Shania Twain: Little Miss Twain Review – Radical Revival Steps Off the Dirt Track to the Middle of the Road | Shania Twain

‘W“When I was a kid, I started out on stages just like this,” Shania Twain told 200 fans packed into a London pub last June, tracking her seventh album, Little Miss Twain. A reintroduction to the Canadian country legend, the record mines memories of her childhood in Ontario for hints of the arena-filling star she would soon become.

Over a mournful Mellotron and pedal steel, the title track marvels at how little Elaine, as she was called at the time, escaped the northern countryside and became a hit in Nashville. And yet, somehow, it all seems inevitable — as if Twain’s career had arisen from the conviction of her mother, who drove her to those bistros in an abandoned Chevy. And yes, from the vantage point of 2026, it’s hard to imagine things going in any other direction. Twain’s icon status is certified by five Grammy Awards and the way her soulful songs have become karaoke classics — not to mention the fact that her 1997 album Come on Over remains the best-selling studio album of any female artist in history.

But it was far from inevitable. The first decades of Twain’s life were affected by poverty, violence, and the shocking death of her parents, which left her responsible for raising three younger siblings. Northern Town, a noir track with upright bass and classical guitar flourishes, gives an insight into those early years, its lyrics laced with cigarette smoke and the irony of being tough in a gold rush zone. On a double-time bridge, she dreams of taking off and driving south to sing: “Just so you know, I’m ready to go,” she muttered.

Unfortunately, the rest of Little Miss Twain’s details are vague. Songs like Quit My Life (an upbeat number about taking a day off) could be imagined from the point of view of a young, responsibility-burdened Twain – but truthfully, there’s not much to suggest that. Instead, memory lane is left in the rearview, and Twain moves from her gentle autobiography into her tried-and-tested comfort zone: witty humor and unadventurous but catchy melodies, all within the Venn diagram of the pop and rock music she made in the ’90s.

A lot of it sounds pretty safe, from the laid-back “Take It to the River,” featuring Ronnie Wood and The War and Covenant, to the delicate, overproduced collection of songs about young love. The best of them, New Love, has a sly beat, shy strings, and a lovely lightness of touch, so it’s a shame that its themes are reworked into the forgettable hockey parlor song Down the Middle and Scary Little Thing.

Fortunately, latest single Dirty Rosie is pop music with real personality. By making cakes around country truck-obsessed stereotypes, it makes great use of Twain’s increasingly ornate voice. By contrast, “I’d Like to Love Me” sounds vocally tense, but in a way that brings much-needed gravitas and pain to the record. This deceptively simple song, forgoing denim and tacky dirt roads, asks how Twain would apologize if she were in her cheating partner’s shoes, and whether her partner, with the roles reversed, would accept that apology — all with a sinking feeling that little would change.

In the title song, Twain sings about two dreams: she wanted to ride horses, while her mother wanted her to become “the next Tanya Tucker.” The two dreams intertwine: Tucker duets on those same lines, and Twain sighs on a beautiful horse in the nonchalant ballad “This Is Money.” Little Miss Twain may not mark a return to peak powers, but amid the peak of new country popularity, it is a timely reminder of Shania’s rich heritage and influence. This genre would be more awesome without it.