Shania Twain Didn’t Have Creative Input On Her First Album
Shania Twain debuted in the early 1990s and went on to become the Queen of Country Pop, dominating the world with record sales and sold-out tours. But when it came to her self-titled debut album, released in 1993, the Canadian singer had little to no contribution to the album’s final sound.
Shania Twain was a resort singer before she signed a record deal
Shania Twain suffered a great personal tragedy in 1987 when both her parents died in a car crash. At the time, she was just 22 years old, and had to support her younger siblings herself.
She had been singing publicly since she was a child, and music was her passion, but she was close to giving up on her dream. In her 2022 Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl, she recounted how she worked a job singing at a resort in Canada to put food on the table.
“Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I learned to respect and appreciate that I did have a talent that would be a shame to throw away and not pursue,” she admitted. “I was busy rehearsing, running the kids back and forth. Before and after the show, I would go home and write. There was no other way to get ahead except working my a** off, really. That was it; there was no other way. All I could do was keep working, keep demoing, keep writing, and hoping I would get a break.”
She soon moved to Nashville and inked her first record deal in 1992. In 1993, she released her self-titled debut album Shania Twain.
Shania Twain released her first album in 1993
Twain reflected on the creation of her debut album, and how she didn’t have that much of an active role in bringing it to life.
“My debut record was an experience that was pretty much me as the newbie in town in Nashville treading lightly, trying to find my way as an original artist with all my own ideas, without being kicked out of town,” she recounted. She was writing her own songs, but executives felt that they weren’t country enough.
“I was definitely coming from a spicier place as a songwriter, and the A&R department just didn’t think it was country enough, and I kinda had to do a little reset on my expectations,” she said. “I didn’t cry about it. I accepted it.”
As a result, the finished product contained little artistic contribution from Twain. “There’s not really that much of my creative input in the album at all, other than maybe just the way I sang things or the way I phrase things, that sort of thing in the studio. But even that didn’t leave me any room, because they were three-hour sessions. I mean, what could I do in three-hour sessions?” she said.
“I had no room to experiment,” she concluded. “I had no room to grow into the project.”
Her subsequent albums were global successes
Twain’s 1995 sophomore album The Woman In Me showed that she had more star power than previously anticipated, and she was able to blend elements of country and pop.
In 1997, Twain released her smash breakout album Come On Over. The album would go on to be certified two-times diamond with over 20 million copies sold in the US, thanks in part to songs like “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” and “You’re Still the One.” Her 2002 album Up! similarly went Diamond.
