Updated

Updated · CBS New York · Jul 19

Shania Twain Revisits 8-Year-Old Bar-Singing Start on 'Little Miss Twain' Ahead of July 24 Release

Updated

Updated · CBS New York · Jul 19

Shania Twain Revisits 8-Year-Old Bar-Singing Start on 'Little Miss Twain' Ahead of July 24 Release

Q: What childhood secrets is Shania Twain finally revealing on her deeply personal new album, 'Little Miss Twain'?

Shania Twain is using *Little Miss Twain* to reveal the largely untold years before fame: a hard, poor childhood in rural Ontario, the adult world she was pushed into as a child performer, and intimate family memories she says fans have never really known. The album revisits the “missing chapter” from about age eight to her late 20s, when she was still Eileen. She writes about singing in smoky bars after midnight for miners and hunters to help support her family, with her mother acting as driver, manager and coach. Those songs also expose how early she was dealing with grown-up themes and pressures that later fed her stage fright. She also opens up about private family moments. In “Northern Town,” Twain recalls life in northern Canada and a childhood secret with her father: after stopping for a beer, he would take her for Dairy Queen and tell her they did not need to mention the bar stop. The song captures the atmosphere of her upbringing and the compromises of a struggling household. Other tracks reveal personal memories she had not publicly explored in this way before. “Faded Blue Jeans” looks back on teenage romance and rebellion, while “Dirty Rosie” celebrates her father’s battered work truck, which she drove in the woods before she was legally old enough. The title track is a direct tribute to her mother’s belief in her talent, tying those childhood experiences to the woman who became Shania Twain.

3 articles · Updated · CBS New York · Jul 19

July 24 album "Little Miss Twain" finds Shania Twain looking back on the years between singing in bars at age 8 and landing a Nashville recording contract in her late 20s.
Twain said the project reflects on a childhood marked by poverty, violence at home and performing in smoky bars after last call, experiences she links to the stage fright she only shed in her 50s.
Her career later faced more upheaval: her parents died in a car crash when she was 22, she became guardian to her younger siblings, and she then endured divorce and a 15-year gap in releasing music.
Lyme disease also cost Twain her voice until experimental open-throat surgery restored it, leaving a rougher sound she now calls part of her identity.
Now in her 60s and living in Switzerland with husband Frédéric Thiébaud, Twain said the album lets her celebrate how far she has come while staying connected to where she started.