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Shania Twain, OC (born Eilleen Regina
Edwards, August 28, 1965, Windsor, Ontario) is a
Canadian singer and songwriter in the country and pop
music genres. Her third album Come on Over is the
biggest-selling album of all time by a female artist,
and the best-selling album in the history of country
music.
She is the only female artist to have
three albums certified Diamond by the RIAA, and has
earned five Grammy awards and nearly forty BMI
Songwriter awards. She is married to rock producer
Robert John "Mutt" Lange, and they have a
six-year old son, Eja. Twain and her family currently
reside in Switzerland and New Zealand.
Early years: Twain was born as Eilleen Regina
Edwards to Sharon and Clarence Edwards, who divorced
when she was two. Sharon remarried Jerry Twain, a member
of the Ojibwa First Nation. When he adopted Eilleen, her
name was changed to Eilleen Twain.
Eilleen Edwards had a hard childhood in Timmins,
Ontario. Her parents earned little, and Sharon was often
depressed over the shortage of food and money in the
household. However she was pivotal to mentoring and
encouraging Eilleen's singing talent, and Eilleen
brought in much needed money by singing in local clubs
and bars from a very young age to support her family.
At the age of 13, Eilleen Twain was invited to perform
on CBC television's Tommy Hunter Show. During high
school in Timmins, she was the vocalist for a local band
called "Longshot" which covered Top 40 music.
In early 1984, Eilleen maintained that she wanted to be
a pop-rock performer when she took her first trip to
Nashville with Toronto DJ and Record Producer, Stan
Campbell to record three songs a la Cyndi Lauper, Irene
Cara, Madonna and Blondie. After a falling out with
Campbell's wife-partner, the recordings were never
released. She also sang a duet performance on an album
by Canadian artist Tim Denis, released on the CTL label.
When her mother and adoptive father died in a car
accident on November 1, 1987, Eilleen - aged 22 - was
forced to put her musical career on hold and take care
of the family. She and her half-brothers Mark and
Darryl, and sister Carrie-Ann moved to Huntsville,
Ontario, where she supported them by performing at the
nearby Deerhurst resort.
In 1991, after an entertainment lawyer (Dick Frank) from
Nashville, Tennessee heard her act, she was invited to
record a demo tape. That led to her first recording
contract with Richard Frank of Mercury Nashville
Records, whereupon she changed her name to Shania
[Shu-nye-uh], which was created by her adoptive father
from Ojibwa words probably meaning "She's on her
way". Twain's embrace of her adoptive Ojibwa
heritage has not been without controversy among members
of the Canadian First Nations, with some claiming that a
non-Ojibwa adopted by an Ojibwa parent cannot be
considered a true Ojibwa. Shania's response to such
criticism is: "I don't know how much Indian blood I
actually have in me, but as the adopted daughter of my
father Jerry, I became registered as a 50% North
American Indian ... That is my heart and my soul, and
I'm very proud of it."
The city of Timmins later renamed a street for her, gave
her the key to the city, and built the Shania Twain
Centre in her honor. Twain visited Timmins to officially
open the Shania Twain Centre and to film a CTV special
on November 2, 2004.
1993: Shania Twain: Twain felt her 1993
self-titled debut album was unsatisfactory. She was
forced by her record company to work with Nashville
songwriters and was only allowed to co-write one of the
songs. She felt that the album was not really her own.
The album did not please the public, gaining little
sales and no real chart action for its singles. The
albums first two singles, "What Made You Say
That" and "Dance with the One That Brought
You" peaked at #55 on the Billboard Country Charts.
By the end of 1993 the album had sold less than 250,000
copies. The same year, she also sang harmony vocals on
Sammy Kershaw's Haunted Heart album.
Twain immediately felt alienated from the Nashville
music scene. Things changed, however, when she met
Robert John Lange at Nashville Fan Fair.
1995—1996: The Woman in Me: Everything changed
when rock producer, Robert John "Mutt" Lange,
heard Shania's original songs and singing and thought
she held promise. He offered to produce her and to write
songs with her. After many telephone conversations, they
met in person at Nashville's Fan Fair in June 1993.
Their professional relationship soon took a romantic
turn, and they married on December 28, 1993.
Lange and Twain instantly formed a successful
partnership and Twain has often commented that a reason
they work so well is because they are so different. They
started working on a second album, and in 1995 The Woman
in Me caught fire due to singles like "Any Man of
Mine" and "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been
Under?" (the former being her first #1). The album
eventually topped the country charts for months and
became a massive crossover to mainstream charts, peaking
at No. 5 and to date has sold over 12 million copies,
thanks to hits like "No One Needs to Know" and
"God Bless the Child". The Woman in Me went on
to win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well
as the Academy of Country Music award for Album of the
Year; the latter group also awarded Twain as Best New
Female Vocalist.
1997—2000: Come on Over: In 1997, Twain
released her follow-up album, Come on Over. This was the
album that established Twain as a successful crossover
artist. Selling 172,000 copies out of the gate, the
album was seen by many at first as a disappointment,
given the massive success of her last effort. But
slowly, the album started racking up sales. It never hit
the top spot, but with the multi-chart hit single
"You're Still the One", sales skyrocketed.
Songs like "Don't Be Stupid", "Honey, I'm
Home", "Man! I Feel like a Woman!",
"That Don't Impress Me Much" and "From
This Moment On" joined the 12 songs that eventually
saw release as singles. Over the next two years, the
album stayed on the charts, spinning off hit after hit.
When the dust finally settled, Come on Over had sold 20
million copies in the United States and 39 million
worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album of all
time by a female artist, and the biggest-selling country
album of all time.
Songs from the album won four Grammy Awards over the
next two years, including Best Country Song for Twain
and Lange for "You're Still the One" and
"Come on Over" and Best Female Country
Performance for "You're Still the One" and
"Man! I Feel Like a Woman!". The album has
sold 39 million copies worldwide, the largest ever by a
female solo artist, but despite this it wasn't able to
top the Billboard 200, reaching a peak of #2. It did
however top the charts for 11 weeks in the UK.
Additionally, the album set the record for the longest
ever stay in the Top 20 of The Billboard 200, remaining
in the Top 20 for 99 weeks (about 1 year and 10 months).
There were several keys to this success. The songs on
Come on Over were full of catchy hooks and phrases that
proved memorable. Lange's hard rock production
techniques from his work with Def Leppard, AC/DC and
others proved effective in the country/pop context. Many
newer fans were unaware of her country music roots,
particularly as versions of singles released to
non-country radio in North America and around the world
featured remixed versions de-emphasizing country-style
instrumentation.
Twain's mainstream pop acceptance was further helped by
her appearance in the 1998 first edition of the VH1
Divas concert, where she sang alongside Mariah Carey, Céline
Dion, Gloria Estefan and Aretha Franklin and by VH1's
1999 heavily-aired Behind the Music treatment of her,
which concentrated on the tragic aspects of her early
life as well as her physical attractiveness and
Nashville's early resistance to her bared-midriff music
videos. In 1999 Twain also established a visible
commercial relationship with Revlon Consumer Products
Corporation, involving a series of cosmetics ads based
around "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!".
In 1998 Shania Twain launched her first major concert
tour, aided by her manager Jon Landau, a veteran of many
large-scale tours with Bruce Springsteen. The Come on
Over Tour shows were enthusiastically received by
audiences around the globe and answered critics who
speculated that she could not perform live. Twain's peak
of success was further emphasized when she was named the
1999 Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of
Country Music and the Country Music Association. She is
the first of only two non-US and one of only five solo
women to win the CMA version of the award. The other
non-US person is Keith Urban and the other solo women
are Reba McEntire, Barbara Mandrell, Dolly Parton and
Loretta Lynn.
2002—2004: Up!: After the success of Come on
Over and the busy schedule it brought, Twain revealed
she was suffering from exhaustion and had decided to
take a two year break. During this break, she gave
birth, and according to the singer they "drank lots
of hot chocolate, rode horses and relaxed" in their
Swiss mansion. After the break, Twain went back into the
studio and Up! was released in November 2002, making it
five years since the world had new material from her and
she staged the Up! Tour later to promote it. They had
travelled over the world greatly during their break to
record and write the material for the new album in many
different countries, from Berlin to Mumbai.
Up! was released as a double album, with 3 different
"remix" discs - pop (a red CD), country (a
green CD) and Indian/Latin (a blue CD). For North
American markets, the pop disc was paired with the
country disc and in international markets, the pop disc
was paired with the Indian/Latin disc. The Indian/Latin
disc was recorded in Mumbai, India. Up! was given 4 out
of 5 stars by Rolling Stone magazine, and debuted at No.
1 on the Billboard albums chart, selling 874,000 in the
first week alone. It charted at the top for five weeks.
The first single from the album "I'm Gonna Getcha
Good!", became a modest country hit that did not do
much on the pop charts, however in the UK it was a
massive pop hit peaking at #4 in the UK singles chart.
The follow-up single "Up!" reached the top 15
in the country charts but failed to reach the pop top
40. The third single from the album would be the most
successful. The romantic ballad "Forever and for
Always" was released as a single in April 2003 and
peaked at number four on the country chart and number
one on the AC chart, spending 6 weeks there. "She's
Not Just a Pretty Face" was a country top-ten hit,
while the last North American single, "It Only
Hurts When I'm Breathing", made the top 20 on both
Country and AC. To date, Up! has sold 5.5 million copies
in the U.S. (Certified by the RIAA as 11 times platinum
due to the organization's rules regarding double albums,
which are counted as 2 units for certifications) and
over 17 million copies worldwide.
Also in 2003, Twain participated in the Dolly Parton
tribute album, Just Because I'm a Woman, covering
Parton's classic "Coat of Many Colors". (On a
number of occasions, Twain has cited Parton as one of
her greatest musical influences.)
2004—2005: Greatest Hits: In 2004, she released
the Greatest Hits album, with three new tracks. To date,
it has sold over 3.5 million copies in the U.S, and over
7.5 Million worldwide. The first single, the
multi-format duet "Party for Two", made the
country top ten with Billy Currington, while the pop
version with Sugar Ray lead singer Mark McGrath made top
ten in the United Kingdom and Germany. The follow-up
singles, "Don't!" and "I Ain't No
Quitter" didn't fare as well, the former made top
twenty AC, while the latter didn't gain enough airplay
to even crack the country top 40, due to no promotion by
Twain or the label.
In August 2005, when Twain hit 40, she released the
single "Shoes" from the Desperate Housewives
soundtrack; it failed to make much of an impact, barely
getting into the top 30 on the country charts and not
charting elsewhere. "Shoes" was also the first
single release in which she and her husband were not the
entire writing credits since her first album (besides
the promotional release of Coat of Many Colors from the
album Just Because I'm A Woman: Songs of Dolly Parton).
2005—2007: New Material: At the 2007 Academy of
Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 16 2007, Shania
was interviewed about what she has been doing since the
release of her Greatests Hits album. She said that she
is currently writing songs for a new album, and that she
is doing a "lot of soul searching" and
"indulging in the writing". When asked about a
future release date for new material, Shania said that
there would be nothing released this year (2007) and
that 2008 is the earliest new material can be expected.
Shania is also releasing her second fragrance,
"Shania Starlight by Stetson", this September.
Shania says, "It's for a night on the town.".
Personal Life: Twain gave birth to her first
child - a boy, named Eja (pronounced Asia) D'Angelo
Lange on August 21, 2001, and he is being raised a
vegetarian like Twain and Lange. Twain is also known for
passionately standing up for what she believes in and
these include raising awareness for hungry children
across North America; her favorite charities being
America's Second Harvest Food Bank (USA) and Kids Cafe
(Canada).
Twain recently bought some land near Wanaka in New
Zealand, at a 170 km² sheep station where she is almost
done building a new house and two guest homes. Shania
and Mutt's Swiss chateau, Chateau de Sully, in La
Tour-de-Peilz was sold in October 2006 to a Russian
couple. The Langes have since moved into a more modest
residence in Corseaux, Switzerland. Twain has always
been athletic, and especially loves power walking,
hiking, swimming, and horseback riding.
Media: In 2003, Shania performed Man! I Feel like
a Woman! and Up! during the Super Bowl XXXVII halftime
show at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California. Later
in 2003, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
A television biopic of Twain, Shania: A Life in Eight
Albums, aired on CBC Television on November 7, 2005,
with Meredith Henderson starring as Twain. The biopic
was released on DVD on April 24, 2007.
In 2005, Shania Twain partnered with COTY for the
creation of her fragrance Shania by Stetson. In November
2005, Twain appeared on an episode of the reality show
The Apprentice, riding horses around Central Park and
having dinner with two contestants who had successfully
marketed her fragrance on the show.
On November 18, 2005, Twain was invested as an Officer
in the Order of Canada. Shania has been confirmed as one
of the recipients of a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame, to be awarded sometime this year (2007). In
September 2007, Twain will release a second fragrance
from Coty called, "Shania Starlight by
Stetson". |
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