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“I cried like a baby”: The 1986 song that changed Shania Twain’s life at 22

By Paulina Subia | Far Out Magazine - UK | October 6, 2026

As one of country music’s most versatile musicians, Shania Twain has transcended genre and expectation, and much of this comes from her range of musical tastes.

Where country music is concerned, Twain has cited Dolly Parton, The Chicks, Loretta Lynn and more as inspirations, and voices including Karen Carpenter as ones she reveres. As she once told The Guardian, the first single she ever bought was Janis Ian’s ‘Seventeen’, even referring to the song on her latest album, this year’s Little Miss Twain.

“I felt like her, I related, but I was also thinking, ‘Wow, I have to someday write this well,’” she shared, “It gave me a goal; I was so in awe”.

The music that Twain loved as a young woman was paramount to her, and music was also a necessity to her and her family. She began singing in bars at the age of eight to help support her family. “My deepest passion was music, and it helped,” Twain explained, “There were moments when I thought, ‘I hate this’. I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music, and so, I survived.”

A record like Janis Ian’s was a rare gift for Twain, who once treated herself out of sheer love for the song: “I made very little money, babysitting, taking care of my neighbour’s horse, singing in bars,” she noted, “I would get like 20 bucks that I would mostly give to my family, but I got that record for myself”.

When asked for the song that changed her life, Twain looked to the soundtrack to The Mission, a 1986 British historical drama starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. The premise takes place in the 18th century, following De Niro’s Spanish Jesuit missionary who travelled to the South American wilderness to build a mission. Spain, then, sold the colony to Portugal, and the Portuguese held no interest in his missions, so he became compelled to defend what he had started.

The Mission’s soundtrack was composed, orchestrated, conducted and produced by the visionary, prolific Ennio Morricone, crafting one that he described as a duet between two themes, the “Spanish” and the “Guaraní”. For his compositions, he used liturgical chorales with Spanish-influenced guitars and native drums, a blend of the cultures shown in the film.

Some of the songs transcended the film, used in sporting events and advertisements, and the main theme, ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’, is perhaps the most revered of them all, having been remade by a number of artists.

“There’s many critical songs on The Mission soundtrack, but ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ hit me hard,” Twain explained, before describing when she first heard the composition, “I had to pull off the road, I cried like a baby. I didn’t realise how powerful music could be until that moment. I was 22.”

While she continued to name Michael Jackson’s 1972 song ‘Ben’ as the one that made her cry as a child, ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ sparked a similar sentiment in her adulthood. In the film, the track plays as the Jesuit Father Gabriel approaches a waterfall and begins to play his oboe, hoping to befriend the natives through his music. The Guaraní tribesmen then approach him (after having stalked him from a distance) and appear confused by the instrument and its sounds; the chief then takes the oboe and breaks it.

As the soundtrack to one of the most memorable moments in the film, it’s no wonder ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ sparked the reaction it did for Twain, speaking to the moving talents of Morricone and the weaving of music and emotion.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-song-that-changed-shania-twains-life-at-22/