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Shania Twain's Homecoming is Here

Shania Twain’s new album celebrates her roots, her story and a return to doing what she loves the most: Performing for her fans.

By Joanna Fox | ELLE Canada | August 17, 2026

For so many of the crew on-set the day we shot Shania Twain, it was a full-circle moment. Camera rolls were scrolled through to find photos from times people had dressed up as her for Halloween or a drag performance; stories were told about the first time hearing her songs or how her music was the soundtrack to growing up in Canada; and memories were shared of copying her looks—whether by donning head-to-toe leopard print or a pink cowboy hat—of concerts past and of shared iconic cultural moments. It felt like Shania was a part of all of us.

So at the Toronto studio on that searing-hot July day, it was hard to take in the fact that we were standing in the presence of the Shania Twain, one of the top-selling female artists of all time and the bestselling female artist in country music—ever. With over 100 million records sold worldwide, this is a woman who has written and performed so many hits that just thinking about them can make your head spin. A five-time Grammy winner, a trailblazer, an icon, the queen of country pop—and here she was, all five foot four of her, smiling at us while holding her tiny Pomeranian, Sapphie.

Twain, who’s 61, has been experiencing her own full-circle moment these days. Hot off her Dolce-clad, 12-night Wembley Stadium stint as the special guest of Harry Styles, she’s in town to promote her seventh studio album, Little Miss Twain, a deeply personal collection of songs about her youth, her early days of performing and life growing up in Timmins, Ont., a small mining town about 700 kilometres north of Toronto.

“This album is a little bit different,” says Twain, who’s now based in Switzerland. “I’d been writing this collection for many years, but I wasn’t really writing them as songs; they were musical, but I wasn’t planning on putting them on an album. I just thought that someday [they] might be good for another artist or maybe they’d just stay in the vault. But after a while, I realized that there was quite a collection of them and they were all themed on the reflection of my own youth and where I was from. It just felt like, ‘Wow, this is a body of themed writing, [so] why not make an album with it?’”

The 15-track record, which seamlessly blends country, pop, rock, soul, jazz and bluegrass, is by far her most intimate and introspective work to date. “Faded Blue Jeans” and “Quit My Life” highlight the singer’s free-spirited side, whereas “Rockstars” depicts Twain in her teens, living in the middle of nowhere and going camping with guitars and a mickey of rye whisky. Inspired by the Supremes, “Scary Little Thing” is what Twain, who played trumpet in high school, describes as her “Motown throwback song.” The very personal title track, which Twain released ahead of the album, touches on her early life, recounting the hopes and dreams her mother had for her as a child. It also celebrates fellow country star—and one of Twain’s earliest musical heroes—Tanya Tucker, who joins her on the song. “As a performer, I always had her songs in my repertoire and followed her career,” says Twain. “My mother—and basically everybody in my family—just wanted me to sing Tanya Tucker songs. Which was understandable because she was a child star in country music, and in my mother’s mind, that was somehow an attainable thing, even though it wasn’t.”

After Twain wrote the song and recorded early drafts of it, one of her team members suggested she ask Tucker if she would sing on it. “I was a bit bashful about it, just because I revered her so much,” says Twain. “I didn’t want to be annoying. But she did it, she was very gracious about it and it was wonderful. It definitely would have been on my mother’s bucket list.”

Twain, born Eilleen Edwards, is one of five siblings. Her upbringing wasn’t easy; it involved a lot of moving around as well as abuse and poverty. Her mother saw her daughter’s talent as a way out of it and became her manager, promoter, driver and biggest cheerleader. She would take her to bars and small venues to sing before she was even
a teenager. From a young age, though, Twain had a real passion for songwriting. “My parents put the singer first,” she says. “But by the time I was 10, I was starting to write songs. That was my real obsession—I was more intrigued by the writing of what I was eventually going to sing.”

Tragically, in 1987, both her mother and stepfather were killed in a car crash, leaving Twain, at only 22 years old, to raise her three younger siblings. She did the only thing she knew she could: sing and perform (most notably at Huntsville’s Deerhurst Resort). Finally, at 27, she landed her first record deal. Suddenly, she’d found the way out her mother had always dreamed of, and her life changed forever.

But it wasn’t always an easy road. When Twain moved to Nashville to record her first album, she knew that it was her only shot at turning her life around. She felt like she was holding something incredibly fragile that could shatter at any moment. “I was very mindful that there was no going back so I had to be very careful how I served myself,” she says of those early days. “I had a vision, but I knew that I couldn’t be forceful about it. I couldn’t be a diva when I was still nobody. So I really minded myself and listened—I learned to listen more than act. I was careful, and I knew that, first of all, I was a visitor—like, this wasn’t even my home. I was new here.”

While her debut album got her foot in the door, it was her follow-up record, 1995’s The Woman in Me, that catapulted her to international fame, with hit singles such as “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” and “Any Man of Mine.” Her third offering, Come on Over, released two years later, would go on to become the biggest-selling album by a solo female artist of all time thanks to gargantuan bangers like “You’re Still the One,” “From This Moment On,” “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and the perennial female-empowerment anthem (and perfect karaoke song) “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

Despite all her commercial successes, though, behind the scenes, Twain faced a series of deeply personal challenges. While riding a horse in 2003, she was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme disease. It damaged her vocal cords and forced her to take a break from music for several years. Then, in 2008, she separated from her husband and her son’s father—who was also her producer—Mutt Lange, after discovering his affair with a woman who was one of her closest friends and her former assistant. Twain, never one to wallow in life’s hardships, wound up unexpectedly finding love again with her now husband, Frédéric Thiébaud—the former spouse of that same friend.

Although Twain has been talking a lot about her past lately while promoting her new album, the singer is very clearly focused on the future and looking forward to doing what she loves most: performing. While arenas may give her more control over her sound and more space to move around (and show off her famous high kicks), when she speaks about her series of pop-ups in smaller venues and bars—like the Shacklewell Arms pub in London, England, Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern and New York City’s Racket NYC—she lights up. “I’ve always secretly dreamt of doing random unannounced get-up- and-jam kind of things,” she says. “But in the past few years, I’ve met some musicians and friends who actually do that together, and I started doing that with them. And there’s never really anybody around, so it’s just out of pure joy.”

For Twain, it’s about the spontaneity and the stripped- downness of it all. “Instead of relying on the sound system, you rely on instinct,” she explains. “It’s more bare bones, it’s more gritty and it’s more raw, which is what I grew up doing and what I miss. Little Miss Twain is so much about those years in my life—the cover years, the small Ontario rooms— that this is perfectly natural for me. Hopefully fans will like it too. It’s a unique way to reconnect.”

The cozier performances also allow her to test out new songs ahead of their release and see how audiences react to them. Just as much as fans are watching her, Twain is very much paying attention to them too. “I can just tell by people’s energy,” she says of whether a new song is hitting or not. “I did the 12 dates with Harry, and [my song] ‘Dirty Rosie’ was still very new, and by the end of that stint, I could tell people were getting more familiar and responding. It’s a great feeling. It’s a reward, and that’s the way it is for every album I’ve done—it’s about the people in the audience. They’re always honest about it because the true fans really just want to know you better, and the best way [to do that] is through music.”

As someone who spent years singing other people’s songs before making it, Twain swore off doing covers for a long time. She was eager to perform her own music and share that part of herself with her audience. But these days, she seems to be changing her tune. “I’m in a different place now,” she says. “I would like to eventually do a cover album of all my favourites. Because that would be a full circle—I made it to the other side of the bridge.”

She’s made it to a place that “little Miss Twain” probably couldn’t have imagined. Looking back at the young Timmins girl strumming her guitar in bars—the one who had to grow up fast and work tirelessly to help her family and reach her dreams—the star says there isn’t much she would change about her path. “It’s always better to not know how high the mountain is,” she says of her journey. “It’s better to just commit to climbing.”

The ELLE Canada September 2026 Issue will be on newsstands and Apple News+ on August 17, 2026.

https://www.ellecanada.com/culture/shania-twain-elle-canada