“Okay, so you’re Brad Pitt / That don’t impress me much,” Shania Twain speak-sang in “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” her 1998 ode to vainglorious dudes. And for the next 19 years, we wondered: Why Brad Pitt? Look at Brad Pitt in 1998. He was People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1995. He was about to start dating Jennifer Aniston. No one was making tired references to Fight Club, because it didn’t exist yet. What about this man failed to impress Shania Twain?
The answer is: His nudes. Let Shania tell you, as she told this room of fans at a listening session for her new album:
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You want to know the truth about this story? I’ve never told this before. I’m going to say it now. I remember I had a girl friend visiting me and it was near Christmas and we were baking cookies. I was writing this album and there was a scandal of [Pitt] and Gwyneth [Paltrow] where there was naked photos of him [in Playgirl magazine, which Pitt later successfully sued for publishing the paparazzi photos]. And this was like all the rage. I just thought ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’ I’m like, well that don’t impress me much, I mean what is all the fuss. We see people naked every day. That’s really what I thought. I wasn’t picking on Brad Pitt. But that was just the association in that moment and things we make fusses about and whatever. Of course, it could have been any gorgeous guy.
Because of course she was baking cookies. Now, Shania Twain’s first album since 2002’s Up!, is out September 29.
You can buy a copy of the August 1997 issue of Playgirl on Amazon, by the way. [Billboard]
