Shania Twain's ex-husband worked on Lady Gaga album
By Shirley Halperin Thu May 19, 2011 7:10pm EDT
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A stream of Lady Gaga's forthcoming second album "Born This Way" has been sent to media outlets one week ahead of its May 23 release and its liner notes have turned up an interesting collaborator: Robert "Mutt" Lange.
The revered but reclusive producer - and the ex-husband of country star Shania Twain - worked on Gaga's ballad "Yoü And I," a track that's already created buzz despite the absence of a flashy video.
The song ostensibly had its premiere on "American Idol" when Interscope Geffen A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine, the show's in-house mentor for season 10, suggested finalist Haley Reinhart perform it on "Songs From Now and Then" week.
"Yoü And I" then made an encore appearance on the Top 5's elimination night in the form of a live version from Gaga's Madison Square Garden show and HBO special.
Featuring Queen's Brian May on guitar (credited as Dr. Brian May) along with a sample of the band's "We Will Rock You," the studio version, which Lange worked on from his recording complex in Switzerland, emotes a sense of grandness that listeners don't always get with Gaga's RedOne-produced heavily-synthetic sounds.
To the contrary, a live piano and background vocals by Gaga and Lange add an undeniably lush quality, while the lyrics, which tell of a passionate love affair with a "Nebraska guy" and feature umlauts over every letter "u," drive the song home and potentially into hit territory.
Will pop radio embrace the ballad? Considering Lange's recent work with Maroon 5, whose latest single, "Never Gonna Leave This Bed," is No. 6 on this week's Billboard Adult Top 40 chart, and the Gaga hype machine, currently in full gear, it stands more than a good chance.
Other producers credited on "Born This Way" include Fernando Garibay, who worked on five tracks ("The Queen," "Highway Unicorn," "Fashion of His Love," "Bad Kids" and "Americano"), Paul Blair (aka White Shadow), and the aforementioned RedOne, who took the lead on the songs "Scheiße," "Judas," and "Hair."
Lady Gaga Is 3X Platinum In Canada And Releases "You And I" Video (watch)
The new Lady Gaga video was released today, August 16, and shows a love-struck Gaga walking from New York to Nebraska to get her boyfriend back. The Shania Twain”ish” sounding single was produced by Twain’s ex husband and multi-platinum producer Robert John “Mutt Lange and features a sample of Queen’s We Will Rock You and guitar from Queen’s own Brian May. The slick video also shows a topless Gaga as Yuyi the Mermaid throughout the video.
The video was released via Twitter as Gaga’s 1,000 Tweet. “You must love all + every part of me, as must I, for this complex + incomprehensible force to be true,” Gaga said.
You and I currently sits at number 27 on the Billboard Canada charts, while Edge of Glory is still doing well on other national charts, coming in at number 2 on the current August 11, 2011 Soundscan charts. Oddly, cities like Vancouver and Toronto are still charting Born This Way at no. 2 and 3 respectively.
Meanwhile, Born This Way, the album, was recently recognized with Triple-Platinum Status in Canada for sales in excess of 240,000 copies in June. Only Adele’s “21” ranked higher in the month with a Quintuple Platinum Album for 400,000 Units.
Lady Gaga’s “You And I” Gets A Shania Twain-esque Remix By Mark Taylor
Just when we were sitting around wondering why there hasn’t been a proper Mark Taylor-produced global pop smash (such as Cher’s “Believe,” Kylie Minogue’s “On A Night Like This,” Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero,” etc.) in ages, along comes a snippet of a remix that British studio whiz Mark Taylor did up for Lady Gaga’s “You And I.”PopJustice posted the tease today and asked, “But you know how it would sound even better if instead of sounding like a Shania Twain ballad it sounded like a linedance-friendly Shania Twain banger?” Why, yes, we do! Listen below.
All this Shania-ism, of course, comes from the fact that “Mutt” Lange, aka the producer of Ms. Twain’s biggest hits/her ex-husband, worked the boards on “You And I.”
Here’s the clip, which, coming full circle, sounds nothing like “Believe,” “On A Night Like This” or “Hero” (and why would it?):
I noticed that the first time I heard lady gaga's "you and i," with mutt producing the song, it kinda had a shania twain beat to it. Some songs it reminded me of was "im gonna getcha good" and "party for two" as far as the drums! I may be wrong, but what do yall think?
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"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13
Hi Logan there is no way to confuse about that well we're already two here who think it has the Shania sound he's a bastard for doing that I'm upset for Shania
New music: Lady Gaga - Yoü & I (Wild Beasts remix) Wild Beasts reimagine Lady Gaga? Could this be as weird as it sounds?
Yoü & I is the ridiculous, Shania Twain-esque single from Lady Gaga's Born This Way. Over bar-room piano and a drum beat lifted from Queen's We Will Rock You (Brian May also plays guitar on the track), the song is brilliantly OTT, finding Gaga in 80s hair-metal mode. It makes this Wild Beasts remix all the more remarkable, the band stripping away the bombast to leave it pulsing beautifully over a spooky bass rumble, distant drums and the chopped up and typically, well, horny lyric: "This time we made love, this time baby you and I." Of the surprise pairing, Wild Beasts' Hayden Thorpe told the Guardian: "The unlikeness of this match was perhaps what compelled us to take it on. Gaga in many ways is the epitome of what we are not. She is the butcher to our butter knife. The essential thrill is always to keep eluding what is expected of us and what we expect of ourselves."
• The remix is also helping raise awareness to the ways people can support independent labels that lost stock in the Pias UK warehouse fire. More information, as well as links to donate, can be found at the AIM website.
Another day, another pretty cool remix of Lady Gaga‘s “You and I.” But whereas the Wild Beasts recut from yesterday completely reinvented the song, replacing its original music and chopping the vocals to near-unrecognizable snippets, Mark Taylor’s latest spin on Gaga’s latest single just takes it further in the direction it was always headed—as a crowd-pleasing, arena-filling country anthem, with a stomping beat, huge-sounding synths and well-timed backing vocals. Given that the song was originally co-produced by Robert “Mutt” Lange, producer of Shania Twain’s Come on Over (as well as countless other rock/pop blockbusters), it’s only fitting that “You and I,” now most closely resembles Shania’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman”—which, of course, is one of the highest of pop compliments. Note the resemblance for yourself: