Prince Invited Shania Twain to Make the ‘Next “Rumours” Album’

Shania Twain said Prince once invited her to Paisley Park to record “the next Rumours album,” referring to Fleetwood Mac‘s hit 1977 LP.

The country star, who is set to release her sixth album, Queen of Me, on Friday, recently spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and shared the story of Prince’s invitation.

Back in 2008, Twain was going through a complicated divorce from her husband, producer Mutt Lange, who had an affair with Twain’s best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. (Three years later, Twain married Thiebaud’s ex-husband.) While she was dealing with her divorce, Twain received a call from Prince.

“We’re on the phone, and he said, ‘Shania, why don’t you come to Paisley Park? I want to make the next Rumours album with you,'” she recalled. “And that was the weirdest thing he could’ve ever said because Mutt’s standard on where he thought I could live as a standard was that album, the Rumours album. He said that to me.”

Twain explained that she was a “major Prince fan,” but that at the time, she wasn’t divorced yet and didn’t feel like she had found her voice as an artist. ”I was still working on it. I was so far from finding it, still,” she said. “I was writing, but I was too insecure to get with Prince in the studio. I was too insecure in every way.”

It didn’t exactly help that Twain was swearing on the phone with Prince. ”He says to me, ‘Well, if you do decide to come to Paisley Park, there’s no swearing allowed here,'” she recalled. “So that was another strike. I’m like, ‘Oh, no, I love you so much, but I don’t think I could get through writing and recording an album without swearing somewhere along the way! What are you going to do to me if I swear? I’m going to have to stand in the corner or something!'”

Twain admitted that it just wasn’t the ideal time for a collaboration of that caliber, noting, “I don’t think I was ready for what all that was going to mean for me.”