Music

Shania Twain:

Queen of Me

Genre: Country/Pop

Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Sound: Exuberant celebration as Canada’s queen stakes out her place on the late-night dance floor.
If you like: Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, Pink
Best track: Waking Up Dreaming
Why you should listen: On an album that has more in common with Taylor Swift than Dolly Parton, Canada’s real queen, Shania Twain, continues to prove she doesn’t need philandering ex, producer Mutt Laing, to make great music.

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MORE POP THAN COUNTRY,  Twain’s confidant and compelling latest release, Queen of Me, will give her lots of new tracks for her next Vegas residency. Hell, she even uses swears to call out some of her love-life disappointments on perhaps her first track to ever come with a warning attached, the “fuck you” fun, of Pretty Liar.

There’s even an occasional Phil Spector Wall of Sound vibe with some of the bigger, harmony-powered choruses. Reliable beats drive plenty of tracks that will easily find a place on dance floors in clubs the world over. Her beats-and-hand-claps-fuelled banger Number One wouldn’t be out of place on a Pink setlist.

Fans of Twain should be pleased by the confidant and comfortable place in which she seems to find herself. Her new tracks drip with a satisfied worldliness while she is still clearly fascinated by and hopeful about the surprises and new adventures — romantic and otherwise — that life continues to hold. It was hard to watch Twain go through the personal and professional fallout of her split with Laing. Queen of Me is further proof that Twain is a major force in music, fully capable of writing her own happy ending without the help of any bum ex-boyfriends.