Little Miss Twain is not going to set any streaming records, it won’t win any major awards, and it won’t be remembered as one of Shania Twain’s best albums. There aren’t any hits on it, and it’s very safe artistically. It’s not a particularly interesting album. It is, however, a multi-million dollar opportunity for one of the most successful country artists of all time and potentially the most important album to her career since Come on Over. Why, you ask? Because this self-labeled autobiographical album is the perfect foundation for a Broadway (New York, not Nashville) bio-musical. Pair these songs with her catalog of hits, and you have the bones of a hit show.
The time is right. There are Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn musicals already in development, and a musical about an iconic musician is a successfully proven concept. Carole King, Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson, Frankie Valli and the Beatles and others have all served as worthy subjects.
Her life is a fascinating story. Shania (a stage moniker that apparently means “I’m on my way” in Ojibwe) Twain was singing for spare change in bars at eight years old; she endured an abusive stepfather, spent a childhood in poverty, raised her siblings alone after her parents were killed, and then, oh yeah, became the best-selling woman in country music history. Then she almost lost her voice almost entirely to a tick bite and rebuilt it from nothing. That’s fabulously compelling subject matter that could stand on its own even without beginning to dive into her marriages to Robert John “Mutt” Lange and later Frédéric Thiébaud.
Musically, these songs are ready for the stage, with “Right Time” shining as a terrific example of this album’s modern theatrical tendencies. The arrangement calls for a horn section, a chorus of backup vocalists, and a piano line that strides elegantly. The verses are conversational almost to the point of being recitative rather than melody, which is exactly the trick a book musical needs when a character has to get through plot before the chorus hits. It’s built for a 2 pm Saturday matinee stage. This song is the moment our hero confidently plants her feet center stage and decides to seize the day.
Then there’s the title track. “Little Miss Twain” (featuring a Tanya Tucker name drop as well as Tanya Tucker herself) opens on electric piano and strings and tells the story of the fork in the road that defined her childhood. It’s precisely the spotlight number a musical needs to anchor its emotional and narrative arc, since so much of Twain’s story turns on who she was before anyone knew her name. Between these two songs alone, we more or less have a first act.
The rest makes a very compelling commercial case that these songs are meant for a soundtrack rather than an album. Little Miss Twain moves through jazz, R&B, pop, and rock, with country peppered in as seasoning. We get a banjo here, a pedal steel there, a lyric about a small town. Country music is the garnish rather than the load-bearing sound. To be fair to Miss Twain, that is a feature of her career, and this genre-agnosticism would be perfect for the audiences walking into a Broadway house. And the demographics of Broadway line up with Twain’s own remarkably well. The musical-going crowd is 65% women, averages 41 years old, and is 75.3% white, per the Broadway League’s most recent demographic report (which reads less like theater data and more like a description of the fans who grew up on Come On Over and have been aging right alongside her).
Musically though, Little Miss Twain has no edge. There’s no pioneering vision here, no attempt to stake out a unique sonic identity. The arrangements are polished and pleasant, the recordings are lush, but it’s unlikely that any of the melodies will blow away many listeners or have any of these songs on heavy rotation. The lyrics carry the weight, and they tell Twain’s story effectively, and in places boldly, even while the production plays it professionally safe. The clarity in creative vision is well situated in a year where country’s biggest albums from the genre’s leading ladies (Ella Langley’s Dandelion, Megan Moroney’s Cloud 9, Kacey Musgraves’s Middle of Nowhere) have all succeeded on the strength of a clear point of view. Little Miss Twain has that same palpable intention, but it’s aimed firmly at telling a story rather than pushing musical boundaries.
With all of that said, this album is the perfect starting point for what could truly be a lucrative and legacy-affirming creative endeavor for Shania Twain. Miss Twain, if you (or anyone who holds any influence in your life) are reading this and someday find yourself accepting a Tony Award, remember who gave you the idea.
