Long before she was one of Canada's best-selling artists and a certified global icon, Shania Twain was a little girl playing dive bars and honky-tonks throughout Northern Ontario. On her new album Little Miss Twain (out July 24 via Republic Nashville/Universal Music Canada), Twain revisits that history in music for the first time. To celebrate that new era and preview new music, she played a special show in one bar she dreamed of playing but never got to: Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern.
Last night (July 17), she rocked that packed and sweaty bar for about 400 superfans and lived those dreams of her youth.
It was a different Shania than they were used to getting. She was talkative and spontaneous, telling stories between songs, reminiscing and figuring things out on the go. She reached for her guitar when she couldn't remember exactly how a new song was played, because that was how she wrote them. It was a throwback to her childhood days, when she rarely sang empty-handed. She sometimes revisited a chorus after the song was done, playing it stripped-down and acoustic so fans could hear the lyrics or sing along.
The sound wasn't perfect, with guitars or mics screeching with feedback on occasion. But it fit the vibe. This wasn't a Wembley Stadium blowout, where she recently joined Harry Styles for his historic 12-show run, nor was it her recent Vegas residency. It was a rough-and-tumble bar show, delivered while fans spilled overfilled pints onto the Horseshoe's checkerboard floor.
Shania Twain at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on July 17, 2026.Fred Thiebaud
Before she sang the title track from Little Miss Twain, she told the story behind it. When she was a girl playing in those bars, her mother said she would be the next Tanya Tucker, the legendary singer of "Delta Dawn." Her mother died in a car accident before she got to see the massive success of her daughter, but she got to bring it full circle when Tucker came to the studio to sing the song with Shania. It was one of many stories she told that night, explaining the meaning behind her new songs. "Faded Blue Jeans," her new track featuring Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, for instance, was inspired by her iconic jeans with the holes in the knees that she had from when she was young and famously wore in the video for 1995's "Any Man of Mine."
She also performed that barnburner, asking fans to accompany her with "your best stomp clap." It was one of a handful of Shania classics sprinkled throughout the night. Before playing "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!," she acknowledged it was one of the world's most popular karaoke songs (declared No. 1 by Billboard in 2022). "I don't know if that's a claim to fame or what," she said.
Before launching into a moving rendition of her immortal ballad "You're Still the One," she said "it belongs to all of you now" and that she'd "given it away." As she'd previously explained, the song doesn't have the same meaning for her when she wrote it about a partner she is no longer with, but fans have found their own meaning in it. Hearing it in a small room like the Horseshoe as the whole crowd belted along, you could feel that moment of collective experience attached to the songs that have entered the great popular music songbook.
True to the looseness of the occasion, Twain explained that she had not planned an encore and asked the audience what they wanted to hear. When someone suggested "Giddy Up!," a song from her 2023 album Queen of Me, she explained that the song usually requires more instruments than the bar-band formation she was playing with (though one with some of the most sought-after musicians in music). But, what the hell, she said. They'd make it work.
It was an unusual show for Shania Twain, one fans in attendance likely haven't heard her do before. But it felt right. The Northern Ontario country bar DNA is clearly still in her. For one night, she took us back in time to those days with her.
