Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego, California, United States
Shania Twain performs during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVII between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders on January 26, 2003 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California.
Gallery of Shania Twain
2011
Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, United States
Twain announcing her upcoming Caesars Palace show in Las Vegas in 2011.
Gallery of Shania Twain
2015
Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, United States
Shania Twain performs onstage at Madison Square Garden on June 30, 2015 in New York City.
Gallery of Shania Twain
2016
Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild and Shania Twain pose for a photo during CMT Artists of the Year 2016 on October 19, 2016 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego, California, United States
Shania Twain performs during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVII between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders on January 26, 2003 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California.
Shania Twain is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Twain has sold over 85 million albums worldwide. She is also the best selling female artist in the history of country music, which garnered her honorific titles including the "Queen of Country Pop".
Background
Shania Twain was born in Canada on August 28, 1965, to Sharon (née Morrison) and Clarence Edwards. She has two sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann. Her parents divorced when she was two and her mother then moved to Timmins, Ontario with her daughters. Sharon married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwa from the nearby Mattagami First Nation, and they had a son together, Mark. Jerry adopted the girls, legally changing their last name to Twain. When Mark was still a toddler, Jerry and Sharon adopted Jerry's baby nephew, Darryl, after Darryl's mother died. Because of Twain's connection to Jerry, the media have reported that she is of Ojibwe descent, but she stated in an interview that her biological father was part Cree, a claim his family denies. Her confirmed ancestry includes English, French, and Irish. Through a maternal great-grandmother, she is a descendant of French carpenter Zacharie Cloutier. Her Irish maternal grandmother, Eileen Pearce, emigrated from Newbridge, County Kildare.
Twain has said she had a difficult childhood. Her parents earned little money and food was often scarce in their household. Twain did not confide her situation to school authorities, fearing they might break up the family. Her mother and stepfather's marriage was at times stormy, and from a young age, Twain witnessed violence between them. Her mother also struggled with bouts of depression. In mid-1979, while Jerry was at work, at Twain's insistence, her mother drove the rest of the family 420 miles (680 km) south to a Toronto homeless shelter for assistance. Sharon returned to Jerry with the children in 1981. In Timmins, Twain started singing at bars at the age of eight to try to help pay her family's bills; she often earned $20 between midnight and 1 a.m. performing for remaining customers after the bar had finished serving alcohol. Although she expressed a dislike for singing in those bars, Twain believes that this was her own kind of performing arts school on the road. She has said of the ordeal, "My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought, 'I hate this.' I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived." Twain wrote her first songs at the age of 10, "Is Love a Rose" and "Just Like the Storybooks," which were rhyming fairy tales. She states that the art of creating, of actually writing songs, "was very different from performing them and became progressively important."
Education
She attended the Timminis High and Vocal School, and sang for a local band called Longshot.
At 18, Twain decided to try and make a go of her singing career in Toronto. She found work, but didn’t make enough to support herself without taking odd jobs, which included a stint at McDonald’s.
In 1987, however, Twain’s life was upended when her parents died in a car crash. In order to support her three younger siblings (in addition to Twain’s younger sister, Sharon and Jerry had had a son together and had also adopted Jerry’s nephew), Twain returned to Timmins and took a job singing as part of a Las Vegas-style show at the nearby Deerhurst resort in Huntsville, Ontario.
However, Twain hadn’t given up on making her own music, and she kept continued to write songs in her free time. Her demo made it to Nashville, and she was subsequently signed to Polygram Records (which became Mercury Nashville).
Her new label may have liked Twain’s music, but they didn’t care for the name Eilleen Twain. As Twain wanted to keep her last name to honor her adoptive father, she opted to change her first name instead, to Shania, an Ojibwe word that means “I’m on my way.”
Encouraged to use songs written by others, Twain lamented her lack of artistic control in Nashville. Still, her first album, titled Shania Twain, was released in 1993. The album was not a big success (though Twain's video for “What Made You Say That,” which featured her wearing a crop top, got plenty of attention), but it did reach one important fan: Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who’d produced albums for groups such as AC/DC, the Cars and Def Leppard. After getting in touch with Twain, Lange set to work with her on her next album.
Twain and Lange co-wrote 10 of the 12 tracks for Twain’s next album, The Woman in Me (1995). Twain loved the album, but given Lange’s rock background and the record’s forays into pop as well as country music, she worried about how people would react.
She needn’t have been concerned. The first single, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” reached No. 11 on the country charts. The follow-up single, the rock-infused “Any Man of Mine,” soared to No. 1 on the country charts and was also a Top 40 pop hit. Twain received four Grammy nominations the following year, and won Best Country Album. A critical and commercial success, The Woman in Me would reach eventually reach more than 12 million in U.S. sales.
Twain’s subsequent album, Come On Over (1997), another co-production with Lange, further fused country and pop. It also had more chart-topping songs, including pumped-up anthems such as “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” and “That Don’t Impress Me Much," as well as romantic ballads such as “You're Still the One” and “From This Moment On.”
In 1999, “You’re Still The One” earned Twain two Grammys, one for Best Country Song and another for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. The song also reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country charts. The next year, Twain took home another two Grammys when “Come On Over” was named Best Country Song and “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” won for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
Come On Over reigned at No. 1 on the country charts for a combined 50 weeks. The album also became, and remains, the bestselling country album of all time - reaching 40 million in worldwide sales - as well as the top-selling album by a solo female artist. With the success of Come On Over, followed by a popular tour, Twain became an international star.
In 2002, Twain's Up! was released. There were three versions of the album: a pop red version, a country green disc and a blue version that had an international, Bollywood-influenced flavor. The red and green combination reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country and Top 200 charts (the rest of the world got the red-blue pairing, which was also a success). However, sales dipped compared to Twain’s previous monster hits, with 5.5 million copies sold in the United States.
By 2004, Shania Twain had recorded enough material for her first compilation of greatest hits. It was released in the fall of that year, the album would top and the charts and eventually go quadruple platinum.
Twain grew up Christian, but practiced a syncretic eastern philosophy called Sant Mat with her first husband. The philosophy emphasizes meditation, yoga, non-violence, and eating a vegetarian diet–among other things.
Politics
Twain says she’s not a political person, or at least she’s tolerant of other viewpoints and wants to keep hers to herself: "I’m not the politician, and I just completely remove myself from that. I don’t have anything against or for any particular person or point of view on politics. I have my own opinions, but my songs don’t share them."
Views
Twain is a vegetarian.
Quotations:
"Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind."
"I lost my sense of trust, honesty and compassion. I crashed down and became what I consider an emotional mess. I've never been so miserable in my whole life. I just wanted to go to bed and never get up."
"Being betrayed is one of the most valuable lessons life can teach."
"I feel like in a way I'm starting over, with everything."
"There were moments when I really just thought, I don't need anything and I don't need anyone. I just want to go away and disappear."
"I really feel like life will dictate itself. You should allow it to unfold as naturally as possible. Just go with the flow. When you're really desperate, you say a few prayers and hope for the best. That's the way I've always lived my life."
"I feel like I'm on top of the world. Honestly, I feel like I've climbed a very giant mountain, and I'm just standing right on top with my arms wide open and breathing rarified air."
"I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that's making me successful."
"Horses calm me. I love being around them. They smell great, they are beautiful to look at, they are loving, demanding, temperamental, and they settle you."
"I really feel like life will dictate itself. You should allow it to unfold as naturally as possible. Just go with the flow. When you're really desperate, you say a few prayers and hope for the best. That's the way I've always lived my life."
"When you don't come from struggle, gaining appreciation is a quality that's difficult to come by."
"It's important to give it all you have while you have the chance."
"I feel sexy when I get out of the tub - your skin is fresh and you've put up your hair without looking."
"Now that I have and I'm not a have-not, I've learned how important it is to maintain humility."
"Life unravels the way it does, and it has an effect on you, but you have to take responsibility for dealing with it."
"I'm neither embarrassed of who I am, where I come from, what I've experienced, I'm not ashamed of it."
"My music must reflect whatever's going on in my mind, and my life needs to evolve for me to discover who it is I'm becoming."
"I don't want my body to be a distraction from my talent or my brain."
"Later in my life, I'm going to look back and smile and be very fulfilled. I know that if I don't give it my all right now I'll regret it later. That's very important to me, because I've worked all my life to have this."
"I temporarily lost my hope in love, and it was temporary, thank goodness."
"I really admire artists that are willing to take a different approach and a different angle to their shows."
"I've succeeded as far as I'm concerned - I don't feel that I have any cliffs I could fall over anytime soon."
Personality
Shania Twain appears strong and powerful. She has an impressive personality and can influence and even intimidate through sheer force. She has natural authority. It is important for Shania to dress well.
Interests
Camping, Horse riding
Artists
Jim Carrey
Jessica Lange
Sport & Clubs
Hockey to watch, Horse ball (a Spanish game) to play
Music & Bands
Wildflower (Skylarc), Dream A Little Dream Of Me (Mamma's & Pappa's), Coat Of Many Colors, In The Getto (Dolly Parton), She's Always A Woman To Me (Billy Joel), I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams)
Connections
Twain married Robert Lange, a music producer she often worked with, in 1993. They have a son. She divorced her husband in 2010 after finding out that he had an affair with her best friend.
On January 1, 2011, she married Frederic Thiebaud, an executive at Nestle.
1995 - Shania Twain - Top New Female Vocalist;
1995 - The Woman in Me - Album of the Year;
1998 - The Woman In Me and Come On Over - Double-Diamond Award;
1999 - Shania Twain - Entertainer of the Year.
1995 - Shania Twain - Top New Female Vocalist;
1995 - The Woman in Me - Album of the Year;
1998 - The Woman In Me and Come On Over - Double-Diamond Award;
1996 - The Woman in Me - Country Album of the Year;
1996 - Shania Twain - Female Country Artist;
1998 - Shania Twain - Top Female Artist;
1998 - Shania Twain - Hot 100 Singles Artist;
2003 - Shania Twain - Top Country Artist;
2003 - Up! - Top Country Album;
2005 - Greatest Hits - Album of the Year.
1996 - The Woman in Me - Country Album of the Year;
1996 - The Woman in Me - Best Country Album;
1999 - You're Still The One - Best Female Country Vocal Performance;
1999 - You're Still The One - Best Country Song;
2000 - Man! I Feel Like A Woman! - Best Female Country Vocal Performance;
2000 - Come On Over - Best Country Song.
1996 - The Woman in Me - Best Country Album;
1999 - You're Still The One - Best Female Country Vocal Performance;
1999 - You're Still The One - Best Country Song;
2000 - Man! I Feel Like A Woman! - Best Female Country Vocal Performance;
1996 - Shania Twain - Country Female Vocalist of the Year:
1996 - Shania Twain - Levi's Entertainer of the Year;
1997 - Shania Twain - Country Female Vocalist of the Year;
1997 - Shania Twain - International Achievement Award;
1997 - Shania Twain - Country Female Vocalist of the Year;
1999 - Shania Twain - Best Country Female Vocalist;
2000 - Shania Twain - Best Country Female Vocalist;
2000 - Shania Twain - Songwriter of the Year (for Man! I Feel Like A Woman, You've Got A Way, That Don't Impress Me Much);
2003 - Shania Twain - Artist of the Year;
2003 - Shania Twain - JUNO Fan Choice Award;
2004 - Up! - Country Recording of the Year;
2011 - Shania Twain - Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
1996 - Shania Twain - Country Female Vocalist of the Year:
1996 - Shania Twain - Levi's Entertainer of the Year;
1997 - Shania Twain - Country Female Vocalist of the Year;
1997 - Shania Twain - International Achievement Award;
1997 - Shania Twain - Country Female Vocalist of the Year;
1999 - Shania Twain - Best Country Female Vocalist;
2000 - Shania Twain - Best Country Female Vocalist;
2000 - Shania Twain - Songwriter of the Year (for Man! I Feel Like A Woman, You've Got A Way, That Don't Impress Me Much);
2003 - Shania Twain - Artist of the Year;
2003 - Shania Twain - JUNO Fan Choice Award;
2004 - Up! - Country Recording of the Year;
2011 - Shania Twain - Canadian Music Hall of Fame.