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Shania Twain opens up about terrifying medical 'wake-up call' that could have ended career

Singing legend Shania Twain - famous for hits such as Man, I feel like a woman and That Don’t Impress Me Much - reveals the terror of almost losing her singing voice, the traumatic childhood which shaped her and why she doesn’t hate the husband who cheated on her with her best friend

By Sanjeeta Bains | The Mirror - UK | May 28, 2024

Domestic violence, losing her parents young and being left to bring up her siblings, not to mention her husband cheating on her with her best friend. It’s fair to say Shania Twain’s life has seen its share of ups and downs.

But as she steps out onto the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury next month the singer will do so with a fresh perspective on life, one drastically changed by what she calls the “wake-up call” she needed.

And while she admits stage fright blighted her for years, those days are now gone after she feared she might lose her ability to sing in front of her fans.

“I used to have stage fright, probably up until I was 42,” admits the singer - famous for hits including You Don’t Impress Me Much and Man! I Feel Like A Woman.

But, having been bitten by a tick she developed Lyme disease which damaged her vocal cords and left her fearing it could all be over.

“I had an operation on my throat,” she recalls. “Open throat surgery and I was not sure if I would recover well enough or that the procedure would work, that I would be able to sing again.

So my ability to say okay, this is not worth worrying about. This is a small thing. Just get out there and have fun. The fear just wasn’t as relevant anymore. So, I started having a lot more fun, a lot less fear.”

Speaking with Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast, she admits she is very hard on herself and always wanted to be note-perfect on stage but has had to adjust since her illness.

“It’s really learning about letting go of the things that you can’t change,” she says. “They’re already done. They’re past, they’re gone. So, and that just makes me more fearless going forward.

“But the letting go part, it’s easier said than done. I needed something, I guess a wake-up call. It was a shock to have to be faced with, maybe never singing it again on stage. I was grieving that.”

That wake-up call meant she stayed away from the limelight, not recording a record for 15 years until she had experimental surgery to try to repair damage to the nerves of her vocal cords in 2018.

And while her voice is different now she has learnt to embrace that.

“Anything tragic that has happened in my life, I will grieve those things forever. There are griefs that change you permanently, that do stay with you.

“There are triggers to those griefs. I don’t pretend they don’t exist. But at some point I decided anyway that I can’t live miserable. I gotta find another way to be happy about what I do have and what is ahead of me.

“So it’s not that I don’t crash and burn when I’m devastated, because I definitely do. But you gain other things. So with my voice now, there’s new things about my voice that I really love that I didn’t have with my old voice.

“I’ve got sounds and tones and power in places that I didn’t before. So those are all new discoveries that would have only have come about in the circumstances.”

Devastation is no stranger to the 58-year-old and it has made her something of a fix-it person.

“I like to solve things because I just don’t like the stale, stuck, helpless feeling,” she says.

It’s something clearly influenced by her childhood. Brought up in a violent home she fled at the age of 13 with her mother and siblings, an escape she planned herself.

“That was a very, very important turning point in my own mind, in my own... And then in all of our lives, in my family’s life,” Shania says. “I went to bed the night before, I was 13 years old, and I said, ‘This is the lowest, darkest, most unhappy I’m ever going to be again. I mean, ever. It ends right now. This is it. I’m never going to be this down again’.

“That was something I was saying to myself. This stops now.”

She knew she would have to act.

“When I got up in the morning, when my dad went off to work, I brought my mom a coffee in bed, bought her a cigarette, lit her a cigarette, and I said, ‘Mom, we’re leaving. The car is packed’. I’d already done that.

“And literally, everybody was ready to go. ‘All you got to do now, all you've got to do is just get your clothes on and drive’.”

Her mother Sharon had left Shania’s step-father Jerry many times but always went back. That day Shania had had enough and after 13 hours of driving from the family home in Timmins, Ontario to Toronto, she got her mother to call a shelter for help.

It was one moment in a childhood far away from the norm for most people.

Performing in bars from the age of eight, she admits her mother “lived for my music”

And says “she’s the mother that saw the talent and wanted to nurture it… She started by putting me up on restaurant countertops to sing with the jukebox. The people would applaud and it was fun then.

“Then by the time I was eight and I’m singing in the bars, now it’s no fun anymore.”

With children not being allowed in licensed premises until the bar was closed she could only take to the stage around last call at midnight.

“Then I was allowed in,” she says. “I could get up and sing. And if the band didn’t want to carry on playing, then I would just get up there with my guitar and entertain everybody that was left finishing up what was on their tables. But it was smoky and stinky. And by then, everybody’s half cut. And it’s nowhere a kid wants to be.”

But while she says performing made her feel like she was “on display”, writing music became her salvation and escape.

But more tragedy was to come as she grew up and tried to make it in the music business. Aged just 22 her mother and step-father were killed in a car accident and Shania moved back home to raise three of her four siblings - Carrie Ann, Darryl and Mark. The eldest, Jill, had already left home.

It could easily have been the end of her dreams but, six years later, Shania finally hit the big time and went on to win countless awards, including five Grammys, and break records.

But while her career went from strength to strength until losing her voice, her personal life was just as turbulent.

She and producer and writer husband Robert “Mutt” Lange had son Eja in 2001 but seven years later announced they were splitting.

It soon emerged he’d been having an affair with their PA and Shania’s close friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud. That could have been the end of it… until Shania then got together with Marie-Anne’s husband Frederic who she later married on New Year’s Day 2011.

You’d imagine there would be no small amount of bitterness but no, Shania’s new outlook on life has affected that too.

“Forgiveness is in the family of letting go,” she says. “But forgiveness, more specifically for me anyway, is not about forgetting necessarily. It’s about understanding the other person”

Does that go for cheating husbands too though?

“Do I hate my ex -husband for making a mistake?” she says. “No. It’s his mistake. Not my mistake. So sad for him that he made such a great mistake that he has to live with. And I don’t know what that is, but it’s not. That’s not my weight.”

And with such optimism, it seems she must be light as a feather.

• Great Company with Jamie Laing is available on all podcast providers.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/shania-twain-opens-up-terrifying-32910993

On the podcast (53min mark), Shania mentioned she is writing a song titled "Hardest Fall". It's not finished yet.

Shania: "The last time I cried... You know I wrote a song and I teared to myself about this song, it's not out yet. It's called Hardest Fall, really moved me. It's not even finished yet. My plan is to make it... one of my strongest."

Shania Twain on escaping Violence at the age of 13.

https://x.com/JamieLaing_UK/status/1795708302170755394

Shania Twain: I feel sorry for ex-husband and his affair 'mistake'

Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager weigh in on recent comments Shania Twain made on a podcast about her ex-husband's cheating scandal saying, "Do I hate my ex-husband for making a mistake? No. It’s his mistake. I'm so sad for him that he made such a great mistake. That's not my weight.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXbvNeSk6GA