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.
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.