Thirty-three years after releasing her self-titled debut album, Shania Twain played a rare club show for 500 fans Friday night at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern.
The venue was one she once dreamed of playing but could not book early in her career, despite it hosting the Tragically Hip, the Rolling Stones, the Police, and thousands of other artists.
Speaking to the crowd during her 10-song set, the 60-year-old singer recalled growing up in Northern Ontario and yearning to perform at the historic bar.
“We weren’t recognized … we just weren’t established enough, so we never made the hire here,” Twain said of her early bar band days.
That changed this week when she booked the pub for a surprise show ahead of her seventh studio album, Little Miss Twain, set for release July 24.
“This is my first time in the Horseshoe Tavern,” she told a roomful of cheering fans. “I guess I’ve finally made it after all these years.”
Twain described the performance as a full-circle moment for a musician who once saw playing the Horseshoe as the benchmark for success in the province.
The packed room grew sweltering, but the five-time Grammy winner embraced the heat, noting it was beneficial for her vocal cords.
Over roughly 75 minutes, Twain and her five-piece band performed career-defining hits including Come On Over, Any Man of Mine, You’re Still the One, That Don’t Impress Me Much, and Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
She also debuted tracks from the upcoming LP, including the new single Dirty Rosie.
The intimate gig followed a 12-show opening slot for Harry Styles during his residency at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Twain has spent decades redefining the boundaries of country music by blending Nashville songwriting with pop hooks and broadening the genre’s audience.
She became the first artist in history to release three consecutive Diamond-certified albums with The Woman in Me, Come On Over, and Up!
After stepping away from music in the mid-2000s while battling Lyme disease, which nearly ended her singing career, she gradually returned through Las Vegas residencies and a documentary.
The smaller venue provided a fitting backdrop to introduce Little Miss Twain, an album Twain says revisits her pre-fame years in Northern Ontario.
Before performing the new track Stranger Things, she described imagining as a young woman that she would marry a rugged lumberjack capable of the same outdoors work she could do.
The album’s title track features Tanya Tucker, a singer Twain said her late mother admired and hoped she would emulate.
Twain’s mother, Sharon, and stepfather, Jerry, died in a 1987 car crash when she was 22, never living to see her daughter’s rise to global stardom.
Near the end of the night, Twain paid tribute to her mother’s ambitions. “Thank you to my mother for her wild dreams,” she said. “They came true.”
Little Miss Twain will be released July 24.
