For the first time since releasing the confidently twangy “That Don’t Impress Me Much” two decades ago, Shania Twain has finally come clean about incorporating actor Brad Pitt’s name in the lyrics.
The No. 7 Billboard Hot 100 hit from 1997’s Come on Over, still the second best-selling album of the Nielsen era (1991-present), sarcastically pokes fun at a narcissistic suitor’s penchant for caring too much about his looks in the second verse before Twain memorably sings, “OK, so you’re Brad Pitt? That don’t impress me much.”
But what left Twain, who was 32 when the album came out, so unimpressed with Pitt, who was 33? Apparently, his nudes. When Billboard mentioned Pitt’s career longevity during a recent interview with Twain at Spotify HQ in New York City this month, she revealed the true inspiration for the Pitt lyric.
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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,” said Twain, 51, building suspense. “I remember I had a girlfriend 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 were 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.”
A 20-year-old mystery has now been solved, just in time for Twain’s long-awaited comeback album, Now, her first studio album since 2002’s Up!
Twain previewed her fifth studio album (due out Sept. 29) before unleashing the untold story about Pitt to a small group of avid fans, whom she shocked by making a surprise appearance at the end of the listening session.
Watch her explain in the video below, courtesy UMG.
This story originally appeared on Billboard.
