Album review: Queen Of Me proves Shania Twain is back in the saddle again
Shania Twain's new album is Queen Of Me.
- Shania Twain
- Queen of Me
- ★★★★☆
The “Shania-issance” is in full swing. Last year 1990s megastar Shania Twain starred in a raw and forthright Netflix documentary, Not Just A Girl, in which she reflected on her impoverished upbringing in Toronto, her collaboration with producer Mutt Lange and the stormy end of their marriage.
That fractured relationship was just one of many traumas to plague her: she was later diagnosed with Lyme disease, which caused her to temporarily lose her voice.
Not Just A Girl is gruelling. But it also lays out the case that Twain was the original Taylor Swift. A singer from off the beaten track who started out playing country only to conquer pop. And conquer hardly does justice to her accomplishments: we think of the 1990s as the era of Nirvana and Britpop. Twain, though, outsold them all. And everyone else for that matter, shifting some 80 million records during her imperial streak.
She now follows up that film with an album which is as glittering as the documentary was unflinching. It’s also unashamedly pop, with producers Mark Ralph (Years and Years) and David Stewart (no relation to the Eurythmics guitarist) framing her vocals in vast shiny dance beats.
Twain’s country roots are not entirely obscured, however. A twanging guitar introduces the opening song 'Giddy Up', with Twain’s vocals coming straight outta Nashville (the lyrics too: “I left my heart at a waterin' hole Somewhere in Small town, Ohio,” she sings).
Twain brings us back around to her Netflix doc meanwhile with 'Not Just A Girl', a country rocker so glossy you can almost see your reflection in it.
The idea that Twain was the proto-Taylor Swift is meanwhile championed on 'Inhale/Exhale Air' – a co-write with Northern Ireland Snow Patrol collaborator Iain Archer.
There’s another nod towards Gen Z on closing track 'The Hardest Stone', an electro number featuring backing vocals from Tyler Joseph of 21 Pilots. It’s a long way from 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman!' But it seals a fascinating comeback from a 1990s icon determined to neither burn out nor fade away.
