Shania Twain bringing ‘Queen of Me’ tour to Des Moines

Call 2023 the year of the renaissance of Shania Twain.

Prominently featured in the documentary series “Women Who Rock,” Twain, the “Queen of Country Pop,” released her sixth studio album and first in six years in February and “Queen of Me” promptly debuted at No. 10 on Billboard magazine’s Top 200 albums chart, making her only the second female artist to have Top 10 albums in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.

A much-remarked presence at the Grammy Awards, Twain is winding up a nearly yearlong tour that runs through November in North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland. She’s coming to the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines on Nov. 3, 2023.

“Resurgence of presence is a better way to put it, probably,” Twain said of her increased visibility. “I’m an empty-nester. We’ve come out of COVID and I’ve had all this music building up that I’ve been writing — all the songs I’ve been building up — building up so much material. My son was anxious to get out into the world on his own.

“I had all this creativity built up. I’m doing as much as I ever did in my career right now. I’m just working every day and loving it. Loving it way more now than I did when I was younger.”

ON TOUR

When Twain sat down for this video interview, she was getting ready for the “Queen of Me” tour in a massive Las Vegas rehearsal room.

“I started months ago, and this is the most involved I’ve ever been with my stage productions,” she said. “I’m really excited about sharing it. I love making music. I love designing clothing. I love the whole vision of the stage production, the lighting, the flow of the show ... just getting really sharp and good (musically), getting the band up to par. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s a lot of fun. I’m very motivated and inspired to share it.”

What Twain is sharing on the tour is a mix of songs from “Queen of Me,” some rarely performed deep cuts and the hits like “Up,” “You’re Still the One” and the smash “Man, I Feel Like a Woman,” songs from the ’90s that made her an international superstar.

Many of those songs have been rearranged vocally for Twain’s first performances following her 2018 open-throat surgery to repair her voice, which was damaged by the effects of dysphonia that resulted after she contracted Lyme disease in 2003.

“I change certain ways that I sing things,” she said. “For example, if I would have normally sung something in a falsetto, now I sing it in a power note. It’s all about voice placement. I can sing lower in some cases than I used to, which is cool. I've got more power. Really, the falsettos are a little more tricky. Now. I'm like the loudest, the loudest one of all the vocals and I love it.”

A few of the songs that she’s doing on tour will come from “The Woman in Me,” her 1995 second album that forever changed country music. Like Garth Brooks before her, Twain combined country with pop, rock and some modern production into genre-smashing hits.

FINDING HER WAY

Twain and producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, whom she later married, didn’t intend to shake up country when they made the record and she said had no idea that she’d done so until she and Lange left the studio cocoon.

“The weird thing is that I had already made the music ... and I didn't realize that when we recorded it.” she said. “We didn't play it to anyone outside the studio at all ’til it was done. It's almost as if the record didn't really belong anywhere specific to the genre, you know, inside a genre lane.

“Mutt was not rooted in country, but I was. My songwriting roots were Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and Dolly Parton. Those were my songwriting teachers and then Mutt was a rock producer.

“And we just made the record that seemed right for Shania Twain. So it was legitimate. It was original, but I didn't think it was going to get resisted by radio so much as it did in the beginning,” Twain said.

“I guess what I'm saying is, I didn't realize that it didn't belong, really, anywhere, ‘til they told me it didn’t.”

Mercury Records executives informed Twain there was only one possible single on the album, and it wasn’t “Any Man of Mine,” the song that she and Lange wanted to be the first to hit radio.

“I'm like, OK, fine. If you're not going to put out ‘Any Man of Mine’ first, go with ‘Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under.’ I'm a fan. I listen to country music. I listen to pop music. I listen to all kinds of music. I think the country fan will love this song,” Twain said. “And then they're going to want to hear what else I've got. Then we're going with ‘Any Man of Mine.’ Everybody agreed with that. And oh boy, when ‘Any Man of Mine’ came out, the fans just took over.”

INSPIRATIONS

Twain’s now cited as an influence by the likes of Taylor Swift, who credits her pop crossover to Twain, Carrie Underwood (“She paved the way for a lot of us”), Orville Peck, Kasey Musgraves, Harry Styles and Kelsea Ballerini.

“That is just so rewarding to hear,” Twain said. “Because the reason I even make music is because I'm inspired by it. I'm inspired as a listener. I'm inspired as a concertgoer. I'm inspired as a songwriter. Music saves me from a lot of things. It's an escape for me for a lot of things.

“In fact, I wrote this whole album ‘Queen of Me’ during COVID. It was my escapism,” she said. “It’s like OK, this is a very dark period in history, very, very scary. I gotta get happy, I gotta take control of my mindset. I gotta get positive, like deliberately positive, So I'm going to write about things that make me happy, things that make me laugh, things that make me want to dance.”

The Twain acolytes aren’t simply following her because of her crossover success. They admire her for outspokenness on issues of equality; bringing an honest female sexuality into music; and, most importantly, the hard-earned Independence that has driven her throughout her career.

“I think you've just got to be very, very honest with yourself to be your own leader, and not follow anyone else,” Twain said. “Being unique is a challenge, but I like that I want to be unique. I want to be my own thing. So if everyone expects me to go left, I'm probably not going left.”

Twain is going exactly where she wants to go — on record, in her fashion and on tour — as she, at last, is able to reap the rewards that have come after three decades of bringing rock to country and speaking her mind in her songs, on stage and off.

“Success kept building, but for a long time there were still always hurdles to overcome, it seemed,” she said. “I spent a lot of energy asserting myself, asserting my ideas, asserting the opportunity to prove.

“If you fast-forward to now. I'm just having fun with all the success I already had,” she said. “I'm not looking for approval from anyone other than the fans, if I'm being purely honest, you know what I'm saying? I just want to give them a great show and enjoy myself creating that show.”