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“I Was Writing It for Myself”: Shania Twain Reveals Why She Never Planned to Share Her Most Personal Music (Exclusive)

By Paige Gawley | American Songwriter | November 11, 2026

Shania Twain is giving fans a peek into her past. Four months after the country star released her latest album, Little Miss Twain, she gave listeners six more songs to enjoy with a deluxe edition of the LP, Little Miss Twain – The Places I’ll Go.

“There was way more than I needed for one album, and that’s the reason why there’s more. I wanted to share more of it,” Twain told host Lisa Konicki during an appearance on American Songwriter’s Off the Record podcast. “Anything that really fell into that theme of reflection ended up being part of this new music.”

One such song is “Hate That Way,” which explores Twain’s rarely felt emotion of anger.

“I rarely am ever deeply angry, if I’m being honest. But if I do get that angry, I don’t like it. I don’t like the feeling. It’s such a heavy emotion. I don’t enjoy that. I don’t like the weight of it,” she said. “… That’s what that song is all about. It’s like, I don’t want to hate that way.”

On the other side of the spectrum is “We Just Met,” a song about love at first sight.

“Love at first sight is just such a beautiful thing, and it’s very rare, but it’s the kind of love that knocks you off your feet and just takes you away,” Twain said. “It’s this escapism that love gives you and brings you, and it is so blissful.”

“For me, especially in my teens, there were people that I felt that way about that didn’t even know I existed. I felt that way many times when I was younger without being loved back or even necessarily being recognized,” she added. “So I know the feeling a lot more than I’ve actually experienced the song itself.”

Shania Twain Reveals the Inspiration for Little Miss Twain

The six new tracks completed Twain’s album, which is an exploration of her Canadian childhood.

“Little Miss Twain really depicts the environment that I grew up with, not just my roots as far as culture, but also the north, the true north, the great white north, and this four-season place that is quite wild,” she explained. “… Life there was so different than where I was dreaming about going. I guess I was projecting myself to where I ended up in the end and writing the songs that I would eventually live out and realize as my reality.”

As she penned the album, Twain said that she came to realize “how long it had been since I had been in touch with where I was from.”

“When I got signed, all of a sudden, I’m in a cultural shift. I’m completely in the South. I’m in Tennessee, and I would never live in Northern Canada again. That was it,” she said. “So all these years later, making this album was… cathartic in a lot of ways. I do enjoy reflecting on it because it’s so dear to me. I missed it. And I learned that, ‘Wow, it is something I never let go of, and I’ve always longed for it.’”

Shania Twain on What She Hopes Fans Take Away from the Album

While the writing process was a great experience for Twain, she didn’t initially think that she’d share the results with the world.

“There was a time over the years as I was slowly collecting this music. I just had never considered making it into an album,” Twain revealed. “… I was writing it for myself, for my own satisfaction. I was indulging and reflecting on my youth and really enjoying revisiting my youth. I wasn’t really sure if it would be interesting to anybody else, or if they would even want to know about that.”

Now that it’s out there, though, Twain said that she hopes the songs give listeners “a genuine sense [of the] senses, sounds, smells of what it is like to be in Northern Ontario.”

“I’m hoping to just spark everyone’s senses and to maybe feel like I’m taking them there,” she said. “When you’re reading a good book and the description of where the story takes you, the town, the senses, the smells, the seasons, you’re in it. You are living it for that moment. So I hope that’s what this album achieves.”

https://americansongwriter.com/i-was-writing-it-for-myself-shania-twain-reveals-why-she-never-planned-to-share-her-most-personal-music-exclusive/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AatFZMx-UKc