st220

FEATURE MUSIC

song is never finished until you’ve finished recording it. Everything I write is pretty much on just an acoustic guitar; it’s me sitting there alone, with my guitar and my lyrics. And then when you get with musicians, and you’re in the process of recording, the whole thing takes on a presentation. The arrangement, is basically what I’m talking about: these pauses [or] builds... I get caught up in that. It’s all very collaborative.” As a fan of collaboration and participation, Twain is famously hands-on with everything that her art encompasses – especially visuals. ”I was disruptive to the image of country music,” she acknowledges in Not Just a Girl , and she continues to be so: the video for Queen of Me single Waking Up Dreaming appears to reference one of the musician’s all-time notable visual creations. It features a four-piece all-girl band behind her – in spectacular costumes we might add,

Top: Robert Palmer's clip for Addicted to Love (1985) Bottom:Twain in the Man! I Feel Like aWoman! clip (1997) Luke Combs, Harry Styles and, of course, Shania’s next-gen baton bearer in country-pop superstardom, Taylor Swift. Queen of Me takes cues from a similarly diverse bucket of influences, though the twang is never far away. Pretty Little Liar evokes Amy Winehouse in its fat stabs of low pitched sax, doo-wop harmonies and double clap on the two. It’s also hilarious: ”Your pants are on fire...

You’ve got a big gun and you really wanna come/ To show me how you

wield it, but save it for someone who cares.” ”I was definitely thinking ’retro’,” Twain smiles. ”I

I was experiencing it as I was writing, it, imagining myself there – which is part of the fun of writing stories and lyrics

Twain herself in a glittered catsuit, voluminous cherry hair and feather lashes – who are deliberately more wild and alive than

three younger siblings, her contraction of Lyme disease and subsequent dysphonia, three consecutive diamond-certified albums, a Vegas residency, throat surgery, and the disintegration of her 17-year marriage to lauded producer Lange – as well as chronicling her extraordinary cross-genre leap from country to pop. It also spotlighted just how influential she’s been on the modern music landscape, featuring comments or appearances from Orville Peck, Bo Derek, Diplo, Avril Lavigne, Kelsea Ballerini, Lionel Ritchie, Post Malone, HAIM, Lizzo, Janelle Monae, Lewis Capaldi, Justin Vernon,

was thinking ’60s, in the feel of it. Motown-y. The story is all very tongue-in

that other band Twain famously fronted in the Man! I Feel Like a Woman! clip. Man! I Feel Like a Woman! ’s visual riff on Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love (Palmer

cheek. There’s a lot of attitude in there. I was picturing myself in a pub somewhere, setting the whole scene – I was very visual about it in my mind, and literal about

it. I was experiencing it as I was writing it, imagining myself there – which is part of the fun of writing stories and lyrics.” The title track is a snappy pop anthem with

up front of stage in classic suit with mic stand, flanked by four purple-eyeshadowed and vacant-faced models doing the bare minimum in miming playing their instruments) is well-known. And while it may have joined a few already existing entries in the ’robotically sexualised back-up band’ music clip trope, Twain was the very first to gender-flip the idea – and it hit super bold. ”Reversing the roles was very intentional,” she says. ”That title wrote everything! It wrote the song, it wrote the video. But the fashion part of it is maybe what made it iconic. I took it very seriously; I was really enjoying the elements of fashion and its role in aesthetics and music combined. I had seen other artists do it – Madonna is probably the greatest at it ever, she is so brilliant in that sense – and I just really wanted to explore it.” Twain remains an intrepid adventurer into pop music’s possibilities as well as its adjacent artforms, giving a tassel-booted kick to any gatekeepers she finds along the way – and that’s precisely why we love her. ”There’s no one type of Shania Twain fan,” she asserts – but though there are a thousand facets to the artist, there’ll only ever be one of her.

plucked strings and harp gliss, in which Twain asserts: ”I don’t want your money, honey,” and ”You ain’t nothing but a king of fools; I’m queen of me.” And a surprise lands in superb closer The Hardest Stone (”When will I learn the hardest stone to turn is the heart?”), anchored by a trip-hop/R’n’B beat which exudes Lauryn Hill energy. Twain says that instinctive decisions on where a song should go happen in the moment, in the studio – and judging by Not Just a Girl, that appears to be how it’s always been. The doco contains a fleeting scene where we see Shania recording what would be her breakout hit in Australia, 1997’s (If You’re Not in it for Love) I’m Outta Here! . ”What if we do, ’I’m outta here,’ and then leave a beat in between?” she asks her bandmates, pencil in hand and notes on her lap. That suggestion became the track’s most memorable moment, when the beat suddenly drops out to let the vocal linger, as a lonesome electric pedal-steel lazily bends its way upwards. ”That happens all the time – all the time,” Twain tells us of these off-the-cuff decisions. ”Because the

Queen of Me by Shania Twain is out now via Universal.

17