Why does Shania Twain have a fear of dying early? And how did a childhood dream draw parallels to a
devastating real world incident? Keep watching to find out more about this legendary musician.
After more than 30 years of performing under her more familiar moniker,
Shania Twain still sometimes refers to herself with her birth name, Eilleen.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2018, Twain also revealed that there is a notable
difference between Eilleen and Shania. The former, who didn't start wearing high heels
until she was well into her twenties, was and still is very much a tomboy.
The singer acknowledged that Eilleen was much less assertive when it came to men, too, saying -
"I was always very agreeable, always out to please my partner."
Interestingly, record company bosses had more of a problem with the Canadian's surname than
her Christian one when she was starting out. The singer was actually encouraged
to replace Twain with something that sounded a little more showbiz.
In 1993, Sean Penn reached out to Shania Twain with an offer to direct her new video.
The singer had only released one song at the time, "What Made You Say That," and admitted in her
memoir "From This Moment On" she was baffled as to how the future Oscar winner had even heard of her.
Twain accepted the unlikely proposition and the
pair worked together on her second single "Dance With the One That Brought You."
Sadly, as the Canadian herself expected at the time, the track didn't do well commercially.
However, Twain has nothing but fond memories of working with the "Milk" star, saying of Penn-
"To me, Sean came across as someone who cared about the underdog. It seemed that he listened
more than he spoke but was not afraid to speak his mind. A real straight shooter."
Speaking on "Home Now Radio," her show on Apple Music, Twain revealed that she was
inspired by seeing Britney Spears perform during her Vegas residency, saying -
"I thought her show was great and I was motivated to get on that same stage,
so her show inspired me a lot."
Twain had first hit the Vegas stage at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in 2012
and returned seven years later for a second residency titled "Let's Go!"
This wasn't the first time that Spears and Twain's worlds had collided,
though. In 2001, Twain penned the tune, "Don't Let Me Be the Last
To Know," for Spears's sophomore "Oops!... I Did It Again" album.
More than a decade after discovering that her best friend Marie-Anne was having an
affair with her husband Mutt Lange, Shania Twain remains livid at such a betrayal.
"First I found out that my marriage was over - and then the next day I
found out about the affair. It was a real death."
In fact, the Canadian still refuses to speak or even see her one-time confidante,
telling The Guardian in 2017 -
"She's the last person on the planet I want to run into."
Incredibly, Twain has somehow managed to avoid such an awkward encounter
despite the fact there's less than a mile separating her and Marie-Anne's
homes. When asked why she didn't simply relocate, the singer defiantly answered -
"I just wasn't going to be pushed out. This is my home,
this is my child's birthplace and I'm not going anywhere."
Twain has also made her feelings crystal clear in the recording studio,
especially while making the 2017 comeback album "Now":
"There was one song I wrote about my cheating friend and there was a lot of f---s in there.
I hated her, so that's the best word to use when you hate somebody."
However, perhaps not wanting to scare off her audience,
Twain left such expletive-laden tracks off the finished record.
Shania Twain may well be one of the richest performers in country music, but that doesn't
mean that her son Eja was showered with gifts every time he celebrated his birthday. In fact,
the youngster didn't get any gifts from his parents at all. Well, apart from a home-made cake.
In a 2018 interview with the Mirror, Twain explained that she wanted to avoid spoiling
her child, having grown up herself in entirely different circumstances. She explained -
"It's all he's known. He expects it. I'd say,
'You know what you're getting from me for your birthday,' and he'd look forward to it."
Twain also keeps things similarly low-key when it comes to the holiday season,
restricting her son's wish list to just three presents. And if they don't get
used within a month then Twain donates them to charity. Of course, the Canadian still
makes sure her son is always catered for when it comes to the essentials, saying -
"There's no point in pretending that we're without, though — if he needs a shirt,
I'll get him a shirt. I'm not going to act poor if we're not poor.
That's my approach and I'm just doing my best."
As much as Shania Twain has performed over the years,
she still gets the heebie-jeebies every time she's about to hit the stage.
It's a fear that appears to have stemmed from her childhood, as she
explained during a 2017 appearance on "The Late Late Show." Indeed,
the singer admitted to host James Corden that she once got so nervous during a school solo
that she peed herself in front of all her fellow students. Luckily, her quick thinking saved her.
"And thankfully I had a glass of water at my feet and I knocked it over to hide the puddle."
"That's genius."
"Brilliant, brilliant move."
The multiple Grammy winner now has to stick to a strict pre-show routine to help calm her nerves,
and presumably avoid any similar puddles.
Shania Twain claims that she still has fond memories of working with ex-husband Mutt Lange.
While promoting the 25th anniversary re-release of her breakthrough album "The Woman In Me" in 2020,
the country star was surprisingly effusive about the man who had an affair with her best friend.
Lange not only produced the record she was promoting but its follow-up "Come On Over,"
one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. And Twain was more than
happy to give the hitmaker his due in a chat with CBC Radio, saying -
"We really played off each other. It was a good teamwork environment,
and we had a lot of mutual respect for each other's ideas. He really nurtured
my independent nature and he was humored by my attitude and thought I was quite funny
with my directness. And we captured that in the records and in the songwriting."
Although Twain can look back at her time in the studio with Lange warmly,
there's still a frostiness between the pair outside of it. She told The
Guardian that she'd, quote, "never have anything personal to do with him again."
With a successful performing and producer as his parents, it was perhaps always
inevitable that Shania Twain's son Eja would end up pursuing a music career.
"Shania is Eja musical? Does Eja have your musical genes?"
"He's very musical."
In an interview with Sounds Like Nashville,
Twain revealed that her son has quite the eclectic taste, saying -
"There's a real broad spectrum in his life musically,
so he makes all kinds of stuff and he orchestrates a lot of things.
He loves to arrange music and write music. He's just on his own journey."
Shania is fully supportive of Eja's artistic endeavors, particularly for the fact that he's
more interested in working behind the scenes rather than on stage:
"I think he'll enjoy music more just being the creator of the music.
It's just really taxing being a performer, being the person out in front, unless that's
what he really wants. [...] I think it will suit him well to be the creator."
Shania Twain famously lost both her mother and stepfather at the age of 21 in a horrific car
crash, leaving the aspiring singer to raise her three younger siblings as a result. Rather eerily,
the future Grammy winner had dreamed of a similar chain of events just months before the tragedy.
While appearing on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2011 for her first TV interview in five years,
Twain revealed that she'd had a premonition in which her mom
passed away and tasked the country star with looking after her other children:
"It was weird. Maybe it was my own sense of the
responsibility that I'd always taken in the family anyway."
The singer also spoke about how she had to deal with the
harrowing inquest into their deaths, explaining -
"I was responsible for dealing with the lawyers and the insurance companies, and I had to know all
the awful details — how they died, every mark on their body. It was hard at the moment, but
I was able to then work through what I knew, and then in the end, I could come to understand it."
Shania Twain's childhood was as far removed from the glitz and glamor of the music industry
as you could possibly get. As well as growing up with a depressive mother and abusive stepfather,
Twain also spent much of her youth doing strenuous manual labor in the
middle of nowhere. Luckily, this was a part of growing up that she appeared to relish.
According to Taste of Country, Twain balanced her schoolwork with shifts at
her stepfather's reforestation firm in Northern Ontario. She reportedly said -
"I loved the feeling of being stranded. I'm not afraid of being in my own environment,
being physical, working hard."
However, Twain's experiences as a quasi-lumberjack
also helped to spark musical inspiration, too. She added -
"It was a very rugged existence, but I was very creative and I would sit
alone in the forest with my dog and a guitar and would just write songs."
In 2011, Shania Twain became the subject of a reality show for Oprah Winfrey's OWN network.
"Why Not?" was shot during a particular turbulent period for the singer,
which explains why she found it painful viewing.
Speaking to Maclean's in 2015 about the six-part documentary series, Twain remarked -
"Yes. It was awful to watch. I did that when I was really suffering.
It was a terrible time. All the things I had to go through to get here [have been] tough.
I want to forget about it because it was a real rehabilitation."
The country star was no doubt referring to the problems she suffered with both the progressive
loss of her voice and the heartbreak of her dramatic divorce to Mutt Lange.
Shania Twain has starred in some of the most iconic videos in country pop
history — and it turns out she's hit the editing suite for most of them,
too. In a 2020 chat with Donna Missal for Interview, the Grammy winner advised -
"I think you should be editing your own videos. Because if you already have the
whole vision in mind, you're the only one that's going to know when you've achieved it."
And Twain's behind-the-scenes talents don't end there, either. The vocalist
also revealed that she's always been responsible for her promo's art direction,
particularly during her early days, saying -
"I would take a shot, and then I would go look through the camera.
It was a very slow process, but I needed to understand how the lighting worked,
where the camera was going to go, what time of day I wanted it to be."
One of the more startling revelations Shania made in her 2011 memoir "From This Moment On"
involved her traumatic birth. Indeed, doctors initially believed
that her mom Sharon had delivered a stillborn daughter. Twain wrote -
"Except, miraculously, the baby girl is alive. Even more remarkable, she will have suffered no
ill effects from the temporary lack of oxygen during the stressful delivery."
Of course, death was still a constant while Twain was growing up.
As well as losing her parents in a devastating car accident,
she also lost a third of her relatives to suicide and several others to alcohol abuse.
It's perhaps little wonder, therefore,
that Twain developed a fear of dying before her time, telling Redbook in 2011 -
"The breakup of my marriage really brought all those worries to the forefront and
reminded me that, hmm, you just never know what's around the next corner."
It's also why she decided to put her life story to paper. The country star added -
"It was important to me to have a legacy for my son. […] When you are famous,
it's even more likely that your child will get the wrong perspective on your life
if you die prematurely. There are so many opinions about who you were."
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