Shania Twain overcame dark childhood performing to drunk crowds aged 8 & battling abusive stepdad to become Glasto queen
SHE’S the undisputed queen of country pop with a £320million fortune, more than 100million record sales and is about to step into the Glasto Sunday legends slot straight from her third Las Vegas residency.
Along with her predecessor Dolly Parton, Shania Twain is a trailblazing music powerhouse who has paved the way for female performers like Taylor Swift to take on the world.
And with country music having its very own moment, her Sunday Glasto performance is expected to draw the biggest crowd of the festival weekend.
But beneath the sequin stetsons and glittery cowboy boots, Shania’s backstory is one of childhood poverty, abuse, grief, illness and heartbreak, which makes her global success taste even sweeter.
She was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1965, one of three girls to Sharon and Clarence. But her parents divorced when Shania was two and her mother’s second husband, Jerry Twain, adopted the girls.
Their home life was one of abject poverty, with Shania and her sisters often going to school hungry.
When Sharon spotted her daughter’s musical talents she knew she had found a way to make money.
So from the age of eight, Shania would be woken up from her sleep to perform in bars after midnight, because that was the time when they were legally required to stop serving alcohol to drinkers.
“I would go to do the after-hours set and everyone was already intoxicated,” the five-time Grammy winner has revealed.
“It was a terrible environment for a kid. But I was very professional about it and I took it very seriously.”
And it was no wonder – because Shania soon learned that if she didn’t bring home the bacon from her gigs it meant trouble for her mum.
“If I didn’t earn anything from it, it was going to be a domestic problem,” Shania, now 58, explained. “The cupboards were often empty, the gas tank was often empty. We were living hand to mouth.”
Jerry was often violent to Sharon, once beating her unconscious, and he was also abusive towards Shania, making her walk around the house topless and would touch her inappropriately.
Then at the age of 22, just when Shania was about to make her big music breakthrough, her parents were both tragically killed in a car crash.
She had to shelve her musical dreams to return home to care for her younger siblings. “It was like I was a single mum overnight,” she recalled.
She added: “It was a very touch and go period in my life.
“I had frostbite many times just by not having the right clothes.
“I’d have to go down to the river and bring back coolers of water to drink and do the laundry down there by hand.
“I chopped my own wood, piled my own wood.
“It was a lot of pressure. I barely slept.”
But she never gave up on her musical dream and once her sisters were old enough to stand on their own two feet, Shania compiled a demo tape to present to Nashville music execs and within a few months she had been signed up.
It was the first step to Shania finally becoming the international singing superstar the world knows today.
Childhood trauma
Like most country music stars, Shania’s music reflects her own personal experiences.
But not many people would guess her most famous upbeat anthem Man! I Feel Like a Woman is related to her childhood trauma.
Shania told the Sunday Times: “That song was me saying I have waited too long to feel good about being a woman.
“For many years I shied away from it or wished I wasn’t a woman. I was a shy, insecure female – not person.
“My brain said ‘I don’t really care what I am’ but my body got in the way – the female got in the way.
“I’ve got curves to I had to set boundaries and guards very young. I did everything not to bring attention to them.
“I missed out on the joy of being a female. S**t, for my whole teens I never once went to the beach in a bathing suit.
“I knew that boys were going to take advantage of me in one way or another.”
Horror disease
As if her abusive childhood and the death of her parents wasn’t enough trauma for one person to endure, she contracted Lyme disease in 2003 after being bitten by a tick while out horse riding.
She suffered blackouts and even feared she may never sing again after she had to undergo open-throat surgery when the disease damaged her vocal chords.
She made her comeback in 2017, releasing her first album in 15 years.
Receiving such a devastating diagnosis and battling to save the career she had fought so hard to build would have been enough to break most people.
But at the same time, Shania had also been dealing with her devastating marriage split after she discovered that her record producer husband Robert “Mutt” Lange had been cheating on her with close friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud.
After finalising her divorce in 2010, Twain and Marie-Anne’s ex-husband, former Nestlé exec Frédéric Thiébaud, became close and they married on New Year’s Day 2011.
She had had no clue that her husband and friend were cheating on her, and later said the affair had made her feel “stupid” but experiencing it with Fred, who was also in the dark, had helped her.
I’ve got curves to I had to set boundaries and guards very young. I did everything not to bring attention to them
“Fred’s so smart,” she told the Armchair Expert podcast. “This is one of the smartest people I know, he didn’t know either,” said Twain.
“That helped me feel better… Neither of us saw it coming … I allowed myself to trust too much … I did let my guard down too much.”
But as she steps out onto that Glastonbury stage on Sunday, she knows she has earned every ounce of success from singing as an eight-year-old in dingy bars, to caring for her siblings, surviving a messy divorce and coming back from a devastating illness to dominate the country music scene once more.
There is no doubt Shania will savour every moment of her Glasto debut and certainly knows how to please a crowd, promising to make her set one to remember.
She told the BBC: “I’m doing the hits – the songs that everybody knows and the versions that everybody knows. It’s just going to be a big sing-along party.”
Glastonbury 2024 line-up
Pyramid Stage
- Dua Lipa
- Coldplay
- SZA
- Shania Twain
- LCD Soundsystem
- Little Simz
- Burna Boy
- PJ Harvey
- Cyndi Lauper
- Michael Kiwanuka
- Janelle Monáe
- Seventeen
- Paul Heaton
- Keane
- Paloma Faith
- Olivia Dean
- Ayra Starr
Other Stage
- Idles
- Disclosure
- The National
- D-Block Europe
- The Streets
- Two Door Cinema Club
- Anne-Marie
- Camila Cabello
- Avril Lavigne
- Bombay Bicycle Club
- Bloc Party
- The Last Dinner Party
- Nothing But Thieves
- Confidence Man
- Headie One
West Holts
- Jungle
- Jessie Ware
- Justice
- Heilung
- Masego
- Nia Archives
- Danny Brown
- Black Pumas
- Brittany Howard
- Sugababes
- Nitin Sawhney
- Jordan Rakei
- Asha Puthli
- Noname
- Corinne Bailey Rae
- Steel Pulse
- Squid
- Sofia Kourtesis
Woodsies
- Jamie xx
- Gossip
- James Blake
- Sampha
- Sleaford Mods
- Romy
- Declan McKenna
- Yard Act
- Arlo Parks
- Alvvays
- Fat White Family
- Blondshell
- Kenya Grace
- Soccer Mommy
- Remi Wolf
- Mannequin Pussy
- Newdad
- High Vis
- Kneecap
The Park
- Fontaines DC
- Peggy Gou
- London Grammar
- King Krule
- Orbital
- Ghetts
- Aurora
- The Breeders
- Mount Kimbie
- Dexys
- Lankum
- Baxter Dury
- This Is the Kit
- Arooj Aftab
- Mdou Moctar
- The Mary Wallopers
- Otoboke Beaver
- Barry Can’t Swim
- Bar Italia