Profile of Shania Twain on Famous Like Me

Shania Twain (born on August 28, 1965) is a Canadian singer and songwriter who has been very successful in the country and pop music genres, setting several sales records for female artists and for country artists.

Early years

Born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario to Sharon and Clarence Edwards, she grew up as Eilleen Twain of Irish and Native Canadian extraction in Timmins, Ontario, after her parents separated when she was two, and her mother later remarried to Jerry Twain.

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 "Longshot" which covered Top 40 music. When her mother and adoptive father died in a car crash on November 1, 1987, Eilleen took her two younger brothers, Mark and Darryl and sister Carrie-Ann to Huntsville, Ontario, where she supported the family by performing at a local resort (Deerhurst resort). In 1991, after an entertainment lawyer from Nashville, Tennessee heard her act, she was invited to record a demo tape.

In 1991, when she signed her first recording contract with Richard Frank of Mercury Nashville Records, she changed her name to Shania (pronounced shu-NYE-uh) which is an Ojibwa word meaning "I'm on my way". Her step-father was a full-blooded Ojibwa. The city of Timmins later renamed a street for her and built the Shania Twain Museum (Shania Twain Centre).

Massive career success

Initially known as a country singer, Twain herself found her 1993 self-titled debut album unstatisfactory as she was forced by her record company to work with outside songwriters. Nor did it please the public, gaining little sales and no real chart action for its singles. Twain immediately felt alienated from the Nashville music scene.

Everything changed when rock producer Robert "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. Soon their professional relationship took a romantic turn, and they were married on December 28, 1993.

With Lange's influence, Shania's music then veered a bit more towards pop. Her vocal performances strengthened by virtue of singing only the material she and Lange had written, a practice she would continue from this point on, contrary to typical Nashville practice. Her second album, 1995's The Woman in Me, caught fire due to singles like "Any Man of Mine" and "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?". The album eventually topped the country charts for months and became a massive crossover to mainstream charts, peaking at No. 5 and topping out at 12 million sold. 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.

In 1997, Twain released her follow-up album, Come on Over. Selling 172,000 out of the gate and peaking at No. 2, 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 11 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 America and 39 million worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album by a female artist of all time, the biggest-selling country album of all time and the #6 selling 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!".

There were several keys to all this success. The songs on Come on Over were full of memorable phrases and catchy hooks, rendered well in Twain's singing. Lange's hard rock production techniques from his work with Def Leppard and others proved surprisingly effective in the country/pop context. And many newer fans were totally unaware of her country music roots, particularly as singles released outside the United States and Canada featured remixed versions de-emphasising 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 cosmetics, 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 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.

Life at the top

After taking time off and having a child in 2001, Shania Twain went back into the studio. Up! was released in November 2002, making it five years since the world had new material from her, and she toured again to promote it. A double-album, it featured 19 songs in pop mixes and the same 19 songs in country mixes. Internationally the country mixes were replaced by world music mixes, such as Bollywood elements. Though it garnered some of the most tepid reviews of the year (it was even called the worst album of 2002 by Spin and Details magazines), Up! debuted at No. 1, selling 874,000 in the first week alone. It charted at the top for five weeks. The first single off of the album "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!", became a modest pop and country hit, while the follow-up single "Up!" failed to do as well. However the third single off of the album would be the most successful: "Forever and For Always" was released as a single in April 2003 and peaked at #4 on the country chart and #1 on the AC chart, spending 6 weeks there. "She's Not Just A Pretty Face" was a country top ten hit but failed on other charts, while the last single, "It Only Hurts When I Breathe", performed even worse. To date, Up! has sold 5.5 million copies in the U.S., 16 million copies total — impressive marks by normal standards but considered a disappointment by some relative to Come on Over. Because Up! is a double album, it thereby achieved Twain's third straight diamond album, which entails sales of over 10 million units; this was another record for a female artist.

In 2004, she decided to release a greatest hits album. To date, it has sold over three million copies in the U.S. The three new singles released from the album had varying degrees of radio success: "Party For Two", a multi-format duet, made the country top ten but failed to make an impression on the pop charts.

In spite of her songwriting abilities and her massive commercial success, Twain has never garnered overwhelming critical praise. Some pop critics and fans see her as almost a robot, controlled Svengali-like by Lange. Some Nashville traditionalists still consider her a pop singer who simply markets her music as country. The most negative factions view her as just a gorgeous studio mannequin with a so-so voice, who got lucky and simply was in the right place at the right time. For example, infamous country outlaw Steve Earle called her "the highest paid lap dancer in Nashville." In interviews Twain has defiantly rebutted all of these assertions.

Twain lives in Switzerland with Lange and their son Eja; she states that living so far away gives her the privacy she would otherwise lack. She is currently working on her next studio album which is scheduled for release in 2006. On August 28, 2005, she celebrated her 40th birthday. In August 2005, she released the single "(Men Are Like) Shoes" from the Desperate Housewives soundtrack.

Awards

In addition to her five Grammy Award wins, three Academy of Country Music awards, and her one Country Music Association win, over the years Shania Twain has been nominated for 10 CMA awards that she didn't win, perhaps reflecting Nashville's ambivalence about her success.

Twain has also won at least seven Juno Awards (Canada's equivalent of the Grammy), including Artist of the Year in 2004, at least six American Music Awards, at least two Billboard Music Awards, a World Music Award, and at least 22 BMI Songwriting Awards in partnership with Mutt Lange.

In addition, Twain was voted the sexiest vegetarian alive by a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals award in 2000.

Discography

Albums

• The Complete Limelight Sessions (unauthorized), featuring demo songs she recorded during 1989 and 1990, sales below 100,000
• Shania Twain (1993), U.S. sales: 1 million (Platinum) (2 million worldwide)
• The Woman in Me (1995), U.S. sales: 10 million (12x Platinum) (21 million worldwide)
• Come on Over (1997), U.S. sales: 18 million (20x Platinum) (39 million worldwide)
• Up! (2002), U.S. sales: 5.5 million (11x Platinum) (16 million worldwide)
• Greatest Hits (2004), U.S. sales: 3.2 million (3x Platinum) (5.5 million worldwide)

Total worldwide album sales: 84 million

DVDs

• April 5, 1996: The Woman In Me¹
• April 7, 1999: VH1 Behind the Music¹
• July 21, 1999: Shania Twain Live¹
• September 24, 1999: Complete Woman In Me¹
• March 9, 2004: Platinum Collection¹
• March 9, 2004: UP! Live In Chicago¹
• March 9, 2004: Come On Over Video¹
• December 9, 2004: Up Close And Personal¹

¹ Platinum (500,000 units sold) DVDs

Singles

Music videos

See List of Shania Twain music videos.

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