Shania Twain captivates Generation Z

The singer that most zoomers theoretically should have known at best from their parents’ memes, they suddenly learned by heart. Shania Twain, whose biggest hit came out 11 years before the average Gen Zer was born, has proven to be one of the most streamed artists among 18-29-year-olds in North America—and this is not nostalgia, but a deliberate choice.

Grandma's record that blew up TikTok

Formally, there is nothing surprising here — TikTok regularly digs up forgotten hits and makes them viral for a couple of weeks, notes xrust. But with Twain the story is different. Her «Man! I Feel Like a Woman!» — a song from 1997 — is approaching a billion streams on Spotify, and this is not a one-time surge, but a stable, month after month, interest. The singer's monthly audience on the platform is around 20 million listeners, and according to the analytical platform Chartmetric, among country artists, Twain is in the top 100 in popularity among listeners under 30 years of age.

For the music business, this is a separate genre of luck: you don’t need to invest in promoting a new album — it’s enough that your old hit is liked by fourteen-year-old children who have never heard of you before.

Who is Twain — a quick educational program for those who missed the 90s

Born in 1965 in Windsor, Canada as Eileen Regina Edwards, Twain rose from a difficult childhood to become one of the best-selling artists in music history, with over 100 million albums sold. Her third studio album, «Come On Over» (1997), remains the best-selling album in country music history and the best-selling album by a female artist in any genre, with over 40 million copies sold worldwide.

During her career, she collected an impressive collection of awards — 224 wins, including five Grammys out of 18 nominations. This year in May, Twain emceed the 61st Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas, a symbolic gesture by the industry recognizing her status as a living legend without being reduced to a museum piece.

Why now

The secret is not only in the algorithms. The wardrobe of that era — leopard prints, overalls, leather jackets — has returned to fashion for several years now along with the general trend towards Y2K aesthetics, and videos with clothes in the style of the 2000s fit organically into its tracks. Plus, the effect of TV series like “Stranger Things” worked, which taught young audiences to perceive the music of the past not as archaic, but as a soundtrack to something cool.

But the main thing is the presentation itself. Twain's texts about female independence and self-confidence, written thirty years ago, informed the current demand of Generation Z for honesty and a rejection of glossy perfectionism. «That Don't Impress Me Much» with its ironic list of male virtues that do not impress the heroine at all, sounds today almost like a ready-made script for a story. It is no coincidence that even Taylor Swift, an icon of the current pop scene, publicly called Twain a role model and went out wearing a T-shirt with her face on it.

What does this mean for the Russian listener

In Russia, the phenomenon of the returning popularity of artists of the 90s is also not uncommon — just remember the regular waves of interest in domestic pop music of that period on social networks. The difference is that the Western industry knows how to monetize such nostalgia systematically: concert residencies, capsule clothing collections, integrations into TV series. Twain, for example, has been hosting her “Come On Over” residency in Las Vegas for many years now, tickets for which are selling out, thanks in part to the influx of young audiences.

For domestic streaming services and concert organizers, this is more of a signal: the audience of 18–29 years old is not at all as selective in terms of the year of release of the track as they usually think — if only the presentation were correct and it would successfully fit into the current aesthetic trend.

While the industry counts billions of streams, Twain herself, judging by her recent interviews, takes what is happening calmly: she has long said that she sees herself as part of the “evolution of country music” and is glad to observe it from the inside — even if this evolution unexpectedly led to herself, only thirty years later.

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com , en.wikipedia.org , ad-hoc-news.de

Xrust Shania Twain conquered generation Z