{"id":539389,"date":"2026-07-22T23:12:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T23:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/539389\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T23:12:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T23:12:25","slug":"shania-twain-people-know-im-inclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/539389\/","title":{"rendered":"Shania Twain: ‘People Know I’m Inclusive’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shania Twain<\/a> is turning back the clock. On her new album, Little Miss Twain, the 60-year-old singer-songwriter connects the dots between Shania the superstar and the young girl who sang Marty Robbins and Freddy Fender covers in motel bars in her native Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first Top 10 [hit] was when I was 30. From the age of six all the way up to then is this whole gap of my life and my music that nobody knows about,\u201d Twain says on a new episode of Rolling Stone\u2018s Nashville Now podcast, recorded at her property in Las Vegas. \u201cThe theme of the album is me catching everybody up on who I am as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Twain, who opened all 12 of Harry Styles\u2019 Wembley Stadium<\/a> concerts this summer in London, isn\u2019t doing it alone. Little Miss Twain features guest appearances by Tanya Tucker, the War and Treaty<\/a>, Ronnie Wood, and even Josh Homme. Producer Zach Dawes came to Twain with the idea of having the Queens of the Stone Age leader on \u201cFaded Blue Jeans.\u201d \u201cHe said, \u2018Josh is a fan. I really hear him on this with you,\u2019\u201d Twain recalls. \u201cI said, \u2018Are you crazy? I would love that.\u2019 I\u2019m a rocker, you know? I\u2019m a late-Eighties rocker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little Miss Twain is an autobiographical album, rooted in your formative years in Timmins, Ontario. What was it like growing up there?
Little Miss Twain is a reflection on the whole journey of a pre-recording artist \u2014 it\u2019s the songwriter trying to eventually make it to Nashville, around that big round conference table.<\/p>\n

Why did it take so long for you to write this record?
Often, if I\u2019m missing my hometown or I\u2019m missing nature, it\u2019s great therapy to sit with my guitar and just ramble on about the place I love. Or the jeans that just no matter how much they\u2019ve fallen apart, they\u2019re still one of my favorite pairs of jeans, you know? That\u2019s where \u201cFaded Blue Jeans\u201d comes in, being 17 and rolling around in the grass with my boyfriend. Things maybe my parents wouldn\u2019t have been happy that I was doing.<\/p>\n

The song \u201cNorthern Town\u201d has a detailed Dairy Queen order in it. Is that from your childhood?
I want people to taste the flavors and smell the air and be there, so I did my best to describe what it was like then. We would go out target shooting or rabbit snaring or something out in the woods, and my dad would stop at the bar on the way home, and we\u2019d sit in the car and wait while he had a beer. Then before driving us home, he would say, \u201cI\u2019m taking you to Dairy Queen. So, remember, we don\u2019t have to talk about stopping for a beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your parents died in a car accident when you were 22. How much of that experience informs the album?
I moved to Toronto right after my first little Canadian tour, and I was 20. All my other friends were in college and university, and I\u2019m working in the local bars in Toronto, which is a pretty big deal compared to Timmins.<\/p>\n

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But then my parents died, and I have to put my career on hold. All [my siblings] lived with me at the time, and a record deal was likely not going to happen, at least till the kids graduated from high school. I wasn\u2019t really thinking about where I was going anymore. I was thinking about day-to-day.<\/p>\n

You have a very sizable queer audience. How have you seen that segment of your fanbase evolve?
I think that if you believe in something, especially if you\u2019re a songwriter, it will show up in your writing, and it will resonate. People know I\u2019m inclusive. They know it through my songwriting. I don\u2019t even have to say it. I didn\u2019t write a song like \u201cAny Man of Mine,\u201d for example, to make a point. I was just talking about myself. I always say be original, and if it\u2019s not you to be broad-minded, then don\u2019t be broad-minded. Don\u2019t be something you\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

Ella Langley is having a moment not unlike yours in the Nineties. Do you see any of yourself in her success?
I see her as an authentic songwriter. She sounds original. That\u2019s already a bonus, right? So we already can hear the difference, and she really does seem very unapologetic. That commands respect. I sense that in her, in her aura, and her persona, and the way she delivers a song. I believe what she\u2019s saying.<\/p>\n

You opened all 12 of Harry Styles\u2019 Wembley Stadium shows this summer. How did you two meet?
We met at a backstage event, and we just chatted, exchanged numbers, and he said, \u201cIt\u2019s my mother\u2019s birthday coming up, would you mind phoning her to wish her happy birthday?\u201d One thing led to another, and he invited me to Coachella. We really came together at that moment as two artists who had already connected as two individuals.<\/p>\n

With \u201cMan! I Feel Like a Woman!,\u201d you achieved something remarkable: recording a song about female empowerment that men feel comfortable singing. How did you do that?
\u201cMan! I Feel Like a Woman!\u201d is an expression, so anyone can express it. Nobody owns that exclamation. It\u2019s punctuated affirmation of something that is followed up with something that\u2019s very singable.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it was empowering for women, which is how I felt when I wrote it. But it really went so far beyond that. It\u2019s a celebration. I wrote it from the heart. I wasn\u2019t trying to be tricky. I didn\u2019t have an agenda. It was just, \u201cI\u2019m really coming into my own here. I\u2019m really enjoying my curves.\u201d I grew up flattening out my chest, and I wanted to make sure they didn\u2019t bounce when I walked, or when I played football, I\u2019d do bras and loose pants, track clothes. I just thought, \u201cWow, I\u2019m so over that! I\u2019m like a late bloomer, I gotta enjoy these curves.\u201d And I really started to embrace that when I started making videos. That\u2019s when I realized, \u201cI am so far behind, I got some catching up to do, and, man, I feel like a woman, I\u2019m going to just enjoy it all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next year marks 30 years of Come On Over. Do you still marvel at how that album shaped country music<\/a>?
It still surprises me that it has been considered an album that has reshaped country because the country I grew up with threw me off the reality of what Nashville would have expected. It was like I was living in a time warp; I was writing and making this album that I thought was well within the margin of a \u201cTake This Job and Shove It,\u201d or Linda Ronstadt records or Fleetwood Mac. If anything I didn\u2019t reshape it. I revived something that was already there, just in a contemporary way.<\/p>\n

Download and subscribe to\u00a0Rolling Stone\u2019s weekly country-music podcast,\u00a0Nashville Now<\/a>, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/a>Spotify<\/a>\u00a0(or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Blackberry Smoke, Jason Newsted, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, the War and Treaty, Carly Pearce, Amy Grant, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Michaela Anne, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons\u2019 Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show\u2019s Ketch Secor, Clever,\u00a0Love on the Spectrum\u2018s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.<\/p>\n

From Rolling Stone US<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shania Twain is turning back the clock. On her new album, Little Miss Twain, the 60-year-old singer-songwriter connects…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,98717,111,139,69,215479,265487],"class_list":["post-539389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-nashville-now","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-shania-twain","tag-shania-twain-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}