Songfacts®:

• In this song, Shania Twain explains what she's looking for in a man. He has to have an endless well of compassion and accept her flaws. If she burns dinner, tell her that's how he likes it; if her dress is too tight, tell her it's perfect. And also, he has to be always on time even though she can be late, and she's allowed to change her mind as often as she'd like.
  
  Twain wrote it with her husband/producer, Mutt Lange, who tweaked it to make it sassier and more assertive. "It was all about how great and wonderful this guy was, but Mutt came up with a new guitar riff that changed the whole tone," she told Maclean's. "We rewrote it and the lyrics became spunkier and, really, more like me."
• "Any Man Of Mine" was a big step forward in Twain's career. She spent much of her 20s caring for her four siblings after her mother and stepfather died in a 1987 car accident. Her first (eponymous) album was released in 1993 when she was 28. Even though she had been writing songs for years, all of the tracks were written by the country music scribes that supplied songs for other artists in and around Nashville. None of the songs really connected, but the video for her first single, "What Made You Say That," got the attention of Lange, who helped find her musical direction and made sure she took part in the songwriting.
  
  The first single from her second album, The Woman In Me, was "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?," the first song with her distinctive attitude. It cracked the Hot 100 at #87 and did well on Country radio. "Any Man Of Mine" was the next single, and it rose to #31 and also topped the Country chart. Twain's management to that point included a pronunciation guide for her first name (Shuh-NYE-uh) but that soon became unnecessary as she became a household name with a long list of hits.
• The original title was "This Man Of Mine" when the song was more about the guy than about what Shania wanted in a man.
• John Derek, known for his role in the movie The Ten Commandments and for his marriage to the sex symbol Bo Derek, directed the video. He deserves credit for developing Twain's visual presentation. Derek, who also directed the video for "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?," presented Twain as confident, rugged beauty who didn't need to depend on a man.
• "Any Man Of Mine" has endured as a concert staple for Twain. Even amassing many more hits to choose from, she left it in her setlists.