Man! I feel like Shania: Shania Twain's fiendishly entertaining new collection inspires a trip down pink memory lane.

Listening to Shania Twain's Greatest Hits CD--complete with four new tracks--is like taking a musical tour through the past decade of my big, fat, occasionally gay life. And I must say, it's a life made considerably more endurable by the unabashedly sunny, exclamation point--favoring Canadian lady of song.

Like peyote, you never forget your first shot of Shania. Mine occurred at the Los Angeles two-stepping gay bar Oil Can Harry's, where Shania's first video, "What Made You Say That," featuring a smokin' hot shiftless love interest, was in heavy rotation. That track is not on the Greatest Hits CD--it was recorded before Shania ditched Nashville and hooked up with her hit-meister husband and producer, Mutt Lang. Its omission is probably for the best, because I now find the song lyrically naive. What made him say that, Shania? He was drunk and he wanted to get in your pants.

Shania totally wised up by the first single of the next album, the suspicious-minded "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" which is among the 21 tracks on Greatest Hits. So is the ravishing "From This Moment On," which I can't listen to without fantasizing about the Star Jones-esque wedding I'll never have. Then there's Shania's wistful ode to enduring love, "You're Still the One," which I vividly recall her strumming on VH1's first Divas Live extravaganza, proving to Mariah Carey--and the world--that you don't need gargantuan hair extensions to win over the White Party crowd. Quick question: How long does a gay couple have to be together before they can adopt "You're Still the One" as their theme song? I'm going to go with a month and a half.

On the up-tempo side, let us take a moment to praise "That Don't Impress Me Much," in which Shania sings about the travails of dating self-involved pretty boys--"OK, so you're Brad Pitt ... that don't impress me much"--while proving in the video that there's no animal print she can't work ... even in the desert! Then there's "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" which reminds me of a drag pageant I cowrote several years back. To this day, I can't hear it without recalling the smell of packages in panty hose.

I was out of the country when Shania's 2002 album, UP!, dropped, so I picked it up in the Miami airport and listened to it all the way back to Los Angeles. Between the 'Red' CD, with the rock 'n' roll production, and the 'Green' country-tinged disc, it was like being buried alive in a Shania avalanche ... but what a way to go! The empowering title track is particularly close to my heart because it's catchier than syphilis mad there's an entire verse about how "even my skin is acting weird." Now, who can't relate to that?

Some criticize Shania for not digging deeper and tackling darker issues with her music, but hey, we've got Avril and Alanis and Ashlee Simpson to do that. Shania's message seems to be, Life's hard enough without me whining about it, so let's party!

This gay boy totally gets it.

Hensley is the author of Screening Party.