Shania Twain's seventh album, Little Miss Twain, revisits her troubled early life but largely plays it safe with zany humour and fluffy songs about young love, according to reviews. The record mines memories from her Ontario childhood for hints of the arena-filling star she would become.
Title Track and Early Life
Over wistful Mellotron and pedal steel, the title track marvels at little Eilleen, as she was called back then, escaping the rural north and making it big in Nashville. It feels inevitable, as if Twain's career was conjured by her mother's conviction, who drove her to tiny bars in a beaten-up Chevy. Twain's icon status is certified by five Grammys and the fact that her 1997 album Come on Over remains the highest-selling studio album by any female artist in history.
But it was far from inevitable. The first decades of Twain's life were shaped by poverty, violence and the shocking death of her parents, which left her responsible for raising three younger siblings. Northern Town, a noirish track with upright bass and flourishes of classical guitar, gives a veiled insight into those early years, its lyrics thick with cigarette smoke and the irony of being hard-up in gold rush territory. On a double-time bridge, she fantasises about cutting loose and driving south to sing: “Just so you know, I’m ready to go,” she murmurs.
Safe Territory and Missed Opportunities
Unfortunately, the rest of Little Miss Twain is vague on the details. Songs such as Quit My Life (an upbeat number about taking the day off) could be imagined from the perspective of young Twain weighed down by responsibility, but there's little to suggest it. Instead, memory lane is left in the rear-view, and Twain pivots from tender autobiography to her tried-and-tested comfort zone: zany humour and unadventurous but catchy melodies, all within the pop-rock-country Venn diagram she made her own in the 90s.
Much of it feels far too safe, from the soul-lite Take It to the River, featuring Ronnie Wood and The War and Treaty, to the clutch of fluffy, overproduced tracks about young love. The best of them, New Love, has a cantering beat, blushing strings and a lovely lightness of touch, so it's a shame its themes are rehashed on the hokey saloon song Down the Middle and the forgettable Scary Little Thing.
Highlights and Legacy
Thankfully, recent single Dirty Rosie is hoedown pop with real personality. Doing doughnuts around truck-obsessed country bro stereotypes, it puts Twain's increasingly textured voice to great use. By contrast, I'd Be Loving Me sounds vocally strained, but in a way that brings much-needed gravity and ache to the record. Ditching the denim and dirt roads of country cliche, this deceptively simple ballad wonders how Twain would apologise if she were in the shoes of her cheating partner, and whether, roles reversed, her partner would accept that apology – all with the sinking feeling that little will change.
On the title track, Twain sings of two dreams: she wanted to ride horses, while her mother wanted her to become “the next Tanya Tucker”. The two dreams intertwined: Tucker duets on those very lines, and Twain sighs over a lovely horse on the insouciant That's the Money. Little Miss Twain may not be a return to peak powers, but amid country's fresh crest in popularity it's a sharply timed reminder of Shania's rich legacy and influence. The genre would be far blander without her.
