July 24, 2026 • 23 mins
Shania Twain stops by to celebrate her new album Little Miss Twain, sharing stories about her mother, growing up performing in smoky bars, recovering from vocal surgery, collaborating with Harry Styles, and the memories that inspired her most personal songs yet.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
She is Shania Twain.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You have no idea how pumped up we were when
we heard you're going to stop by to say hi
here on your album release day. This is quite an honor.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, thanks for being had it. This is like I
guess Christmas morning for you right now. I mean, your
album came out last night at midnight, little miss Twain.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And right it is, it is.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
It really does feel like Christmas because there's so much
build up and anticipation on my side. You know, I'm
preparing it for all this time being a songwriter. I
put everything. I put so much into it, so much
thought and energy and emotion, and especially this album, little
Miss Twain, because it's so much about my life and
(00:48):
my experiences and so yeah, and and and you know,
looking back and reflecting on my my youth in general,
all the way up to my late twenties till I
got signed to my recording contract. So it's this huge
gap that I'm now sharing through this music. And I'm
just waiting with an.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Dissipation to hear what everybody thinks. And that's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Well, who cares what they think?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Well?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I do. I actually do care because I make music
to share it.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So you know, the gift for me is the feedback,
and the reward is really all in how it is
maybe inspired others, affected others in a positive way.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's always my intention, So I do care a lot.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
Has there been a song that you didn't love as
much but the public loved it so much that you
changed your mind a little bit?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Okay, Well there's always one song. Yeah, okay, do we
really have to do that one again?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, And it's not because I don't love the song.
But any Man of Mine is such a hard song
to sing.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Why such a good song?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
There so many words, right, and I'm just like, okay,
what was I thinking cramming all of this language into
every single line of the song.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So you know, I'm trying.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's one of those ones you really have to watch
your breath control. And then it gets into the course
and it goes way up there and there's just there's
just so many lyrics in it, and that is the
thing so live, it's very challenging.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So when you're writing a song. We wrote the songs
for this album, you're like, uh uh, righting this live
somewhere maybe a song with four words totally even you.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Know what, I think it is just I do write
for the flow, and I'm not thinking live.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm gonna be honest.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
I'm thinking more about what really works with the language,
what's the phrasing. I'm thinking more about the musicality of
how the words flow. And so I did it again.
I mean with dirty Rosie. It's like the bridge has
so many words, like I was raised to share my
things with all my all my neighbors and my siblings.
(02:59):
I work all night day just to save my nickels
and my dimes, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
To whatever it is. But I'm just like.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Rhyming off all these words. So that's the part of
the only part of the song we're after really like
the lyrics.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
A take the song Tequila and the Weekend, you know,
the weekend, the weekend. He only sings three different notes.
So I mean, so, I don't know what, It's just
not my style.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Maybe I need to, like, maybe I need to explore
different stuff that you.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
Were talking about, how this is a gap of your
life that you wrote about that you had never written
about before.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Was there a reason you'd never written about it before.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
A lot of the songs for Little Miss Twain were
things that I'd been writing for many years, but they
were just slowly coming in as as songs that I
was playing around with, never really planning them for a
project or for an album. And then over time I
realized I had a collection of songs in the same
theme and it and I'm like, wow, I guess I've
(04:04):
arrived at a place where I've got an album's worth
of music all about this phase of my life that
I had never written about before. So it just it
happened very organically, and there were some songs that I
wrote more recently, liked Little Miss Twain because I started
thinking a lot more about my mother, and you know,
sad that she's not I'm always sad that she isn't here,
(04:27):
And but there's always, you know, pinnacle moments where you
we all say, when there's someone that we've lost in
our life that wow, you know, I really wish I
could share that with that person. So my mother is
definitely one of those people because I lost her so young.
But thinking about when I lost her brings me.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Back to that period of my life, to.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
My twenties, to my childhood, and Little Miss Twain is
all about when I started singing in bars, and my
mother was my my manager and found my you know,
she was the agent that found all the gigs, which
were these little smokey bars.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I'm going to talk about that in a second, but
you know, and this is something for all of us
to think about something. I lost my parents years ago
as well, and but now it's just now in this
part of my life, I understand what they stood for.
So this is so talking about my mom now is
talking about now in this part of my life, because
I didn't recognize that till now. But your mom, I
(05:21):
mean you were eight years old, right, and your mom
would take you to these smoky bars to perform, and
a lot of moms A god, I would never ever
do that with my mom. Thank god, your mom? Did
I know?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I know?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Did you ever even at eight think? I don't know, mom?
Should I be here right now?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Definitely. There's bittersweet.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Emotions that I still carry about that now, and it developed.
I developed stage right because of that. You know. It
was very intimidating standing in front of adults. Of course,
it was illegal to be in there underage. So what
I had to do is I had to get up
and sing only after last call. So last call once
(06:03):
the bar is legally closed and they locked the cabinets up,
you can still load up your table with drinks and
you're there.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Patrons are there some one two in the morning.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Sometimes that's when I get up and sing, so everybody's
already intoxicated. I'm singing all these adult songs. Take this
job and shove it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And you know, divorce.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So I'm like, my role is to as an entertainer,
is to convince everybody that I really know what I'm
singing about, right, that I'm in the song.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And half of them believe me, half of them don't.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
But so I take on a lot at that age,
and they were really rapid fire lessons and how to
be an entertainer in a place I really didn't belong.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So it was awkward.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
But yeah, of course, listen, if my mother hadn't done that,
where would my training ground have been?
Speaker 6 (06:56):
But did she know you were talented? Is that why
she did that? Or was this something you had wanted?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
No, I did not want to be on the stage
at all.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
A bunch of drunks.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Wow, No, I'm one of these. No, No, I'm one
of the kids. I'm one of these kids that definitely
you had to drag me up there. But I loved music,
so I was obsessed about music. I was dissecting every
record that I loved, and I was writing and building harmonies,
and I was in my room non stop, just being
(07:26):
a songwriting nerd. So my mother would always be the one,
you know, knocking on my bedroom door saying, you know,
come on out, let me hear what you're writing, come
and sing for me. And it gave her so much.
She really did love my talent and the fact that
I was a little singer, and she saw it as
(07:46):
hope for us that maybe I could make it, and
she really held on to that. So I did it
for her. I did the part I was afraid of doing,
which was getting up on the stage. I did it
for her. So, you know, it was just one of
those things I think a lot of kids do do that.
You know, there's a lot because you hear say, oh,
(08:06):
I really did not want to play, you know, football,
But I did it for my dad because he wanted
me to be a football player, or or they wanted
me to be a lawyer, so or I did.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It for them.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And we were eight years old.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I know, how do you don't even know what.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
You want when you're eight, little miss Twain. This is
homage to her mom. This is just a little slice
from the album My Mother.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
The next ten she say in the bar start Sevy,
its heavy, I'm still smaller.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
There's some intensity in that song, Yeah, a lot of intensity.
But you know, being dragged on stage as an eight
year old versus going out on stage on your own
at Wembley Stadium with Harry Styles in London, which was
We're frightening or was that? Did you feel like you
were a home at ease at Wembley Stadium with that
fearful crown, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Very at home.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I mean at this point now in my career, I've
played to so many giant audiences. It's not nothing about
that is intimidating to me. It's I've come to a
point now, especially after losing my voice, where I just
I'm grateful to be able to sing and the stage
(09:31):
is it. It's something that I've that I realized was
my destiny, and I just stopped fighting destiny after a
certain amount of time. But it was a I went
I was kicking and screaming though for a while there.
I was that kicking, screaming kid like no.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I don't want to swim.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
But at one point, at one point, you got rid
of that in your life. I still do that every day.
Come into this place. He does, do I have to go?
He quits once a week. Done.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
But speaking of losing your voice, that had to be
insane at the time that you lost it in general,
I mean as a singer in general, you lose your voice,
how did that reset and reframe what was going on
with you?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Well, losing my voice was very it was. It was
traumatic on several levels. But part of the most traumatic
part was that this was an open throat surgery. It's
it wasn't a vocal cord surgery.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
As a vocalist that's going to be in those frightening.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
News It was because it was a lorential UH dysfunction.
And they literally put crutches in my neck.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Wow. So they open you up with clamps and they
install crutches and you have to be awake for the surgery.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Not really, I'm not kidding. So what were you doing traumatic?
Were we watching a cartoon or something where they had
to do while this is going on.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
They speak to you and they the surgeons talk you
through it because you have to sing. You have to, phoney,
you have to. They have to see everything functioning in
order to know where to place the crutches so that
you get the function and the closure you need. It's
really that's that is quite It's traumatic. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Did you ever look up and go, God, why are
you putting me through this? No?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I said to myself, you have a choice. You either
never sing again, or you you brave through it and
you find the courage and you do this.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So there was no option.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
There were options, but I didn't like not ever being
able to sing again. So I thought, okay, well off
singing again means I'll be on the stage again.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
You know, I think it is the sort of thing where,
you know, listen, some people are just afraid of water, right,
they don't, and so they never learn how to swim.
But if someone keeps throwing you in there enough, you
will eventually learn.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
How to swim. You swim or you drown.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
And that's sort of how I I've seen a lot
of my life too, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
One eight from kicking and screaming onto the stage to
now yes, open my throat up while I'm awake, because
I want to be able.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
To be on stage and screaming to get back on
the stage exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Well, No, the thing is I wanted to sing again,
and now I get up there and sing with so
much gratitude.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
You were talking earlier about your throat surgery and you
had to come to the grips that with a chance
that your voice may never be the same and you'd
have to be a little different. You see, to us,
it's it still sounds like Shanaia. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I'm so happy it does.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
It does to us, it does.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
It's just I have more, you know, vocal fry, and
I have there's more air. Sometimes I do have to
sing some of my classic stuff in different placements, you know,
maybe where I would have a falsetto, I need to
do it in full voice now, thinking the breaks are
in different places. But I embrace it. It's just, you know,
I've taken it like this this. I have a different
(12:54):
instrument and I'm learning how to use it and it's
fun and it's an exploration and and and yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Vocal.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Chivalry on this, like how do you retrain your voice
to kind of get back to where it was.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Okay, so I couldn't speak for three weeks. You're not
allowed to speak for three weeks, or no solids or
anything like that. You really have to baby it. And
so when the doctor says, okay, today's the day you
can make, you know, make some sounds, first thing I
said was just awe.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
And it was so such a good awe.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Weird hearing yourself make a noise.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
It was so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I'm like, oh my god, it's there, I have it.
It was such a fabulous feeling, and I was excited.
So getting back into vocalizing was really.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
The easy part.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
It was the part of trying to vocalize before the
surgery that was so challenging.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Wow, and so this all came from lime disease.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Lime disease.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, it's uh, limes of the is in effective and
parts of the body, the nerves is death one of
those targeted, sadly targeted areas, and the nerves in my
larynx we're damaged.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I'm got to get to something kind of weird from
a radio point of view. Back in the day when
oh that don't impress me much came out, I received
one of these. You went into a studio and I
think they took out Who's who Brad Pitt and you
had to say the name of all. You had to
(14:29):
say the name of all these radio DJs and say
Elvis Duran. That don't impress me much and I have
I still have that copy and all did that hurt you?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
No, you know what hurt me. All the other DJs
on the station had one too. I'm like, well, I
thought this was a spatial for me. She did it
for everyone. Damn your SINAI I wanted to meet me.
You had to read rack D's and Ryan Seacrest and
and there's all stupid names in this business like Marty,
the one Man Party, the radio gu Na.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Well, the other names are stupid very nicely so, I mean,
as far as traveling around and promoting what you do,
for instance, now the album is out, you're having to
go around it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
To these interviews with the crazy people. No.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Being able to talk about the music is really wonderful.
It's beautiful. It was such a long, you know, effort,
and so yeah, to be able to talk about it
and uh, you know, answer questions about it as a pleasure.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
Really, when you are talking about the music, and you
think about, like, obviously you lost your voice and there
was a chance you wouldn't get it back, right, that
was a very absolutely do you think about that? What
was your plan B?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Okay, Plan B was a very positive one. Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I'd already prepared for this because I already couldn't do
live performing before the surgery, and I'd already realized that, Okay,
if you never sing again, because I was never going
to sing again, if I couldn't sing with control, I
wasn't gonna force you know, I was just gonna write more,
(16:15):
write more.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Music.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Writing is really my greatest love. So I would have
been writing for everything under the sun. I would have
found all kinds of writing projects and dug into the songwriting, Okay.
And I would have had such great joy just going
to the Grammys watching someone else sing my songs, and
I would have been incredibly proud. So I don't need
to be the singer of my own music. Am I
(16:38):
happy that I can be, of course? But I wasn't
going to stop at that. It wasn't going to be
the end of my music love. You know what I did.
What I love about music?
Speaker 5 (16:47):
Is there someone that you want to write for desperately
that you would love to perform one of your songs.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Well, you know I wrote this.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I wrote from this moment on that song for Celine
Dion that never happened. I ended up recording it myself,
but became a big hit. I would love another English
record by Seline Dion and I want to write for her,
so let's see what happens come back, And that became
(17:13):
my head.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Do you have a favorite on the album?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Rock Stars is my favorite song because it's all about
a moment in time that is very frozen, sort of
these frozen, beautiful moments in your life when you're young
and you think no one's ever going to get old
and everything's always going to stay like this forever. And
it's that oblivious youth that is frozen in time in
(17:43):
this song. So and for me, rock stars never die,
you know, they just live on forever. Oh.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I love that.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
I like hearing the behind the music about what the
song is actually about.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
And that's what that's about. It's like rock stars never die.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
Manow speaking of your youth, since you just said youth,
you grow up in the street. There's no social media, right,
but now I mean you have millions of followers on
social media, and obviously we all have to deal with
what people say. If you had to go back and
tell young Shanayah how to deal with social media today,
what would you do? What would you say?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I saw your eyes go wide?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
It is difficult. It's difficult to navigate because the negativity
is so uh excessive and in your face. So you
have to manage that. I would just tell my young
I would tell little miss Twain, Uh, just stick with the.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Good, stick with the good. Do not get distracted by negativity.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Maybe I'll start doing that.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
Yeah, right, we all need to do that.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
Just don't read the comments there.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
No, you just can't let it.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
You just can't let that happen. You know, you got
to you. You have to manage that yourself.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That's up to you.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Let's go back to Wimbley Stadium with you and Harry Styles.
Uh how did that come about? But you know what
when I was when I was first told that you
were doing that, I mean, how many would how many shows?
Twelve twelve shows shows with Harry Wembley Stadium. I'm thinking okay,
and I thought about him, went okay, okay, I totally
get that.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I think we were We were really we were just
a great team for the summer.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And he it was his idea.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
He you know, reaches out, but he had reached out
before for the Coachella performance.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I was a guest there.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
He called me up and said, you know, would you
consider coming and doing a couple of songs I'm doing
coach Ella this summer.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
And so I went. I did.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
That was very a very casual request. I did have
no idea it was going to be such an epic thing,
and it was just really wonderful. We even looked like
we had matching outfits, which we had no idea what
each other was wearing. We had no idea what each
other was going to wear. So we're just kind of
(19:53):
we have these compatible perils, you know, things parallels in
our lives. His mother raised him a lot on my music,
and I think he is sincere about saying that he
was influenced by me when he was a kid. He
grew up with it, and his mother's a huge fan.
Both his parents are. He says, would you call my
mom and wish your happy birthday one time? And I
did that and that was very sweet and just because
(20:15):
I love the fact that he still has his mother
around through all his success. It's so important. And then
you know, one thing led to another and he just
casually asks again, do you want to come? And do
you know I'd like to invite you to read my
special guests this summer for twelve shows.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So it was an honor and I was pleased to
do it. I had a lot of fun. And our
audiences really do inter twine the intertwein.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, we see you, and I love hearing that because
a lot of people in this.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Business, you're between everybody.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
So many people in this business think, well, you could
only do this, you can only do that, You're going
to do it for this age group, you can only
do it for that age group. Well that's BS and
we all know that. And that's why I know that
our audience loves you. Are the people who are older audience.
People are a younger audience discovering you. That Wimbley concert
twelve concerts series, that was brilliant. I love that I
got to play some music from the album.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
All right, I love it.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But before I do that, writing your songs, what is
different now in writing a song than it was for
your last album, I mean, or the album before that.
You write differently, yeah, and it comes from a different place.
How does your process work?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
The albums themselves are phases.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
The writing is always ongoing, so it's it's I'm always
writing something and for different reasons, but not necessarily for
a project. Once I've got a collection of songs going,
it starts to take shape of what you know, where
there's a theme somewhere going on that's maybe recurring theme
that I keep her visiting. And I realized, wow, this
is a phase I'm in right now. These are the
(21:50):
songs that really work for that. And that's how I
do it. It's like a process of elimination, just focusing on, Okay,
where are you at right now?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
What is really.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Authentic to the moment now that you want to say?
And so Little Miss Twain is very much focused on
my reflection of a period of my life that nobody
really knows anything about that I that I've kind of
not neglected, but it just didn't even think of that
(22:21):
anybody would even relate to it because it's so much
about my own environment growing up and my own experience
is about rolling in the grass with my boyfriend and
my ripped, faded blue jeans.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Is this therapeutic for you?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It's more than therapeutic.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
It's it really gives me a sense of a smile
when I look back on it, and I feel very lighthearted.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, it's very freeing, it's very liberating.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
God, I'd love to rip my jeans and rolled around
in the grass with your boyfriend right now. This is
what you've done to wash Okay, of course, little miss
Twain is out. Today is the day. Is Shania Twain Day? Okay,
I'm gonna play a song.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Well, let's hear fade of Blue Jeans.
She is Shania Twain.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You have no idea how pumped up we were when
we heard you're going to stop by to say hi
here on your album release day. This is quite an honor.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, thanks for being had it. This is like I
guess Christmas morning for you right now. I mean, your
album came out last night at midnight, little miss Twain.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And right it is, it is.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
It really does feel like Christmas because there's so much
build up and anticipation on my side. You know, I'm
preparing it for all this time being a songwriter. I
put everything. I put so much into it, so much
thought and energy and emotion, and especially this album, little
Miss Twain, because it's so much about my life and
(00:48):
my experiences and so yeah, and and and you know,
looking back and reflecting on my my youth in general,
all the way up to my late twenties till I
got signed to my recording contract. So it's this huge
gap that I'm now sharing through this music. And I'm
just waiting with an.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Dissipation to hear what everybody thinks. And that's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Well, who cares what they think?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Well?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I do. I actually do care because I make music
to share it.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So you know, the gift for me is the feedback,
and the reward is really all in how it is
maybe inspired others, affected others in a positive way.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's always my intention, So I do care a lot.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
Has there been a song that you didn't love as
much but the public loved it so much that you
changed your mind a little bit?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Okay, Well there's always one song. Yeah, okay, do we
really have to do that one again?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, And it's not because I don't love the song.
But any Man of Mine is such a hard song
to sing.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Why such a good song?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
There so many words, right, and I'm just like, okay,
what was I thinking cramming all of this language into
every single line of the song.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So you know, I'm trying.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's one of those ones you really have to watch
your breath control. And then it gets into the course
and it goes way up there and there's just there's
just so many lyrics in it, and that is the
thing so live, it's very challenging.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So when you're writing a song. We wrote the songs
for this album, you're like, uh uh, righting this live
somewhere maybe a song with four words totally even you.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Know what, I think it is just I do write
for the flow, and I'm not thinking live.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm gonna be honest.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
I'm thinking more about what really works with the language,
what's the phrasing. I'm thinking more about the musicality of
how the words flow. And so I did it again.
I mean with dirty Rosie. It's like the bridge has
so many words, like I was raised to share my
things with all my all my neighbors and my siblings.
(02:59):
I work all night day just to save my nickels
and my dimes, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
To whatever it is. But I'm just like.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Rhyming off all these words. So that's the part of
the only part of the song we're after really like
the lyrics.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
A take the song Tequila and the Weekend, you know,
the weekend, the weekend. He only sings three different notes.
So I mean, so, I don't know what, It's just
not my style.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Maybe I need to, like, maybe I need to explore
different stuff that you.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
Were talking about, how this is a gap of your
life that you wrote about that you had never written
about before.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Was there a reason you'd never written about it before.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
A lot of the songs for Little Miss Twain were
things that I'd been writing for many years, but they
were just slowly coming in as as songs that I
was playing around with, never really planning them for a
project or for an album. And then over time I
realized I had a collection of songs in the same
theme and it and I'm like, wow, I guess I've
(04:04):
arrived at a place where I've got an album's worth
of music all about this phase of my life that
I had never written about before. So it just it
happened very organically, and there were some songs that I
wrote more recently, liked Little Miss Twain because I started
thinking a lot more about my mother, and you know,
sad that she's not I'm always sad that she isn't here,
(04:27):
And but there's always, you know, pinnacle moments where you
we all say, when there's someone that we've lost in
our life that wow, you know, I really wish I
could share that with that person. So my mother is
definitely one of those people because I lost her so young.
But thinking about when I lost her brings me.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Back to that period of my life, to.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
My twenties, to my childhood, and Little Miss Twain is
all about when I started singing in bars, and my
mother was my my manager and found my you know,
she was the agent that found all the gigs, which
were these little smokey bars.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I'm going to talk about that in a second, but
you know, and this is something for all of us
to think about something. I lost my parents years ago
as well, and but now it's just now in this
part of my life, I understand what they stood for.
So this is so talking about my mom now is
talking about now in this part of my life, because
I didn't recognize that till now. But your mom, I
(05:21):
mean you were eight years old, right, and your mom
would take you to these smoky bars to perform, and
a lot of moms A god, I would never ever
do that with my mom. Thank god, your mom? Did
I know?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I know?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Did you ever even at eight think? I don't know, mom?
Should I be here right now?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Definitely. There's bittersweet.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Emotions that I still carry about that now, and it developed.
I developed stage right because of that. You know. It
was very intimidating standing in front of adults. Of course,
it was illegal to be in there underage. So what
I had to do is I had to get up
and sing only after last call. So last call once
(06:03):
the bar is legally closed and they locked the cabinets up,
you can still load up your table with drinks and
you're there.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Patrons are there some one two in the morning.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Sometimes that's when I get up and sing, so everybody's
already intoxicated. I'm singing all these adult songs. Take this
job and shove it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And you know, divorce.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So I'm like, my role is to as an entertainer,
is to convince everybody that I really know what I'm
singing about, right, that I'm in the song.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And half of them believe me, half of them don't.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
But so I take on a lot at that age,
and they were really rapid fire lessons and how to
be an entertainer in a place I really didn't belong.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So it was awkward.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
But yeah, of course, listen, if my mother hadn't done that,
where would my training ground have been?
Speaker 6 (06:56):
But did she know you were talented? Is that why
she did that? Or was this something you had wanted?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
No, I did not want to be on the stage
at all.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
A bunch of drunks.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Wow, No, I'm one of these. No, No, I'm one
of the kids. I'm one of these kids that definitely
you had to drag me up there. But I loved music,
so I was obsessed about music. I was dissecting every
record that I loved, and I was writing and building harmonies,
and I was in my room non stop, just being
(07:26):
a songwriting nerd. So my mother would always be the one,
you know, knocking on my bedroom door saying, you know,
come on out, let me hear what you're writing, come
and sing for me. And it gave her so much.
She really did love my talent and the fact that
I was a little singer, and she saw it as
(07:46):
hope for us that maybe I could make it, and
she really held on to that. So I did it
for her. I did the part I was afraid of doing,
which was getting up on the stage. I did it
for her. So, you know, it was just one of
those things I think a lot of kids do do that.
You know, there's a lot because you hear say, oh,
(08:06):
I really did not want to play, you know, football,
But I did it for my dad because he wanted
me to be a football player, or or they wanted
me to be a lawyer, so or I did.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It for them.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And we were eight years old.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I know, how do you don't even know what.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
You want when you're eight, little miss Twain. This is
homage to her mom. This is just a little slice
from the album My Mother.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
The next ten she say in the bar start Sevy,
its heavy, I'm still smaller.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
There's some intensity in that song, Yeah, a lot of intensity.
But you know, being dragged on stage as an eight
year old versus going out on stage on your own
at Wembley Stadium with Harry Styles in London, which was
We're frightening or was that? Did you feel like you
were a home at ease at Wembley Stadium with that
fearful crown, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Very at home.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I mean at this point now in my career, I've
played to so many giant audiences. It's not nothing about
that is intimidating to me. It's I've come to a
point now, especially after losing my voice, where I just
I'm grateful to be able to sing and the stage
(09:31):
is it. It's something that I've that I realized was
my destiny, and I just stopped fighting destiny after a
certain amount of time. But it was a I went
I was kicking and screaming though for a while there.
I was that kicking, screaming kid like no.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I don't want to swim.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
But at one point, at one point, you got rid
of that in your life. I still do that every day.
Come into this place. He does, do I have to go?
He quits once a week. Done.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
But speaking of losing your voice, that had to be
insane at the time that you lost it in general,
I mean as a singer in general, you lose your voice,
how did that reset and reframe what was going on
with you?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Well, losing my voice was very it was. It was
traumatic on several levels. But part of the most traumatic
part was that this was an open throat surgery. It's
it wasn't a vocal cord surgery.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
As a vocalist that's going to be in those frightening.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
News It was because it was a lorential UH dysfunction.
And they literally put crutches in my neck.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Wow. So they open you up with clamps and they
install crutches and you have to be awake for the surgery.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Not really, I'm not kidding. So what were you doing traumatic?
Were we watching a cartoon or something where they had
to do while this is going on.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
They speak to you and they the surgeons talk you
through it because you have to sing. You have to, phoney,
you have to. They have to see everything functioning in
order to know where to place the crutches so that
you get the function and the closure you need. It's
really that's that is quite It's traumatic. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Did you ever look up and go, God, why are
you putting me through this? No?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I said to myself, you have a choice. You either
never sing again, or you you brave through it and
you find the courage and you do this.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So there was no option.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
There were options, but I didn't like not ever being
able to sing again. So I thought, okay, well off
singing again means I'll be on the stage again.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
You know, I think it is the sort of thing where,
you know, listen, some people are just afraid of water, right,
they don't, and so they never learn how to swim.
But if someone keeps throwing you in there enough, you
will eventually learn.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
How to swim. You swim or you drown.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
And that's sort of how I I've seen a lot
of my life too, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
One eight from kicking and screaming onto the stage to
now yes, open my throat up while I'm awake, because
I want to be able.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
To be on stage and screaming to get back on
the stage exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Well, No, the thing is I wanted to sing again,
and now I get up there and sing with so
much gratitude.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
You were talking earlier about your throat surgery and you
had to come to the grips that with a chance
that your voice may never be the same and you'd
have to be a little different. You see, to us,
it's it still sounds like Shanaia. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I'm so happy it does.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
It does to us, it does.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
It's just I have more, you know, vocal fry, and
I have there's more air. Sometimes I do have to
sing some of my classic stuff in different placements, you know,
maybe where I would have a falsetto, I need to
do it in full voice now, thinking the breaks are
in different places. But I embrace it. It's just, you know,
I've taken it like this this. I have a different
(12:54):
instrument and I'm learning how to use it and it's
fun and it's an exploration and and and yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Vocal.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Chivalry on this, like how do you retrain your voice
to kind of get back to where it was.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Okay, so I couldn't speak for three weeks. You're not
allowed to speak for three weeks, or no solids or
anything like that. You really have to baby it. And
so when the doctor says, okay, today's the day you
can make, you know, make some sounds, first thing I
said was just awe.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
And it was so such a good awe.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Weird hearing yourself make a noise.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
It was so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I'm like, oh my god, it's there, I have it.
It was such a fabulous feeling, and I was excited.
So getting back into vocalizing was really.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
The easy part.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
It was the part of trying to vocalize before the
surgery that was so challenging.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Wow, and so this all came from lime disease.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Lime disease.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, it's uh, limes of the is in effective and
parts of the body, the nerves is death one of
those targeted, sadly targeted areas, and the nerves in my
larynx we're damaged.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I'm got to get to something kind of weird from
a radio point of view. Back in the day when
oh that don't impress me much came out, I received
one of these. You went into a studio and I
think they took out Who's who Brad Pitt and you
had to say the name of all. You had to
(14:29):
say the name of all these radio DJs and say
Elvis Duran. That don't impress me much and I have
I still have that copy and all did that hurt you?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
No, you know what hurt me. All the other DJs
on the station had one too. I'm like, well, I
thought this was a spatial for me. She did it
for everyone. Damn your SINAI I wanted to meet me.
You had to read rack D's and Ryan Seacrest and
and there's all stupid names in this business like Marty,
the one Man Party, the radio gu Na.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Well, the other names are stupid very nicely so, I mean,
as far as traveling around and promoting what you do,
for instance, now the album is out, you're having to
go around it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
To these interviews with the crazy people. No.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Being able to talk about the music is really wonderful.
It's beautiful. It was such a long, you know, effort,
and so yeah, to be able to talk about it
and uh, you know, answer questions about it as a pleasure.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
Really, when you are talking about the music, and you
think about, like, obviously you lost your voice and there
was a chance you wouldn't get it back, right, that
was a very absolutely do you think about that? What
was your plan B?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Okay, Plan B was a very positive one. Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I'd already prepared for this because I already couldn't do
live performing before the surgery, and I'd already realized that, Okay,
if you never sing again, because I was never going
to sing again, if I couldn't sing with control, I
wasn't gonna force you know, I was just gonna write more,
(16:15):
write more.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Music.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Writing is really my greatest love. So I would have
been writing for everything under the sun. I would have
found all kinds of writing projects and dug into the songwriting, Okay.
And I would have had such great joy just going
to the Grammys watching someone else sing my songs, and
I would have been incredibly proud. So I don't need
to be the singer of my own music. Am I
(16:38):
happy that I can be, of course? But I wasn't
going to stop at that. It wasn't going to be
the end of my music love. You know what I did.
What I love about music?
Speaker 5 (16:47):
Is there someone that you want to write for desperately
that you would love to perform one of your songs.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Well, you know I wrote this.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I wrote from this moment on that song for Celine
Dion that never happened. I ended up recording it myself,
but became a big hit. I would love another English
record by Seline Dion and I want to write for her,
so let's see what happens come back, And that became
(17:13):
my head.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Do you have a favorite on the album?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Rock Stars is my favorite song because it's all about
a moment in time that is very frozen, sort of
these frozen, beautiful moments in your life when you're young
and you think no one's ever going to get old
and everything's always going to stay like this forever. And
it's that oblivious youth that is frozen in time in
(17:43):
this song. So and for me, rock stars never die,
you know, they just live on forever. Oh.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I love that.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
I like hearing the behind the music about what the
song is actually about.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
And that's what that's about. It's like rock stars never die.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
Manow speaking of your youth, since you just said youth,
you grow up in the street. There's no social media, right,
but now I mean you have millions of followers on
social media, and obviously we all have to deal with
what people say. If you had to go back and
tell young Shanayah how to deal with social media today,
what would you do? What would you say?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I saw your eyes go wide?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
It is difficult. It's difficult to navigate because the negativity
is so uh excessive and in your face. So you
have to manage that. I would just tell my young
I would tell little miss Twain, Uh, just stick with the.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Good, stick with the good. Do not get distracted by negativity.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Maybe I'll start doing that.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
Yeah, right, we all need to do that.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
Just don't read the comments there.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
No, you just can't let it.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
You just can't let that happen. You know, you got
to you. You have to manage that yourself.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That's up to you.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Let's go back to Wimbley Stadium with you and Harry Styles.
Uh how did that come about? But you know what
when I was when I was first told that you
were doing that, I mean, how many would how many shows?
Twelve twelve shows shows with Harry Wembley Stadium. I'm thinking okay,
and I thought about him, went okay, okay, I totally
get that.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I think we were We were really we were just
a great team for the summer.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And he it was his idea.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
He you know, reaches out, but he had reached out
before for the Coachella performance.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I was a guest there.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
He called me up and said, you know, would you
consider coming and doing a couple of songs I'm doing
coach Ella this summer.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
And so I went. I did.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
That was very a very casual request. I did have
no idea it was going to be such an epic thing,
and it was just really wonderful. We even looked like
we had matching outfits, which we had no idea what
each other was wearing. We had no idea what each
other was going to wear. So we're just kind of
(19:53):
we have these compatible perils, you know, things parallels in
our lives. His mother raised him a lot on my music,
and I think he is sincere about saying that he
was influenced by me when he was a kid. He
grew up with it, and his mother's a huge fan.
Both his parents are. He says, would you call my
mom and wish your happy birthday one time? And I
did that and that was very sweet and just because
(20:15):
I love the fact that he still has his mother
around through all his success. It's so important. And then
you know, one thing led to another and he just
casually asks again, do you want to come? And do
you know I'd like to invite you to read my
special guests this summer for twelve shows.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So it was an honor and I was pleased to
do it. I had a lot of fun. And our
audiences really do inter twine the intertwein.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, we see you, and I love hearing that because
a lot of people in this.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Business, you're between everybody.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
So many people in this business think, well, you could
only do this, you can only do that, You're going
to do it for this age group, you can only
do it for that age group. Well that's BS and
we all know that. And that's why I know that
our audience loves you. Are the people who are older audience.
People are a younger audience discovering you. That Wimbley concert
twelve concerts series, that was brilliant. I love that I
got to play some music from the album.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
All right, I love it.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But before I do that, writing your songs, what is
different now in writing a song than it was for
your last album, I mean, or the album before that.
You write differently, yeah, and it comes from a different place.
How does your process work?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
The albums themselves are phases.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
The writing is always ongoing, so it's it's I'm always
writing something and for different reasons, but not necessarily for
a project. Once I've got a collection of songs going,
it starts to take shape of what you know, where
there's a theme somewhere going on that's maybe recurring theme
that I keep her visiting. And I realized, wow, this
is a phase I'm in right now. These are the
(21:50):
songs that really work for that. And that's how I
do it. It's like a process of elimination, just focusing on, Okay,
where are you at right now?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
What is really.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Authentic to the moment now that you want to say?
And so Little Miss Twain is very much focused on
my reflection of a period of my life that nobody
really knows anything about that I that I've kind of
not neglected, but it just didn't even think of that
(22:21):
anybody would even relate to it because it's so much
about my own environment growing up and my own experience
is about rolling in the grass with my boyfriend and
my ripped, faded blue jeans.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Is this therapeutic for you?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It's more than therapeutic.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
It's it really gives me a sense of a smile
when I look back on it, and I feel very lighthearted.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, it's very freeing, it's very liberating.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
God, I'd love to rip my jeans and rolled around
in the grass with your boyfriend right now. This is
what you've done to wash Okay, of course, little miss
Twain is out. Today is the day. Is Shania Twain Day? Okay,
I'm gonna play a song.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Well, let's hear fade of Blue Jeans.
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