrough album, Woman in Me, and Shania is still perfectly capable of putting out songs that stand up alongside her mega hits, proved tonight with ‘Waking Up Dreaming’ and ‘Giddy Up’ from her latest album Queen of Me.

“I like things that make me feel giddy,” the 58-year-old teased the crowd. “Even at my age. It’s something to look forward to, I promise. A little of that old giddiness.”

“I’ve been coming here for many, many years and watching all the legends play this stage. I have played the stage once before. It's been a while now… 2003, and here we are again, and I just can’t thank you enough.”

When she played this stage 20 years ago she kept it simple with jeans and a white baseball cap, but tonight her choice was appropriately between two cowboy hats, as she acknowledged the way “country music has kinda come back around in fashion,” asking the crowd which one they preferred and opting for a brown rhinestoned one that had won their approval.

‘From This Moment On’ gave her a chance for self-reflection, telling the crowd, “I will remember this forever, I promise you,” with an emotional quiver in her voice.

As she tested the crowd’s vocal harmonies before ‘Honey, I’m Home,’ a stage prop seemed to delight her as much as confuse her, as she hugged the giant tree that decorates the Great Oak stage every year at BST.

“I mean, is this fake?” she asked, tapping the tree, and perhaps provided a metaphor for how she’s always dealt with the huge success and fame she’s enjoyed over the years. “I don’t care, it feels real… and big, and I want to believe in it.”

We believe in it too, Shania. We always have. Consider this shit well and truly kicked.