10 things we learned from Shania Twain's Desert Island Discs
Shania Twain is known as the ‘Queen of Country Pop’, but that nickname barely covers a career whose success has transcended genre entirely. Her 1997 record Come On Over remains the biggest-selling studio album by a female solo artist in music history, powered by anthems like That Don't Impress Me Much and Man! I Feel Like a Woman.
But behind the leopard print lies a life of real hardship, and in an extraordinary interview with Lauren Laverne, Shania revisits a chaotic upbringing in rural Canada, the sudden death of her parents, finding love, and how music has always been the thing that saved her.
Here are 10 things we learned from her Desert Island Discs…
1. She survived a very tough childhood in rural Canada
Born Eileen Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, Shania grew up mostly in Timmins, a remote mining town where “no one lives far from the woods” and frostbite and bears were real dangers.
Money was always tight, and the pressure spilled into violence between her parents. “I remember being four, my little sister was two, and my older sister was six. Us girls ran out onto the porch in the snow, in our pyjamas in our bare feet.” In the freezing snow, they watched their parents fight inside the house. “And I just remember the feeling of my feet in that snow, then the loud footsteps of the police officers coming up the wooden stairs squeaking in the snow to save us.”
2. Ice skating and pop music brought a sense of normality
The family moved constantly. Shania attended 17 different schools and never found “a place... where you felt it was permanent.” But for three hours every Saturday night, she and her sisters would escape to the ice rink to skate.
“This is where we could hear pop music, because when we were little, my parents only played country music around the house.” She picks Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John as the second disc she would take to her island, calling it her “favourite ‘floating in the clouds’ song to skate to”.
“On Saturdays we were normal. We were with everyone else doing what everybody else did.”
3. Her mother was convinced Shania would be a star
Sharon Twain was complicated, Shania explains. “She would sit at the table and sometimes, just to make us laugh, she would pull her leg up around the back of her head… She had a sense of humour and loved to dance around the kitchen.” But she was “very fragile” too. “I saw her as my little bird,” she tells Lauren. “I did have to protect her.”
Sharon never doubted Shania's talent. From the age of eight, “she would wake me up around 11:30pm to take me to the bar to sing.” Shania remembers the bar being “very, very smoky” as she stood on stage, often alone with her guitar, to sing for the drunken crowds. “My mother was so determined that I was going to get my big break and get discovered on a bar stage by some record executive.”
4. Songwriting became her way of disappearing into other worlds
I was writing about places I didn't know about yet. I was creating worlds, I was creating characters.Shania turned to songwriting from a young age.
Writing songs from the age of 10, Shania used music to transport her from a difficult upbringing. “As a young person, I was writing about places I didn't know about yet. I was creating worlds, I was creating characters,” she tells Lauren, describing how she'd sing “with made up accents of how I imagined other people might speak in different places of the world. I was transporting myself.”
For Shania, writing music “transported me through my imagination to anything. It was my way of colouring with words and sound.”
5. Aged 13, she packed up the car and persuaded her mum to escape
In one of the interview’s most poignant moments, Shania describes the day she decided the turbulence at home was finally enough. She waited until her father had gone to work, loaded her siblings into the car, woke her mother with coffee and a cigarette, and announced they were leaving for Toronto. “She [Sharon] didn't even argue. She got dressed and got behind the wheel. I wanted us to start a new life. I said, ‘let's go, let's drive.’”
6. She was about to start a new life in a rock band – until tragedy changed everything
Shania skipped her high school graduation to join a travelling rock band. Things were going well. But on 1 November 1987, aged just 22, she got a phone call that her parents had been killed in a car accident.
I'm just paralysed and I just cry my face off for… I don't even remember how long. I was just numb and it was like a dam had broke.Shania reflects on the tragic loss of her parents.
“I collapsed hearing that news over the phone.” She moved back to the family home and became the head of the family, suddenly dealing with insurance claims, lawsuits, and a second mortgage. “I wasn't allowed to grieve because I'm thrown into this state of guardianship.”
Sometime later, driving alone and still reeling, Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone came on the radio, the song she picks as her fifth disc. “I had to pull over on the side of the road because I could no longer see through my tears,” she says. “I'm just paralysed and I just cry my face off for… I don't even remember how long. I was just numb and it was like a dam had broke.”
7. The big break her mum always hoped for did finally come
Unable to make a living in Timmins, Shania took a steady singing job at a golf resort, arranged by her mother's old friend Mary Bailey, who later became her manager. “They've got big feather boas and they're wearing fishnets and makeup… this is just not what I do.” But she stuck it out for three years, learning to sing in stilettos and sequins, still writing songs in her spare time and constantly sending demo tapes to Mary.
One day, Mary passed a tape to a Nashville music lawyer, who was so blown away he travelled to the resort to see Shania sing live. “The heavens opened because I was finally discovered. A proper bigwig comes from Nashville, Tennessee and offers you a big fat record contract. And I go to Nashville, and I sit around that big round conference table and they say, ‘Little Miss Twain, please sign your name.’”
8. At the height of her success, a tick bite took her voice for a decade
The late nineties was an overwhelming time for Shania. Her third album, 1997’s Come On Over, made with her then-husband and collaborator Mutt Lange, sold 40 million copies. She was at the height of her fame. Then in 2003, while out horse riding, Shania was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme disease, damaging the nerves in her vocal cords.
“I was not to get on a stage again for many years.” She required open-throat surgery performed while she was awake, so surgeons could watch her vocal cords move: “They open your neck... push your larynx to the side... and I had to sing.”
9. She found love in a very unexpected way
In 2008, while still struggling with her voice, Shania discovered her husband Mutt Lange had been having an affair with her closest friend. “I'm enjoying being a mom. I'm enjoying writing music and being in the garden. I don't even know anything's going on.”
In an amazing twist of fate, she found love with that same friend's ex-husband, Fred. “Fred takes the blinders off, he tells me what's going on, and I don't believe him. And in that time, we found each other,” she explains.
“I found out what a beautiful person he was.” She remembers thinking, “you need to be my partner. I'll treat you better.”
10. Her music may be fun – but it's also a statement of self-belief
So many of Shania's songs have become iconic feel-good anthems. But beneath the fun surface they contain important messages about resilience and defining her identity on her own terms. “I'm still leery of the man that sees me as an object, because I started singing in bars so young,” Shania tells Lauren. Throughout her teens, she remained wary of getting attention from boys.
“So, by the time I'm in Nashville and I'm writing songs like Any Man of Mine, and Man! I Feel Like a Woman, I am feeling more confident and liberated to push back through the music. And those are my songs of, ‘I'm happy to be a woman, and I love men... just don't try to dominate me.’”
