W L INTERVIEW
AN INTERVIEW WITH SHANIA TWAIN
Eilleen Regina " Shania " Twain Edwards is a Canadian singersongwriter and actress . She has sold over 100 million records , making her the best-selling female artist in country music history and one of the best-selling music artists of all time . Her third studio album , Come On Over ( 1997 ), became the bestselling studio album by a female act in any genre , the best-selling album of the 1990s and the best-selling country album of all time , selling over 40 million copies worldwide . Come On Over produced twelve singles ( yes really ), including " You ' re Still the One ", " From This Moment On ", " That Don ' t Impress Me Much " and " Man ! I Feel Like a Woman !" and earned Twain four Grammy Awards .
She is back for 11 gigs in the UK and is playing Manchester this September . Shania has led a fascinating life of huge highs and very challenging lows …
It is the latest step in what Shania calls her ‘ rehabil itation ’ to the world stage after some major health scares . In 2003 , she caught Lyme disease , a type of bacterial infection , from a tick while out horse riding . It affected the nerves in her vocal chords and meant she required open-throat surgery to save her voice .
Her mother Sharon and stepfather Jerry could barely afford a car and when Shania was 22 , still dreaming of hitting the big time , they were killed in a road accident , leaving her to look after and support her four younger siblings , via singing in small bars .
Last year , a captivating Netflix biopic , Not Just A Girl , charted Shania ’ s rise from poverty in rural Ontario to global superstardom . It showed pictures and footage of this young girl with a clear , sweet voice singing in seedy bars to help scrape a living for her family . She says : “ Looking back at that stuff , I couldn ’ t help thinking , ‘ Wow , this is probably why I had stage fright for so many years ’. “ I was performing in bars full of drunk adults , places that were just not comfortable for me at that age . It was very intimidating ”.
Now , at 57 , the horse loving Canadian is back in the saddle for her vibrant , sixth studio album , Queen Of Me .
What music were you inspired by ? My earliest roots are my grandparents ’ and parents ’ country music , Dolly Parton , Willie Nelson , Loretta Lynn , Waylon Jennings . Then I gravitated towards vocal harmony groups like The Bee Gees and The Carpenters . I still really like those story tellers and my songwriting education came from them . But , as I got into my teens , the bars were hiring rock bands so my repertoire had to change . I started doing Queen , Journey and The Beatles , by the time I got a deal , I had developed my own style .
We ' ve been immersing ourselves in the new album ‘ Queen of me ’ for the past couple of weeks . Tell us about it . Oh good , a couple of weeks is awesome . This was one that I was playing around with for a little while , and I ' d been singing it in various phrasings into my iPhone , playing around with like up in your giddy , more than the actual giddy up because I was thinking , you know , this is like a really fun , creative way of saying , you know , pep in your step , or spice in your life . I mean , I probably overthought it . Now that I ' m breaking it down . But like giddy to me is happy . You know , when you ' re giddy , you ' re happy , you ' re chirpy , and it was obviously meant to be a very up-and-happy , chirpy song , a cheer-up song .
Yeah , and we feel like it ' s quite a focused album in general as well . Like you sing , “ We ain ' t got time to waste ” on that track , and it feels like that ' s almost kind of a mantra for the whole record . Yeah , because I wrote the entire album during COVID . It sort of threw me into a very , very productive and creative time . That isolation , well , there ' s an irony there because in order to really get creative , I love to be solitary . I love to be alone . I need that space . It ’ s me time , you know ; songwriting is very much me time and self-help time too . So , but the forced isolation is , as we all know , it ' s a very different thing . But the mind over matter came into play because I ' m like , OK , what am I gonna do ? Just write a bunch of melancholy , miserable songs . I gotta write myself out of that mood . I ' ve gotta write myself into feeling up and happy and take charge of my mood and focus on putting myself in a positive frame of mind . And so , the whole album was written taking charge of your own mood . Switching your mood over , it was a great exercise . Even songs that I had started that were maybe more on the melancholy side , I deliberately started changing the narrative and groove to where it made me feel like I wanted to dance .
That ' s interesting ; you mentioned the word groove because I thought there ' s a very strong rhythmic element throughout the record that seems to be an important aspect of your work . Oh , I definitely needed to be able to want to dance and move to every song , even a song like “ Last Day of Summer ,” that is more ballady , you know , more like a “ You ' re Still the One ” kind of thing . It ' s definitely more in the folky singer-songwriter vein that I start so many of my songs in , but I wanted it to shuffle along a little faster . I wanted it to feel a little more floaty and lighter .
At the start of “ Not Just a Girl ,” you ' ve got that very power poppy doo doo section as well . Are these the sort of things that you would find yourself singing into a voice memo or something like that ? Oh , definitely , I do that with a lot of things , you know . I ' ve never sat in a room and finished a song with a group of people before .
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