At long last, the mystery of why Shania Twain casually name-dropped Brad Pitt in her iconic classic “That Don’t Impress Me Much” has been solved.
To jog your memory, here are some things that don’t impress Shania Twain much, if at all: being a rocket scientist; having a car; thinking that you’re Elvis; being John Wayne, Tarzan, Captain Kirk or, most memorably, Brad Pitt. Out of all the things that Twain insists don’t impress her much, I’d argue that Brad Pitt is the one thing that should—he’s Brad freakin’ Pitt! Anyway, shoving his name in with things like having a reliable form of transportation or a good job always felt off, though beautifully confident.
Now, thanks to an interview Twain did with Billboard, we have an answer, and in a highly surprising twist, it involves the publication of paparazzi photos of Pitt nude while on vacation with then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow:
“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.”
Nothing pleases me more than the possibility of Shania Twain picking up an issue of Playgirl, looking at Brad Pitt’s nude 32-year-old body, wrinkling her nose and muttering the phrase that would become a hit under her breath. Do not send Shania Twain your nudes. She will not be impressed.
