Mark your calendars: Shania Twain has new music coming in 2017.
The country music superstar released her last album, Up!, in 2002. After a two-year Las Vegas residency and 2015's Rock This Country tour, Twain is ready to release her fifth studio album in the spring. "I'm so overdue!" Twain admits. "I feel like I just need to keep making albums now."
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly Wednesday, Twain reveals she's been toiling away at new music for years. Before she even set foot in a recording studio, though, she would often come up with lyrics and melodies and store them on various recording devices. "There's, like, five of them," she says. "I'm forever backing things up. So if it's a rainy day or I'm bored, I'll go through my electronics and listen to things. They'll have titles like 'Fun Beat' or 'Fab Memory.'"
Twain says she's recorded demos at home using GarageBand and Pro Tools. "It's really fun to experiment with arrangements," she says. "I did so many of my backing vocal arrangements—just being able to have all these multitracks and moving them around and experimenting that way. By the time I got into the studio, I was already quite familiar with what I wanted to do."
The "Still the One" singer has assembled an all-star team of producers and songwriters who've worked with everyone rom Carly Rae Jepsen to Kings of Leon. "I'm a very focused person in the studio," she tells Entertainment Weekly. "It's not like it's not fun, but the joy comes in watching the whole thing grow and getting locked into that creative mode—that's so indulgent for me."
For her next effort, Twain has collaborated with with Ron Aniello, Jake Gosling, Jacquire King and Matthew Koma. According to the country star, "They're all very different from each other."
By the time Twain finished recording the as-yet-untitled album, the 51-year-old singer felt more empowered than ever. As Twain puts it, "I felt like I had climbed a huge mountain and was standing on top of it, looking God in the eye, and saying, 'I'm here! What do I gotta do next?'"
The album will not feature any assistance from music producer Mutt Lange, her ex-husband. "It was a big leap of courage for me," Twain told Billboard earlier this month. "I didn't know where to begin. I'd write every type of song, every type of lyric, every type of melody. Who is going to say, 'All right, let's hone in on this style?' I didn't have that direction, whereas with Mutt I did."
Twain, who's sold 35 million albums in the U.S., described the album "kind of schizophrenic musically." Just don't expect any breakup anthems inspired by her former marriage to Lange. "I talk a lot more about pain," Twain said, "but I didn't feel the need to be that literal about anger or hate. It's very triumphant in the end. I felt like, 'Whew! I made it through the album! I made it through writing all the songs!' It was an emotional roller coaster, and the lyrics reflect that."