Shania Twain is back with new music and a new album that drops at the end of July. Little Miss Twain is Shania going back to her Timmins, Ontario roots. She’s going back to singing the bluesy country music that she grew up listening to with her late mother; the music that she would perform in bars when she was underage, trying to make a name for herself. At 60 years old, Shania is more confident than ever and sending a message of love and comfort to her younger self. The new single “Little Miss Twain”, the title track, is a hint of how personal we can expect this new project, her seventh, to be.  

Shania is in full promo mode for the album, serving as the opening act during Harry Styles’s Wembley Stadium concerts in London. The concept of Shania Twain being the opening act for anyone is wild, to say the least, but given her public love affair with Harry and the sheer magnitude of the tour, maybe that works somehow. Shania’s been performing an hour of her hits to British fans for weeks now, and the stadium is huge. She’s a big artist yes, but she generally sticks to arenas and casinos. Performing in a stadium is still noteworthy for someone with a legendary career like hers and there’s no better place for a legacy artist to promote a new album than a stadium stage. Shania has been performing the lead single from her new album “Dirty Rosie” every night to more than 80,000 fans per show. Plus, any opportunity to watch her slay in custom Dolce & Gabbana feels like a treat in of itself.

At this point in her career, it isn’t about creating any more hits, she’s already got a legacy worth of those. It’s about her connection to music, and doing all she can to keep on making it. She’s been open about her struggles with Lyme disease and how it has affected her singing voice in many interviews and in her 2010 memoir. Now she’s finding her groove and this new music is a more gritty and soulful delivery than her earlier works. The new sound complements her new voice in a great way and almost feels like it could be the soundtrack to her own life story, and maybe it is. She recently announced a deal with Sony Pictures for a biopic about her life, appropriately titled Shania. She’s also tapped to produce the movie. I’ve never been too in love with Shania’s acting chops, so I’m happy to see she won’t be playing herself, LOL. I have however been a lifelong Shania fan. There are videos of me as a four-year-old performing “From This Moment On” to my father who was behind the camera. Yes, I’ve showed them to Lainey. These are some of my most cherished moments, and the beginning of my love affair with music. Shania represents that for me and for so many others, it’s only natural that she gets the full legend treatment with this biopic and new album.

Next week is Madonna week at MC’s Music Lounge. It’s her first new album in seven years, and is easily my most anticipated release of 2026 so far. Madge just teased a possible Kylie Minogue collaboration on the album, and if that actually comes true, expect the gay man writing these words to go into full panic mode. This week, we have music from Tyler The Creator, JLo, Charli xcx and Carly Rae Jepsen. Plus, more Olivia Rodrigo because the album hasn’t left my rotation and now the album cuts are starting to go viral.

Listen on…

MC’s PICKS OF THE WEEK

“Little Miss Twain” by Shania Twain, Tanya Tucker

Since Shania returned to music in 2017, it has been interesting to observe her musical choices. A lot of the music she’s put out in the last decade hasn’t felt all the way authentic. Some good songs yes, but a bit disconnected from the true Shania. This song feels like it came from her first album. It’s raw, emotional and honest. The lyrical content of “Little Miss Twain” paired with the traditional country production make it some of her best work in a long time. It’s about her mother and how she would always tell her that she was “the next Tanya Tucker”. Shania being the icon that she is was able to get Tanya on the song as well, and the two harmonize in the chorus. What a full circle moment, to be able to perform a song with the person that connected you and your mother when you were starting to sing. Shania lost her parents before she became a star, so this song is the ultimate dedication to the woman who always encouraged her to pursue her dreams. As a lifelong Shania fan, this song was touching to hear, and for more reasons than just the personal lyrics, but also her vocals. One of the things about her voice on this song which I noticed right away were the key changes. She’s taking a lot more risks in her singing and she sounds a lot more comfortable with her new voice than ever before. Shania has been open about the changes to her voice and the journey she’s been on to regain the power in her vocal chords. The acoustic singer/songwriter style of “Little Miss Twain” suits her more than anything she recorded on her last album Queen of Me.

“THAT GUY” by Tyler, The Creator

For fans of Tyler, this release isn’t new at all. He actually dropped this one on Christmas Day 2024 to celebrate the success of his album Chromakopia. It’s a freestyle over the beat of “hey now” by Kendrick Lamar from his GNX album, always my favourite song off Kendrick’s project, and remains on the stairmaster portion of my gym playlist, the final 30 minutes if you were wondering. Tyler even dropped a video at the time, but since it was never made available on streaming, it remained something of an underrated fan favourite. Now it has the ability to reach the masses, and it’s a perfect time to revisit as well, given the nostalgic summer feel of the original beat. Plus, Tyler is spitting his sh-t on the song. He’s flexing throughout the entire thing, and rightfully so given the immense success he’s experienced in the last few years. If you go through the comments of the video, you will see the section riddled with requests to put the song on Spotify dating back to the day it was uploaded. His record label has finally made good on that promise and now we can all add it. If you enjoyed Kendrick’s GNX album, then definitely give a listen to “THAT GUY”. Tyler raps with the same conviction that Kendrick does, except he has an effortless flamboyance to his lyrics that make it signature to him. It’s impressive and a big reason why he’s always intrigued me so much as a rapper. Don’t let this release fool you though, Tyler isn’t planning on releasing a new album anytime soon. He recently told fans to “not get stuck on this idea”, hinting at a longer break before releasing another album. That could explain the release of this long beloved freestyle. I’ll take it either way.

“Everything’s Fine (PM)” by Alok, Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer is riding the recent wave of success she’s been seeing on the dance floor. “Everything’s Fine (PM)” is a different sound for her but it works. It’s nothing deep, it’s just a pulsating beat with minimal vocal requirement, the addictive cries during the chorus are enough to fill a gay club on their own. Lyrics like “everything’s fine but I still feel weird” feel like they were taken out of a pre-teen’s diary, it’s a little comical but also perfect. The last time Jennifer got too deep in her music it was the prologue to the dissolution of her marriage to Ben Affleck, so maybe she needs to escape into something a little less traumatic. Cue the dancefloor. Interestingly, she hasn’t explored the house music field too much over career, even though her 2000 “Waiting For Tonight” remix is one of my most cherished dance mixes. It took the resurgence of “On The Floor” and the streaming success of “Save Me Tonight” to bring her here. Alok has collaborated with his share of divas, working with Kylie Minogue just last year. He knows what the gays want to hear, and he brings it out of our girls in a great way. Jennifer embraced the new “Jen-eration” (LOL) with a new performance at Prime Video’s Obsessed Fest fan event in LA over the weekend. She performed “Everything’s Fine” and eventually went into “On The Floor”, the song that Prime’s Off Campus helped bring back to the top of the charts. I just know she’s loving every f-cking second of this resurfaced interest in her music career and I’m loving it alongside her. Tonight, we are in fact “it” on the floor.

 “Wink Wink” by Charli xcx

The opening lines of “Wink Wink” include “maybe I f-cked your dad” and “I used to jump on trampolines with no underwear on”. If you didn’t know Charli, maybe these lines would be confusing, but if you do, it’s just another Tuesday. Charli is the resident party girl, and this song is all about the wild things she could have possibly done, solely based on reputation, but also wanting to show that people can change. You may have expected her to have gotten into every mess you can imagine and more, but a lot of that is just your own imagination projecting onto her. Charli is embracing her inner freak, while still maintaining the rock undertones that she promised with this project with the first single. It’s the third single from her upcoming album Music, Fashion, Film and to me, “Wink Wink” perfectly closes the trifecta of opening singles that are meant to represent the title of the project. “Rock Music”, the song with a clear lyric about making rock music represents “Music”. “SS26” is a clear nod to “fashion” given the title but also the depiction of a fashion show in the music video. And now, we have “Wink Wink” which sonically feels like it came off the soundtrack to a 2003 Brittany Murphy movie, so that’s the “film”. This is probably my favourite of the three, because as I’ve explained in this column when analyzing both the new music from Gracie Abrams and Olivia Rodrigo, I love a song that sounds like it’s from a 2000s soundtrack. It’s one of my positive musical triggers.

“On Wires” by Carly Rae Jepsen

There’s no better way to close out Pride than with a new song from Canadian queen of all gay people, Carly Rae Jepsen. Her new song “On Wires” is the beginning of a new era for her, opting for a less dance-oriented sound and more of a yearning and reflective tone. The song is her talking to a potential love interest about wanting to get with them. It’s a dramatic mid-tempo that’s a departure for her, still polished but just more mature and more pop/rock than anything she has done in a while. Pop music fans everywhere are well aware of Carly Rae’s game, but she still remains somewhat underrated. Maybe that’s a safe place for her to be, she did just give birth to her first child, and being able to slip in and out of the spotlight is a privilege for her I’m sure. “On Wires” sounds like something she would’ve recorded in her “Tug Of War” days, before the madness of “Call Me Maybe” turned her into the niche pop star she would become. Just like Charli xcx, Carly Rae is stepping into the pop/rock realm and taking new chances. The upcoming album Day and Night is a double-album complete with 24 tracks, 12 per side. Will there be a juxtaposition of genres to represent each side?

MC’s VIRAL PICK

“honeybee” by Olivia Rodrigo

We’re two weeks removed from the release of Olivia Rodrigo’s album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, and not only has the album not left my playlists, but I seem to be listening to it even more aggressively than when it was first released. Each song gets better with every listen and clearly I’m not the only one who thinks so because the entirety of the album has now charted for a second week in a row on the Billboard Hot 100, with some songs taking over TikTok in their own respective niches. This is where “honeybee” comes into the picture. The song is #3 on the album, the first emotional ballad. The song is a picture perfect love song where Olivia affectionately refers to her lover as “baby boy, honeybee” in the most corny but loving way possible. The truth is that sometimes when you’re in love, you embrace the corny sh-t. We all know the feeling and to deny oneself said corniness is to deprive yourself of one of the most euphoric highs of human existence.

@livbedumb

♬ WHO WROTE THAT - 𝒽𝒾𝓃𝒶𝒶𝒶ᥫ᭡
@grandadfrankk Just the luckiest❤️‍🩹 #honeybee #oliviarodrigo #fyp #youseemprettysadforagirsolinlove #grandad ♬ honeybee - Olivia Rodrigo
@erikao424 Honey boy 🍯#honeybee #goldenretriever #goldenretrieverlife #goldenretrieversoftiktok #goldenretrieverpuppy ♬ honeybee - Olivia Rodrigo

The “baby boy, honeybee” trend is taking over TikTok, with users sharing moments with the  loves of their lives. Whether it be a moment from a wedding, a cuddle with a dog, or the expected slide of pictures with their significant others, people are embracing the cheesy, heartfelt moments that life has to offer. In less than two weeks, the song has already amassed more than 2.1 million sound uses on TikTok, and is gaining by the hundreds of thousands on the daily, and has reached #1 on TikTok’s viral songs chart. Looks like we know what the fourth single is going to be.

The 2026 “MC’s MUSIC LOUNGE” Spotify playlist is live. You can add it here to keep up to date with my weekly picks throughout the year. 

With Love, 

MC

Photo credits: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/BACKGRID

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