Shania Twain’s Perception of Making Music Was Based on The Beatles and Elvis Presley
Shania Twain rose to international fame in the 1990s, becoming a music superstar able to blend together elements of country, pop, and rock seamlessly. While she never expected or set out to become a legend, she did look up to legendary musicians throughout her life, including The Beatles and Elvis Presley — so much so that when she got her own record deal, she pictured her career looking more like theirs.
The early days of Shania Twain’s career
Shania Twain got her start as a professional musician performing at a local ski resort in Canada in the late 1980s. She eventually moved to Nashville and secured a recording contract, and got to work on her self-titled debut album.
Shania Twain was released in 1993, fronted by the singles “What Made You Say That” and “Dance With the Once That Brought You.” Twain, however, had very little creative control of the album, only co-writing one song on the project and singing songs that were given to her by music industry brass.
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 recounted in her 2022 Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl.
“I had no room to experiment,” she added. “I had no room to grow into the project.”
Shania Twain’s perception of recording music was taken from Elvis Presley and The Beatles
Twain spoke about her experience recording her first album — and how she expected it to go versus how it actually went — in her 2011 memoir From This Moment On.
“Timed sessions booked by appointment were how I was experiencing the recording scene in Nashville. It harked back to the compartmentalization that existed in popular music prior to the early 1960s,” Twain said. “But the Beatles, probably more than any other musical act, advanced the idea that a group could be a self-contained unit and record its own songs rather than rely on outside writers — much to the dismay of veteran tunesmiths and lyricists.”
She went on to describe how The Beatles and Elvis Presley informed her idea of what recording music as a signed recording artist would look like.
“Even the recording of the album itself fell short of what I had envisioned,” she said. “I’d expected that the sessions would be crackling with energy and ideas, like what I’d seen in documentary clips of Elvis Presley. He would jam with his band in the studio for days on end, going over and over the same tune until everything felt just right, then cut the track. Same thing with The Beatles. Some of what they went into the studio with were songs they were regularly playing live already, but much was also worked out in the studio, experimenting with blends, sounds, grooves; many classic ideas were discovered by the live jamming itself, allowing room for the magic to unfold in its own time. This was what my perception of making a record was.”
She eventually became a worldwide phenomenon
Twain’s star only continued to rise throughout the 1990s. Her 1995 sophomore album The Woman in Me was a success, and her 1997 smash album Come On Over continues to reign as the highest-selling album by a female artist of all time, with over 40 million copies sold worldwide. Her 2002 album Up! became her third straight diamond-certified album with over 10 million copies sold domestically.
Twain’s legacy has only been enriched in the years since. She’s performed two Las Vegas residency shows, and is releasing her sixth studio album Queen of Me and going back on the road in 2023.
