Shania Twain wants fans to be able to “taste” and “smell” her childhood in her new music.
The 61-year-old country star’s latest record Little Miss Twain was released in July and the album looks back on her younger years growing up in Ontario, Canada – and Shania has revealed one song in particular, Northern Town, is designed to give fans a real feel for the days she spent in a branch of Dairy Queen as a child.
She told Rolling Stone: “I want people to taste the flavors and smell the air and be there, so I did my best to describe what it was like then.
“We would go out target shooting or rabbit snaring or something out in the woods, and my dad would stop at the bar on the way home, and we’d sit in the car and wait while he had a beer.
“Then before driving us home, he would say: ‘I’m taking you to Dairy Queen. So, remember, we don’t have to talk about stopping for a beer’.”
Shania added that writing about her hometown gives her great comfort, explaining: “Often, if I’m missing my hometown or I’m missing nature, it’s great therapy to sit with my guitar and just ramble on about the place I love.
“Or the jeans that just no matter how much they’ve fallen apart, they’re still one of my favorite pairs of jeans, you know?
“That’s where [the song] Faded Blue Jeans comes in, being 17 and rolling around in the grass with my boyfriend. Things maybe my parents wouldn’t have been happy that I was doing.”
Shania added of Little Miss Twain: “My first Top 10 [hit] was when I was 30. From the age of six all the way up to then is this whole gap of my life and my music that nobody knows about. The theme of the album is me catching everybody up on who I am as a whole …
“Little Miss Twain is a reflection on the whole journey of a pre-recording artist – it’s the songwriter trying to eventually make it to Nashville, around that big round conference table.”