Before Shania Twain became one of the biggest names in country music, she was already watching MTV.
And one of the artists who caught her attention wasn’t a Nashville legend.
It was Madonna.
For Twain, the appeal wasn’t simply the music. Madonna understood something that would eventually become central to Shania’s own career: an artist could use clothing, attitude, performance and visual storytelling to become part of the song itself.
Years later, Twain openly acknowledged Madonna’s influence. Looking back at the making of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, she recalled watching pop videos as a teenager when Madonna dominated MTV. The corsets, gloves and glamour made an impression on her, and Twain eventually incorporated some of those ideas into her own visual identity.
But Shania wasn’t preparing to become another Madonna.
She was heading toward Nashville.
That was where things became complicated.
When Twain arrived in Nashville, she already carried musical influences that didn’t fit neatly into one box. She had grown up performing country music, but she also loved pop, rock and R&B. She had listened to artists ranging from Stevie Wonder and Elton John to the Carpenters, while her early songs already contained what she described as a strong pop sensibility.
Nashville, however, had expectations.
A female country singer was supposed to look and sound a certain way. Twain didn’t always fit the picture.
Her 1993 debut album received little attention, and her appearance immediately became part of the conversation. Even her first music video caused controversy because the way she dressed and presented herself was considered unusually provocative for country television at the time.
Instead of retreating, Twain pushed further.
She realized she didn’t have to choose between country and pop.
That became one of the most important decisions of her career.
By the time she reached The Woman in Me and especially Come On Over, Twain was combining country songwriting with rock guitars, pop hooks, glamorous styling and highly deliberate music videos. Contemporary coverage noted how unusual her approach was compared with traditional Nashville stars, while Twain herself insisted that she had never been interested in fitting neatly into one genre.
Then came “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”
And the Madonna influence suddenly became impossible to miss.
Twain chose a tight corset-style silhouette, a short skirt and a tailored black suit. But she wasn’t simply recreating a Madonna look. She was mixing masculine and feminine imagery to match the song’s message about female confidence and freedom.
Even the men in the video were deliberately repositioned.
Instead of surrounding Shania as powerful male figures, the band members became part of the visual joke and the fantasy. Twain later explained that reversing those traditional roles was part of the entire concept.
That was the twist.
She had taken an idea associated with the world’s biggest pop star and carried it directly into country music—then changed it enough that it became unmistakably Shania.
Nashville had once questioned whether she looked or sounded “country” enough.
Shania’s answer wasn’t to become more traditional.
It was to make the definition of country bigger.
And that’s why her Madonna influence mattered.
She didn’t take Madonna’s identity.
She took Madonna’s freedom to create an identity—and brought that freedom into a genre that wasn’t quite ready for it.
By the late 1990s, the result was everywhere: leather, corsets, leopard print, short skirts, rock guitars, huge pop hooks and country storytelling all existing in the same world.
What Nashville initially saw as a problem became the thing that made Shania impossible to ignore.
She wasn’t choosing between country and pop anymore.
She was turning the two into something the industry hadn’t seen before.