Shania Twain - You're Still The One

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. Shania Twain is a singer and songwriter from Ontario, Canada. She's the only female artist to have had three consecutive Diamond albums, albums that have sold over 10 million copies. Actually, her 1997

Come on Over is the best-selling album by a female solo artist of all time. One of the most iconic songs from that iconic album is You're Still the One. It was co-written and produced by Mutt Lang, who had previously produced some other classic albums. Like Back in Black by ACDC and Pyromania by Def Leppard. He'd also produced Shania Twain's previous album, The Woman in Me, from 1995. For this episode, Shania told me the story of writing You're Still the One.

She told me what the song meant to her when she was making it over 25 years ago, and what it means to her now. My name is Shania Twain.

You're still the one was written when I was married to Mutt Lang. We had met and married within six months. He was quite a few years older than me, and we were from very, very different worlds. Mud had a very British and South African accent, which was quite strong. I was born in Ontario, Canada. So the combination of us was a real contrast. But musically we were not going to be able to do that.

from such different worlds. Mutt being a very, very big country music fan and rock was a staple in all of my upbringing in Canada, much of it being what Mutt had written and produced. I knew the Def Leopard albums, the Foreigner albums, the Cars albums, and of course A C D C I feel like I had already known him for so long. Inside out, because Mutt Lang was those records on many levels.

It was just so obvious that we needed to be together, which was difficult for other people to believe on the outside. There was a lot of skepticism about whether our relationship would last. In interviews, I would be asked questions like What is your role in this music relationship? Questions that insinuated that I was a product being shaped and formed and developed. questioning my ability because I was the newbie and Mutt was already so accomplished.

So you're still the one was definitely written with me feeling like I needed to say We're gonna make it, we're gonna get through all the skepticism. In years from now, everybody will see that you're still going to be the one for me.

The day of writing You're Still the One is so clear in my head. I start humming a melody around in the kitchen, which is very common for me. The lyric Looks Like We Made It comes out. Looks like we made it. I thought, hmm, I'm onto something here, but we're not that far into our marriage. I could be getting ahead of myself. I know we still have a long way to go together, so I'm just gonna put it out there and I'm gonna say it in this song. I picked up my guitar. And the melody came really

And then the poorest lyrics came together. That was the next thing I And Mud came in, he just sat across from me. I played him what I was doing and he said, Okay, well let's just roll the course over a few times. I played and sang and played and sang and you know, he would just say do it again and do it again and do it again. And I could see his mind coming up with something. And then he just started singing. And that was the hook to me. I'm just like, that's the hook. That is the hook.

The way Mutt and I heard the music together, it wasn't gonna sound like any other country record on purpose. Our first album together, The Woman and Me just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I got a lot of criticism, questioning my authenticity as a country artist. And I was foreign. I wasn't even American. Never mind. I wasn't Southern. So I was offensive to some of them, and they made it pretty clear.

But I knew I belonged there because those were my roots. I mean, I'd been singing in bars from the age of eight years old, writing my own music from the age of ten. And my repertoire as a little girl was Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, it was George Jones. And that is in me. But I wanted to be my own artist. And the music was gonna be a hybrid of all of my various influences stylistically, RB, rock.

And of course, country. And so the song was recorded in Nashville because there's a different feel to the country music player. So for example, it affects the groove entirely. If you bring a country drummer into a session, he's gonna give a song a very different feel than if you bring in a rock drummer or if you bring in an R and B drummer. And the session for You're Still the One was particularly for me about the drums. So see that pattern?

It's brushes on the snare. It's like you exhale and you're in a slow dance. It's a sway. It's a very romantic soulful. Cruise. We needed to get the tempo right. So I remember working a long time on that. I was there singing along so we could set that tempo for the drummer, Paul Lyme. We're still together, still going strong.

It wasn't a challenge for me vocally. It was very, very natural. I tend to sing lazy that way. And so the delivery of the song stayed very true and pure to the way I wrote it, right down to the backing vocals. Mutt did backing vocals and he gives a a style to things. There's like a signature sound to his vocals, for sure. You know that's Mutt Lang backing vocals. And it was a great contrast to my very solitary storytelling.

Mutt wanted to add the sensuality to the intro of the song. You know, he wanted to milk the romance. And I I never enjoyed that part. I'm almost, I'm like, oh, this is so corny. Do you mind if we listen to it? Ha ha! See it makes me laugh even thinking about listening to it. When I first saw you. I saw

I'm in there and I'm just giving a bunch of like different takes. And the first time you touched me. I would have liked to listen to the outtakes because I'm sure I was laughing between some of them, thinking, Oh my god, I'm really You know, pouring it on here and after all this time. You're still the one I love. John Hobbs is on the organ. The steel guitar, I would say, most particularly, was in the control room a very wow moment. It was a very That's magic.

Bruce Bountain was the steel guitar player on You're Still the One, and he was just the perfect stylist on that instrument for this song. This is an instrument that works in waves. It's waves and attack. Waves and attack. Mutt is also writing that performance in the mix to exaggerate the swells because he wants the instrument to disappear and then come back and then disappear and come back. It's a haunting instrument. It makes you reflect from a distance.

It ends very alone. It's just my voice. So there's no more beat at that point, which I think is very appropriate. Just the way I sing it.

You're still the one that has gone through its own evolution and meaning and purpose. When I wrote the song, I wrote it from my perspective about my relationship and about feeling so good and satisfied that we made it. When we got divorced I knew I couldn't go on stage without doing this song'cause it had become one of my biggest songs. And it was very hard. And I was choking down the tears. It made me very sad to sing it.

But forcing myself through that wall, through that, oh, I can't believe I have to sing this song again, cause it's not true anymore. And you know, I was kind of in this emotional space with it. Because I'm looking at the people and they're going, Well, she's singing about something that's no longer true. I didn't know if that would make everybody sad. How would they feel about that? But I soon realized that it wasn't about me.

People had adopted the song as their song. They weren't thinking Shania doesn't mean this song anymore. They were thinking, this is my song. This is our song. This is my wedding song. This is our anniversary song. And then I started celebrating that myself. I'm like, wow, this song has way surpassed why I wrote it. It's so much more than that. It's not about me. And I let go of that. I let go of my own attachment to the reason I wrote it.

And of course, in all the years that we were together, I meant every I meant it. I was singing it for myself more than anything. And then all of a sudden I was singing it for everybody else.

Coming up, you'll hear how all these ideas and elements came together in the final song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April twenty fourth. It's been about fifteen years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Herway.

I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the All of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vac.

Fenn Lilly and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm gonna be on tour playing in cities across the US starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Simeen Nosrat, Jason Manzukis, Josh Molina, Min Jin Lee, Ken Jennings.

John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all gonna be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music. Get tickets for the shows on my website, rishices.co, or just go to song. Slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. And now, here's You're Still the One by Shania Twain in its entirety.

To learn more, visit Songexploder.net. You can find links to buy or stream you're still the one. And you can watch the music video. Shania Twain will be in residency in Las Vegas starting in May 2024, and you can get tickets for that on our website, shaniaTwain.com. This episode was produced by Craig Ely, Theo Balcombe, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about all our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on social media at Rishi Hirway, and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at Songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. Thanks for listening. Radio T.