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Shania Twain: She’s Still the One

The Grammy Award–winning artist has a way and now it’s louder, bolder and entirely on her own terms. Her next chapter starts now.

By Marshall Heyman | DuJour

Let's get in our DeLorean and flash back about three decades. To November 4, 1997, if you please.

A few days ago, Titanic—yes that one, with Kate and Leo— had its world premiere in Tokyo.

In a month, Timothée Chalamet will be 2 years old.

Harry Styles is 3.

Taylor Swift is 7.

Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter haven’t even been born yet.

Now imagine Shania Twain. She’s 32 years old, from the middle of nowhere, “the bush,” in northern Ontario, Canada, where, in winter, the roads freeze over and you get around on snowmobiles. She’s already had her first No. 1 hit, “Any Man of Mine” from her breakthrough The Woman in Me. Today, she’s celebrating the release of what will become her landmark album Come On Over, her third record.

She knows it’s good. She’s put her heart and soul into it. But she has no idea that it will become one of the best-selling releases of all time. (Tied for a while, before surpassing it, with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.)

And, that nearly 30 years later—OK, now we’re in 2026 and Sabrina Carpenter is 27 and Harry Styles is 32—we’ll still be singing not one, not two, not three, but five songs from it: “You’re Still the One,” “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” “From This Moment On,” “Come On Over” and “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”

These are tracks that play rent-free in our minds. You can sing a line from any of those songs, and you don’t even need the radio or a karaoke machine to do it. One of those lyrics is likely rolling through your head right now as you read this.

Maybe it’s:

The best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun.

or:

You’re still the one that I love, the only one I dream of.

For me, it’s:

Oh-oh, you think you’re sexy. Oh-oh, you think you’re something else. Okay, so you’re Brad Pitt. That don’t impress me much.

Yes, the legacy of this album is amazing. It’s impossible not to be impressed. Do you know what’s also amazing? Do you know what’s also impressive? That in the 30 years since this canonical album was released, Twain has still not met Brad Pitt.

“Never met him,” she says, taking a load off after the day’s photo shoot. She’s wearing a Gucci jacket, a yellow baseball cap, white high-top sneakers and a T-shirt featuring Winnie the Pooh.

I look at her, dumbfounded. I repeat the question. How is it possible? That this worldwide musical sensation has never been in the same room as Pitt? After all this time?

“Nope, I’ve never met him. And I think he owes it to me to at least introduce himself,” she says. At the time, two years before the release of Fight Club, Twain explains, it was a “very random lyric.” She once said she came up with it after seeing leaked naked photos of Pitt with his then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow.

“And, actually, I hoped he’d never be in the same room as me because I’m a little embarrassed that I did that,” Twain adds. “I always thought, ‘What if he doesn’t like it? What if he’s offended by it?’ I’d rather just not run into him at all.”

All these years later, though, Twain says, “I think we’d both talk and laugh. Or I’d hope so, of course.”

Twain will turn 61 in August. Pitt is 62. And she has nothing to be embarrassed about. Especially not this summer, which sees the release of her latest studio album, her seventh, titled Little Miss Twain, out July 24. Starting in June, she’ll enter into a concert residency with Styles for 12 dates in London at Wembley Stadium.

First: the album, which harks back to her childhood, “who I was and where it started,” Twain says. It’s filled with so much of the soundtrack of her youth, including The Supremes, Dolly Parton, The Carpenters, Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, Bread, The Bee Gees, Gladys Knight. There’s some banjo, some bluegrass, some acoustic guitar.

“It’s my whole scramble of music influences, where I’m from and who I really am,” she says. “It comes out of the pure joy of making music.”

It also comes from a time when Twain was 8 years old, already earning money by singing in bars, encouraged by her mom to sing. “I’d have school the next day,” she recalls. “I’m too young to be there. I’m tired. It’s full of smoke.” She makes it sound a bit like she was a young Gypsy Rose Lee. There are strippers, she remembers, on the stage too, and “when they’re stripping, I’m on a break. When they’re off, I’m onstage.”

“According to my mother, I’m the next Tanya Tucker,” Twain sings on the album. It’s not that she felt pressure from her mother to become famous, she says. “Fame was so far away as a reality. I wasn’t dreaming about fame. The dream was to make a living at singing.” Fame, she insists, “was my mother’s dream. That lyric is about how I will be famous someday, not according to me. By the time I figured [being famous] was even a remote possibility, she was not even here anymore. That’s how wide the gap is between her dream and my reality, which is kind of cool.”

Twain’s parents died in a car crash in 1987. Things had never been easy. “We were really, really poor,” Twain continues. “We’d have empty cupboards for weeks. I always thought, ‘If I get good enough at this, then we’ll always have food.’ I had really basic, naive goals.” Twain would contribute to the family income. “I could put gas in the car,” she says. By 13, she was already working at McDonald’s.

Still, returning to that moment for this album is a happy time. Zipping around on snowmobiles. Campfires. “I love looking at the pictures and reminiscing with my sister.” Twain says. “It’s a good feeling. I’m not sad about it anymore, and maybe that’s part of the timing, too. I’m also discovering my purpose in a lot of things. And songwriting is a big part of that journey.”

Since she’d just be turning in the latest album, Twain expected to take the summer off. She wanted to ride horses. To cook. (Lentil soup for her 25-year-old son, Eja; her special vegetable casserole of cheese, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and carrots for her husband, Frédéric Thiébaud.) Play lots of tennis. Write more music. “I take writing very seriously,” Twain says. Think about the jukebox musical of her songs that’s in development. Spend time between the Bahamas and Switzerland, where she has homes.

“I love the Canadian nature,” she says. “I love being in a tent. I love sleeping outside. I love cooking on a fire. I love the Exumas. I love the Caribbean. I love the waters. I love just being in the water and forgetting about the rest of life.”

To that end, Twain says, “I wasn’t planning on doing anything this summer. I’d already decided in my mind that I wasn’t getting on the stage.”

And then Styles reached out.

Styles has often covered “You’re Still the One” on his tours. It’s a favorite of his. So she went to see him in concert, and they met backstage. They exchanged numbers. A little bit later, he texted to ask if Twain would call his mom and wish her a happy birthday.

“He said, ‘She’s a big fan. She’s the reason why I even know who you are. You’re the soundtrack of my youth.’ So I give her a call and wish her a happy birthday, and we’ve just been friends ever since.”

Twain sees herself a “little bit more like an aunt” to Styles. At 32, “he’s just now at the age when I was just really getting big. I relate to him more now than I would have when he was younger. I know where he’s at, or where I imagine he’s at. He’s burdened with a lot of things that fame brings, but all the great things too. So we understand each other. I would never have done it for anybody else. It’s a really great match.”

Twain adds that “it’s a good coming together of people in this world. We’re just normal people, but we understand each other as normal human beings and as artists.” She also deeply appreciates Styles’ closeness with his mom. “There’s something really touching about that connection. He loves her so much. It’s adorable, and I just want to be around that. I want to cheer him on. He’s off on a big, big, big venture.”

But she can’t tour the whole world with Styles. “He has time for that, but I’ve got to prioritize things,” Twain says. “I have to live to 200 in order to do everything I want to do. I’ve got to get back in the studio. I’ve got other songs I need to write.”

Twain believes her mental health comes first. “It’s everything,” she says. “I try to be the best parent I can be, the best wife, the best friend, the best sister. I like making people happy. That makes me happy.”

Little Miss Twain, she explains, is a good marker of where she’s at in her life, of all she’s accomplished. “I’m proud of her. I’m proud of Little Miss Twain and her determination. She freaking did it.”

https://dujour.com/news/shania-twain-new-album/