Twain, an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, snapped a selfie with James while the crowd cheered wildly. Then Twain decided she wanted to sing some of the song … except she couldn’t remember the lyrics. Standing in front of 18,000 people, neither did James. They both stood there for a few seconds before Twain attempted to smoothly move on — but then James devised an impromptu solution and looked up the lyrics on his phone. The audience laughed and cheered again, and the singer appeared thrilled.
“I’m about to be reacquainted with this,” Twain, 57, said, scanning the screen as she held up the phone and belted out the first verse: “Spoke my heart when I had the mind to, I lost my way trying to find the truth / But I’m home now, home now.” As she reached the end, James chimed in: “I’m home now, home now.”
Over the last month or so, some concertgoers have taken to TikTok (with those videos later aggregated into blog posts) to express their disappointment in Twain’s worldwide “Queen of Me” tour, which kicked off in late April and continues through November. The gripes run the gamut: Her voice seems different. She stops the show to talk about random things. And why is she wearing a wig? Reviews have said she “sounded almost manic” at one point, or that “the whole night felt odd.” Of course, multiple social media critics go out of their way to emphasize they love Twain, and they know she’s had publicly documented health issues that led to vocal struggles, and that the fans seemed to have a blast anyway — but, well, it just wasn’t what they were expecting.
Out of context, the forgotten lyrics/phone situation could have easily wound up in one of the roundups of Twain’s awkward concert incidents. But the unscripted interaction was also one of the highlights of the otherwise heavily choreographed show. Twain clearly thrives on spontaneity, as she also brought up two young girls from the audience to sing with her: A 7-year-old too shy for the microphone, followed by a 6-year-old who let loose with a dazzling rendition of “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and then broke into an original song about cowgirls that she wrote herself. (Twain joined in, improvising more lyrics.)
The potential chaos of it all may make some people squirm, but such moments are a reminder that the whole point of Shania Twain is to let her be Shania Twain. The music industry learned this lesson three decades ago when Nashville executives urged her to release a “traditional” country album, but saw her explode into mega-stardom when she was allowed to co-write her own music and embrace her love of rock and pop.
That freedom sold 100 million albums; Twain became the only artist in history to have three consecutive diamond-certified records with 1995’s “The Woman in Me,” 1997’s “Come On Over” and 2002’s “Up!” Her success inspired listeners and the aspiring female country stars who would follow. This reporter even wrote a chapter in a book about how Twain was the reason she started listening to country music, which makes it strange to stand there in the crowd all these years later and consider the awkward crowd banter, or listen closely for hints of diminished power. But if there’s one thing she has shown throughout her career, Shania Twain knows what she’s doing.
The last year hasn’t exactly been a Shania-aissance — even when she’s out of the spotlight for long periods of time, her cultural influence remains steady, whether she’s serving as an influence for artists from all genres or you hear “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” or “Any Man of Mine” blasting from any given grocery store speaker system near you.
And yet, since last summer, it seems like Twain has been all over the place, from a spate of award-show appearances to her current tour. Last July, she joined the pantheon of celebrity documentaries on Netflix with “Not Just a Girl,” directed by Joss Crowley. Though it mostly focused on her music, Twain briefly talked about growing up in an abusive, poverty-stricken household in rural Ontario, and the trauma that followed the death of her parents in a car crash when she was in her early 20s. She touched on the betrayal of her ex-husband, Robert John “Mutt” Lange (the acclaimed rock producer who produced and co-wrote her massive-selling albums), who had an affair with her married assistant and close friend. Twain and Lange divorced in 2008; three years later, Twain wed her former friend’s former husband, a chain of events that still fascinates celebrity gossip sites.
Though many may be familiar with Twain’s backstory from her 2011 memoir or other interviews, the goal of the film was for Twain share her narrative in her own words on camera, Crowley said. The younger generation wearing T-shirts that read “LET’S GO GIRLS” might not know all of the details, such as the fact that Twain was diagnosed with Lyme disease around 2003 and feared she might never sing again because it damaged her voice.
“Because of what she’s gone through, she’s rightly quite guarded about things. So when she wants to talk, you need to listen,” Crowley said. “It’s just very powerful, and that’s what I tried to bring across: Let her tell her story and have her moment, which she is definitely having this year.”
The documentary was planned as part of a lead-up to Twain’s latest record, “Queen of Me,” released in February, her second in the past 20 years; she has said she wants the record, filled with upbeat pop tracks, to reflect how comfortable she now feels in her own skin. She spoke in the film about her fear of going back into the studio without Lange, who was the one who realized that if she combined her country roots with a rock and pop sound, she could be a megastar. The enormous amount of success they had together was daunting, although, as the film pointed out, too many people in the late 1990s wanted to give Lange most — if not all — the credit for Twain’s career.
“It was sort of the lazy sexist journalism of the day,” Crowley said, noting that while Lange rightly got a huge amount of credit, it shouldn’t have overshadowed Twain. “And Shania is so respectful about what Mutt contributed, she would never say a bad word about it.”
Crowley wanted to show how much Twain is in control: She still writes her own music, remains savvy about marketing and promotion, and knows exactly how she wants her concerts to play out, from “every last thread stitch on a dress” to beat and chord changes.
“She works with wonderful people and she knows what she wants,” Crowley said. “She brings out the best in people — [she has] that balance of being a great collaborator but being the driving force behind everything she does.”
One aspect of her legacy that Twain cares especially deeply about is visuals — it was the area early in her career where she, to borrow a phrase, was given the prerogative to have a little fun. At first, Nashville executives were aghast at her sensual music videos and midriff-baring wardrobe and all that leopard print. But then her brash confidence started connecting with listeners, dazzled by this woman who was unimpressed with whether a man had a car or was a rocket scientist or was even Brad Pitt — the only thing that mattered is if he considered her an equal and treated her well.
In this era, her fashion choices go viral: A sheer leopard-print dress (and tribute to the “That Don’t Impress Me Much” video) worn to the People’s Choice Awards in December, where she won the Music Icon Award. A cow-print suit and bright red wig at the Grammy Awards in February. A two-piece purple ensemble at the CMT Music Awards in April, where she was given the network’s Equal Play Award for her advocacy for women and underrepresented singers.
As with any woman who dares to age or evolve in the nostalgia-obsessed music industry, Twain received plenty of feedback on her bold looks, and appeared to address the negative comments in an Instagram post after the CMT Awards: “For me fashion is a powerful tool that helps to convey my personality and express my creativity … Life is too short to wear boring clothes!!”
Leslie Fram, CMT’s senior vice president of music strategy, saw the chatter online about Twain’s style, but hoped that people also took away just how much of an impact Twain has made on the next generation of singer-songwriters. When the network talks to artists in its Next Women of Country program, Fram said, “99.9 percent” say Twain is one of their major influences. Twain has quietly mentored singers behind the scenes, she added, as well as provided opportunities for newer musicians as openers on her tour, from Breland and Priscilla Block to Lily Rose and Hailey Whitters.
“She’s taking out a lot of artists that would never have the opportunity to be on a Shania Twain tour if it was just a promoter putting the tour together,” Fram said. “She’s really paying it forward.”
At her concert in Maryland, Twain arrived for the first song in a rolling cart through the middle of the audience, then took the stage in a pink two-piece with sparkly silver boots and a matching cropped jacket, with pink ribbons flowing off the edge. The audience indulged her newer pop songs (“Giddy Up!,” with the much-discussed line, “Drunk in the city, got litty in the cup”) and sang their heads off at the classics, from “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” to “Honey, I’m Home.”
At one point, a tiny alien ran across the background screen to give the impression it was chasing Twain’s fiddle player; Twain started one song on the back of a motorcycle. Did all of it make sense? Absolutely not. It doesn’t have to. The fans screamed regardless.
“Everybody that I can see knows the words to every song so far,” Twain said, settling in to sing the classic 1997 ballad “You’re Still the One,” and then stopped to chat with someone in the front row. Upon learning this fan could not sing, Twain insisted it didn’t matter — whether you have the voice, she urged, sing anyway.