She was the queen of country pop, but with her latest album, Queen of Me, Shania Twain is eyeing the title of Queen of Pop. The famous cowgirl Canadian wanted to dance, she says, on the eve of the first of two concerts she will give at the Bell Center this year.
“I’ve never had so much fun,” says Shania Twain, with a broad smile in her voice. Her tour is going well, the crowds are surpassing her expectations, her audience is diversifying (“Several generations ago,” she rejoices) and the Ontario-born superstar is happily singing.
His enthusiasm fits perfectly with the state of mind of Queen of Mereleased in February, his most pop album since Up!, at the turn of the millennium. Abandoning the country accents that we still heard on now (2017), she opted for danceable rhythms and up-to-date sound packaging.
“The root of all my songs is always me and my guitar. I’m not trying to determine how I want it to sound in the end when I’m at that stage, ”explains Shania Twain first. What guided his writing this time around was the uncertainty and isolation associated with COVID-19. And above all a strong desire to rediscover joy and optimism.
“All the songs on the album deliberately seek to make people dance. Even the last The Hardest Stone, talks about optimism”, she specifies, about this piece which talks about making peace with what we cannot change. Shania Twain adds that the general idea running through Queen of Me is to regain possession of oneself. “I am solely responsible for my state of mind, my gestures and the way I express myself,” she says. There’s a beauty in that too. This form of independence is very important to me. »
make his way
Under its pop packaging that we can find generic, Queen of Me is, it is true, in perfect harmony with what has guided Shania Twain since her beginnings: to do things her own way. Even if it means disturbing or even shocking. Not Just a Girla documentary broadcast on Netflix which retraces his career and recounts his fight against Lyme disease, indeed recalls how difficult his beginnings were.
Shania Twain shook up the country music world considerably at the turn of the 1990s. Being taken seriously and being recognized for her singing skills and her intelligence rather than her physique was no small feat. affair. She says it more clearly in the documentary than in her interview with The Press : she wanted to assume her femininity and her sexy side. By choice. Like Madonna, Pat Benatar and a few others before her.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, PRESS ARCHIVES
Shania Twain show at the Bell Center in 2004
It was so controversial to show my navel when I started out. I laugh about it now, but so many people concluded that was why things worked for me. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be wonderful if my songs had been written by my navel. That would be a great story!
Shania Twain
Those who didn’t ask her about her physique suggested that her success was due to the work of her director, Robert Mutt Lange, who was her husband from 1993 to 2010 and had been at the helm of multimillion-dollar AC/ DC, Def Leppard and Bryan Adams. Without giving her the credit that was hers.
A bit like Dolly
Decades later, Shania Twain admits to being a little surprised at the resistance she encountered when she landed in Nashville, the capital of country music. “I thought people wouldn’t find me so different, because Dolly Parton had been there,” she explains. The queen of country had indeed quite shaken up the conventions and displayed her colors from her beginnings, in particular with Dumb Blondean ironic song where she says with a smile “This stupid blonde is not stupid” (” This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool”).
Shania Twain thought the way was at least somewhat open. She was wrong. “I realized that it would be quite an adventure to try to be who I was, to implement the vision that I had. I’m not just talking about what I wanted to write, but how I wanted to sound, how I wanted to present this universe and how I wanted to present myself, she says. It was my fight there, and it was his too. »
Extract of Man! I Fell Like a Woman!
One of the keys, according to her, was humor. There was indeed a touch of mischief on some of his greatest hits of the 1990s like That Don’t Impress Me much And Man! I Feel Like A Woman!. The clip of this song was also a nod to the one, considered sexist, by Robert Palmer for Addicted to love. This sparkling side, his side cowgirl powerremains an essential element of its immense success. Come on Over has sold tens of millions of copies (40, it is said), which places it among the best-selling albums in all categories.
We feel less this kind of wink on the most recent records of Shania Twain, but her desire to have fun, she remains present. Especially since the singer, whose voice has been affected by complications from Lyme disease, feels better than ever. “I think I sound sexier, because I have something a little more serious in my voice now,” she says. I’m really happy and comfortable with my voice. »
Sunday, 7:30 p.m., at the Bell Center. Also on October 25, 7:30 p.m., at the Bell Centre.