Shania Reigns

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Every once in a while, Shania Twain will munch on a carrot stick, whip her curly hair over her shoulder and issue a modest decree. It is worth paying attention to these pronouncements, even though Twain, who is Canadian and thus constitutionally averse to star trips, never quite means what she says. On a brisk October night, with the bleat of Paris traffic in her ears, the Twain fiat is this: she is going to stop singing in public. "I never burned to perform, and I don't care if I ever perform again," she says. "I have no need to do that."

First in line among the things she has no need to do is Star Academy, a French reality game show in which marginally talented young aspirants live in a house and vote one another out on the basis of their progress in becoming slick professional singers. (Imagine the cheese factor of Big Brother, Survivor and American Idol--in French.) But just a few hours after her edict about performing, Twain, 37, is singing her signature ballad, You're Still the One, in a duet with Jeremy, a young Frenchman whose penchant for accidental key changes augurs poorly for an extended stay at le Star Academy chateau. As Jeremy bludgeons the first verse, Twain closes her eyes and sways in a convincing facsimile of joy. Star Academy is wildly successful in France; Twain is only moderately successful in France. Yes, she really wants to stop performing, but what she wants more than anything is to have the biggest-selling album of all time, and she will do anything, including Star Academy, to get it.

"Overcoming any situation and performing at your best--that's being a professional," she says later of her battle with Jeremy's howl. "It was an obstacle, and I overcame it." Twain speaks in formal, syllogistic sentences, especially when the subject is her job. "I am a commercial singer. When I write a song, I'm thinking about the people who are going to be listening to it. The whole process is done with that in mind. I hear other singers say, 'What I do is artistic, and I do it for myself.' I don't get that. If you're making it just for yourself, why sell it?"

It is this unabashed commercialism (plus a great gift for pop hooks) that makes Twain the ruler of the vast collection of ears between Madonna and Garth Brooks. She began her career appealing to a country audience that was first scandalized and then hypnotized by her pop sensibilities--and her conspicuously bare midriff. Then in 1997 Twain recorded Come on Over, a brilliantly calculated mix of pop and country that has sold 19 million copies and is the most popular album by a female singer in American history. Twain and Whitney Houston are the only women to have two albums sell more than 10 million copies each. Twain's newest, Up!, released Nov. 19, sold 874,000 copies in its first week, meaning it should be just a matter of months before she's the only woman with three 10-million sellers.