A song doesn’t need to be a Top 40 hit to be a notable milestone in an artist’s career, and this is certainly true of Shania Twain’s debut single, “What Made You Say That”, from her eponymous 1993 album. As the country singer’s first release, there was plenty of promotional airplay, but it wasn’t enough to break the track into the Top 40. It peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs and No. 70 on the RMP Country Tracks chart in Twain’s native Canada.
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Still, “What Made You Say That” was the first single Twain ever released. And that in and of itself makes the song special. What’s more extraordinary about the track is how it landed on the album in a “the stars aligned” kind of way. During a 1993 appearance on The Dini Petty Show, Twain described the months-long process of sifting through over one hundred songs to compile a ten-track album.
After listening to “tape after tape after tape,” Twain came up with what she and her team believed to be a solid record. But that didn’t include “What Made You Say That”. Twain didn’t even hear the song until the day before she was going into the studio to start cutting the album—literally in the eleventh hour.
The Last-Minute Addition Later Connected Shania Twain to Avril Lavigne
Shania Twain told daytime show host Dini Petty that she kept the new song, “What Made You Say That”, in her back pocket when she went into the studio the next day. She and her band had plans to record three songs during that session, which was already an ambitious order. Twain knew there was a good chance they wouldn’t have time for a fourth. But at the end of the day, she realized she had 45 minutes left in the studio. So, she brought it up to the band.
The band agreed, and they cut the track that day at Music Mill in Nashville, Tennessee. “What Made You Say That” became Shania Twain’s lead single off her eponymous debut, followed by “Dance With The One That Brought You” three months later and “You Lay A Whole Lot Of Love On Me” three months after that.
Perhaps the most interesting, “small world” part about Twain’s single is that it later connected her to a fellow Canadian and future pop-punk star, Avril Lavigne. In the late 1990s, Lavigne entered a radio contest in which contestants competed for the chance to perform with Twain by singing her debut single, “What Made You Say That”. A 14-year-old Lavigne won the competition and performed with Twain at a sold-out arena in Ottawa.
“That definitely helped me in my career,” Lavigne later told Alternative Press in 2022. “And she’s someone I’ve stayed in touch with. She’s so epic. Her songwriting, writing from a woman’s perspective about things we go through—[that was] quite inspiring throughout my life and had a real impact.”
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