Shania Twain Signs With Republic Nashville, Releases First Single in Five Years, ‘Waking Up Dreaming’

Chris Willman
·3 min read
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After being with Mercury Nashville since the beginning of her recording career in the early 1990s, Shania Twain has a new label home, Republic Nashville, and a new song and video to go with the switch — “Waking Up Dreaming,” her first official single in five years.

It’s not just a new label for her — it’s a new label to everyone, as Twain’s statement about the signing established that she is the debut artist for Republic Nashville, a division of Republic Records.

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“I couldn’t think of a better partner than Republic Nashville,” Twain said. “I’m honored and excited to be the label’s first artist and lead the charge of this new and exciting chapter. In this respect, it feels like a new beginning all around, and I’m embracing it wholeheartedly.”

Said Republic co-founder and CEO Monte Lipman, “Shania is one of the most influential and impactful artists of this generation. She’s a rare talent whose legacy continues to resonate throughout the world. We feel a tremendous amount of gratitude to support her new body of work, which is spectacular.”

Although the cover art for the single and other images released have Twain posing with a cowboy hat, “Waking Up Dreaming” embraces her pop side, not least of all with an Isaac Rentz-directed music video that borrows the bygone iconography of glam-rock and hair-metal. The light-hearted clip puts Twain in an outlandish series of blonde, pink and red wigs, and even more outlandish, inches-long eyelashes, as she poses like a rocker out of the early Motley Crue or Poison era.

Shania Twain ‘Waking Up Dreaming’ single art
Shania Twain ‘Waking Up Dreaming’ single art

Just two months ago, Twain released what turned out to be her swan song for Mercury Nashville, the soundtrack to her recent Netflix documentary “Not Just a Girl (The Highlights),” a compilation that included one new track, the title song.

Her previous studio album was “Now,” released in 2017. That marked her comeback after a long recording drought that had not seen her release a fresh studio effort since 2002’s “Up!,” although she stayed active in the interim as a touring artist and keeper of a Las Vegas residency. Twain’s first five albums have sold more than 100 million units worldwide. Her most successful album, 1997’s “Come on Over,” is the rare album to have been certified as double-diamond by the RIAA, for sales of 20 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Her second Vegas residency, this one at the Zappos Theater in Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, is ongoing and is scheduled to run through the rest of 2022.

In other Twain news, the country-pop superstar was revealed Thursday by Variety to be in “final talks” to co-star in a live television remake of “Beauty and the Beast” in the role of Mrs. Potts. Other cast members include H.E.R. as Belle and Josh Groban as Beast, in a broadcast that is set to go out live on ABC on Dec. 15 and become available for streaming on Disney+ the following day.

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