It takes a sledgehammer to knock me DOWN…but I always get up again! New Starstruck judge Shania Twain reveals how she bounced back after her husband ran off with her best friend… and a rare disease left her unable to sing
- Shania Twain, 57, shares the tricks of her trade with contestants on Starstruck
- The singer has experienced extreme poverty and abuse throughout her life
- READ MORE: Shania Twain says she ‘retreated from her own womanhood’
As one of the world’s best-selling female artists, Shania Twain knows all about performing. But as this confident, uber-glamorous 57-year-old singer happily shares the tricks of her trade with contestants on ITV1’s hit Saturday night talent show Starstruck, which she’s joined for the second series starting this month, few would guess the traumatic story behind Shania’s success.
This is a woman who has known fame, fortune and luxury as well as extreme poverty, sexual abuse, betrayal (she lost her husband of 15 years to her best friend), the death of her mother in a car crash when she was 22, and a medical diagnosis that made her fear she’d never sing again.
‘All my life, music has been everything,’ she says. ‘From the age of eight it was more than a passion, it was my escape from reality, my stabiliser.
‘There was no option for me but to make it as a singer, whatever it took. I didn’t always believe I would be a star but I always knew I would sing. My voice was everything to me.’
When it was announced she was replacing Sheridan Smith as a judge on Starstruck – a twist on the old Stars In Their Eyes format which sees fans perform as their idols – alongside comedian Jason Manford, singers Beverley Knight and Adam Lambert, and host Olly Murs, social media went into overdrive at the idea of this megastar (she’s sold more than 100 million albums and won five Grammys) appearing on British TV.
Shania Twain, 57, (pictured) has shared the tricks of her trade with contestants on TV1’s hit Saturday night talent show Starstruck
But Shania laughs at the idea she could be nasty to the contestants. ‘Hey,’ she says with a soft country twang.
‘I understand them and where they’re coming from. These are people who’ve worked really hard. They might be a cleaner or a stay-at-home mum but they’ve put a huge amount of effort into per – forming like their heroes.
‘I respect that. I’m there to give constructive criticism, maybe advise them how to improve their vocal control, but I’m also there to enjoy their journey.
‘This is a show with a heart, it’s about the transformative power of music. That’s something I know a lot about.’
She certainly does. Born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, on the Canadian border with the US, her father Clarence left when she was two. Shania’s mother Sharon took her and her two sisters, Jill and Carrie-Ann, to the town of Timmins, Ontario.
There Sharon married Jerry Twain, a Native American of the Ojibwe people, had a son, Mark, and also adopted Jerry’s nephew Darryl.
When Shania talks about her early life it sounds like a tear-jerking tale straight out of the country music songbook. They were so poor they’d tie plastic bags over their broken shoes in winter and a common family meal was ‘goulash’ – dry bread with boiled milk and sugar.
‘That was our life, that was all we knew,’ says Shania, who now has homes in the Bahamas, Canada, Las Vegas and Switzerland and is worth an estimated £325 million.
Her new album Queen Of Me has just been released and she’s embarking on a marathon tour later in the year
But hers is not the story of a poor-but-happy family like Dolly Parton’s. There was a dark side, of physical and sexual abuse.
Her stepfather was a heavy drinker. In her 2011 autobiography From This Moment On, Shania says she and her sisters often saw Jerry beat their mother. And the abuse escalated.
Shania later said his sexual abuse of her began when she was ten years old, causing her to flatten her chest with tight vests and bras to disguise her developing figure. When she was 11, Jerry punched her in the jaw after she broke a chair over his back when he was attacking her mother.
She punched him back. That was an average night in the Twain household.
Looking at Shania today, it’s hard to imagine poor Eilleen as she was then. Beautiful, groomed and softly spoken, this dedicated vegetarian is tiny, slim and looks far younger than her 57 years.
In 2009, scientists at the University of Toronto released their research on facial features using geometrical measurements, and claimed that the most ‘perfect’ face in the world was Shania Twain’s.
But she’s far tougher than she looks. As a woman, she’s done much to break down barriers in the music industry, particularly in country music, which initially dismissed her as a lightweight bimbo who dared to cross over into rock and pop.
She became engaged to Swiss Nestlé executive Frédéric Thiébaud in 2010. They were married on New Year’s Day 2011 in Puerto Rico
Yet she defied her critics to become one of the biggest selling country-rock artists of all time.
As troubled as her childhood was, Shania says it gave her the tools she needed to fight the innate sexism of the country music world and break through as a mainstream crossover artist. Although she’s a big supporter of the #MeToo movement, she insists she’s never been sexually abused in the industry.
‘I think things are better in the music business generally but in country music there’s still a block,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of talented women but it’s 90 per cent controlled by men – there needs to be an intervention.
‘I would never allow anyone to bully me. By the time I got to Nashville I knew exactly what I was about and what other people were about. As bad as my background was, it was a big advantage.’
Shania was just eight when her mother started taking her to bars, sneaking out when Jerry was sleeping so she could perform for $20 a night. ‘If you’re an eight-year-old who’s raised in a rough and unsafe atmosphere you’re going to become very savvy.
‘You’re raised to be tough and look out for things and keep your eyes open,’ she says. ‘My mum is the one who took me to bars.
When it was announced she was replacing Sheridan Smith as a judge on Starstruck alongside comedian Jason Manford, singers Beverley Knight and Adam Lambert, and host Olly Murs , social media went into overdrive at the idea of this megastar appearing on British TV
‘People were drinking, they would be wasted by midnight. It wasn’t a place for a child but I learnt so much about people, about psychology, about keeping myself safe.
‘When I was older I was fearless because I felt I could look after myself. You learn how to watch for changes when people drink.
‘When we were kids we’d all go over to a relative’s house party and I’d be singing and everyone would be drunk out of their minds.
‘All the kids would get together in a bedroom, climb into bed and lock the door, push furniture against the door to keep people out. It’s just what we learnt, what we did, and that made me prepared for Nashville. I wasn’t naive. I was tough.’
From the bars of Timmins she progressed to local TV and cover bands, singing all over Ontario. In 1987 her mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident, so she moved her younger siblings to Huntsville, Ontario, and got a job as a performer in a ‘Vegas-style’ show at a hotel.
It wasn’t until 1993, when her siblings had left school, that Shania set out to make her name in Nashville.
Her first album was modestly received, but her second, 1995’s country-rock crossover The Woman In Me, has sold 20 million copies and earned Shania her first Grammy. In 1997 her breakthrough album Come On Over spawned the hits, such as That Don’t Impress Me Much and Man! I Feel Like A Woman!, that turned her into an international star.
She’d married her producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange in 1993, and with hit albums and sellout tours, millions in the bank and a son, Eja, born in 2001, life couldn’t have been better. Then, in 2003, Shania contracted Lyme disease while horse riding.
She struggled to keep her balance on stage and after tests was told that the bacterial infection, which comes from being bitten by an infected tick, had penetrated her vocal cords. She didn’t perform for a decade.
‘I thought I’d never sing again. For a long time it was all over, which was completely devastating.’
There was more trauma when, in 2008, she discovered that Mutt was having an affair with her best friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud, who’d been her confidante when she’d suspected he was cheating.
‘I lost my husband and my best friend,’ she says. ‘There followed seven years of deep, deep sorrow. But you learn what you’re made of when you come out of that storm, it makes you stronger.’
The final twist to the Shania story is that in 2010 – the year her divorce was finalised – she became engaged to Swiss Nestlé executive Frédéric Thiébaud, Marie-Anne’s ex-husband and the only man who understood her feelings of betrayal. They were married on New Year’s Day 2011 in Puerto Rico.
In 2012, her voice recovered, Shania did her first Las Vegas residency. A second finished last year, shortly before Adele began hers.
Shania went to see Adele’s show wearing one of her trademark cowboy hats, and Adele’s post-show Instagram message read, ‘Thank God you had a hat on @shaniatwain. I would have self-combusted had I seen it was you!! I adore you, I can’t believe you came to my show.’
In Shania’s recent Netflix documentary, Not Just A Girl, a producer who worked with her commented, ‘You’d have to take a sledgehammer to knock her down – and she’d get up.’
Shania laughs and says this is absolutely true. In despair after her marriage broke up, she kept working on her voice (she had a vocal operation in 2018), trying to pull herself out of the black hole she found herself in.
‘Betrayal messes with the mind,’ she says. ‘I’ve never faced anger like that but I let it all out. I’m in a good place emotionally as a woman.
‘I feel comfortable and I have my voice again. Fred is a great support, we’re a team and I’m happy.’
Her new album Queen Of Me has just been released and she’s embarking on a marathon tour later in the year. And of course she’s becoming part of Britain’s Saturday night entertainment.
‘Bring it on,’ she says with a smile. ‘Everything that’s happened to me was once a completely impossible dream. Magic happens with music. Let’s see what’s going to happen on this show.
- Starstruck starts Saturday 18 February on ITV1 and ITVX.
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