Shania Twain - ‘There is no man that intimidates me’

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0:35Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This podcast puts failure in the spotlight and asks us what we learn from the moments in life that don't go according to plan. Because I firmly believe that most failure can teach us something if we let it. Every week I talked to a new guest about the times they failed and how their perspective on life and what success really means was shaped along the way. Before we begin, I just wanted to remind you about my subscriber series. This week in Failing With Friends, I cover the stress of full weekends away for hen-do's, the difference between having a failure and feeling like a failure, the importance of listening to your inner voice, a failure to have a baby and to manage that at work, and much, much more.

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1:32Despite being famous for singing the phrase, that don't impress me much, it's fair to say that today's guest impresses me a whole lot. To try and summarise her career in just a few words is to attempt the impossible. The facts are astonishing. Her album Come On Over is the biggest selling studio album ever in the UK by an international female artist. She has won five Grammys, sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and at 58, remains the top selling female country pop artist of all time. This year, she makes her Glastonbury debut in the coveted Legends slot, undertakes a new tour of the UK and Ireland, and returns to Las Vegas for her third residency.

2:17Her greatest hits album, to be re-released in November on vinyl, is certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest selling hits collection by a female artist in the US. It contains another of her iconic songs, Man, I Feel Like a Woman. And yet her childhood was challenging and impoverished. Raised in Canada by her mother Sharon and her stepfather Jerry, from the age of eight she was helping to support her family by singing in bars. Today she is a cultural icon who has influenced a new wave of artists including Taylor Swift and Harry Styles with whom she performed at Coachella in 2022.

2:58It's only in looking back that Shania Twain says she can appreciate the level of her success as she was always too busy to celebrate in the moment And although she has endured her fair share of struggle, including 2018 surgery to reconstruct her vocal box after contracting Lyme's disease, Twain says that these days, whatever scars I have, I've earned. I'm comfortable in my own skin. Shania Twain, welcome to How to Fail. I can't believe I get to say that. That was really fun listening all about myself in a sort of surreal way. Yes. I mean, it must be incredibly surreal to imagine that you have achieved all of those things.

3:44And here you are. I guess I consider them more as experiences than achievements, really. Because some of them, of course, are related to accolades. But mostly, you know, I've just always been a very hard worker and came from not much. So I would say that I attribute where I am now to just one experience at a time. You mean so much to so many of us. How does that feel when you walk about on the London street? What is the number one thing that people say to you when they see you and recognize you? Most people want to make sure that it's me first. because I don't look, you know, I'm always really pretty low key when I'm walking around the streets of London or any streets of any city for that matter, unless I'm dressed up to go to a red carpet or something like that.

4:37But I think a lot of people just feel like I look related to Shania Twain. Could that really be Shania Twain? So they're always very polite and ask first. And of course, you know, I'm honest and say yes, but then they get excited and it's just fun. I wanted to end on that quote about being proud of your scars because it really goes to the root of so much of what this podcast is about, how we can learn from our failures, our perceived imperfections. How do you feel about your scars? Oh boy, I have a lot of scars. Well, I have a lot of scars from cooking. I have a lot of scars from working in the bush with sharp tools.

5:17I have a lot of emotional scars, losing my parents together in a car accident. Very shocking. I've been through a sad divorce. I've been through challenging childhood and then my open throat surgery. Over time, I have realized that all of those experiences have really made me who I am today and I wear them well, I think. Well in the sense, I feel well about it. I feel fine. When I first got this throat scar, for example, I was wearing a scarf around my neck to cover it up because I thought, I don't know how people are going to react to this. They don't even know that I've had throat surgery. They don't even know that I've had this voice issue yet.

6:05I'm just starting to talk about it. I don't want them to be distracted by it without being able to explain it first. And then I just got over it, you know. Maybe saying that is a little bit, maybe too light of a language to use. I wouldn't say I'm over it, but it's there and I accept it and I don't really feel like I need to cover it up, like any of my scars. Someone once said to me that we should write from the scar and not the wound. And I think there's something really profound about that. The wound that you initially have, which is so painful and seeping and bleeding, and then the scar, which is the recovery process that teaches you how to live again.

6:46I wonder if that resonates with you, because so much of your music really does connect to our vulnerability as listeners and fans. And I wonder how difficult that is sometimes to dig into your own sadness. That's a very good question. I like the way you put that question because the process while you are in pain or struggling or suffering is often when I write about things, I'll document my feelings. I'll put things down. They're very raw, they're very real, they're very in the moment. And I live them. I like to live through my suffering. I like to understand myself. I'm the kind of person that goes over it and over it and over it and over again and reanalyzes and turns it around in every direction.

7:37Till I finally get to the other side of it, which is then you're left with a wound. You're healed, but you've got this wound to remind you. That is normally when I release a song that may have been written or in the process of being written while I was going through a struggle. So my songs often have a sense of humor to them. They're now reflections of what I've been through. But they are on the other side. They are the healed experience with a scar. So when I'm writing something like, man, I feel like a woman, it's me writing about being someone that wasn't comfortable in their own skin for a very long time.

8:19And then all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but after going through the process, reaching a point in my life where I can say, wow, you know what? I'm actually really glad I'm a woman with all the things that come with it. So that song is a song of celebration and realization and ownership of the fact that I've been through the challenges that a lot of other women have been through. And I can talk about them now more easily, but they're all from experience of having those challenges. Well, thank you for that alchemy because I'm so grateful for that song. man, I feel like a woman, which has seen me through so many hard times and good times and karaoke times and all of the rest of it.

9:01And part of the reason it's so iconic is also the video and your outfit in the video. And I know that outfits in videos were very important and continue to be very important to you. Can you talk us through why that visual was so crucial? The visuals for me are always very, very important because they are the continuation of the idea of the song. It's being realized visually. It becomes tactile. It becomes a different medium. It's a different platform altogether. And it is an extension of the song. So, Man, I Feel Like a Woman, all about the layers and the more rigid, structured overlayer. peeling off the structured, very confident, but nondescript.

9:53The personality is really underneath and the celebration is underneath in the celebration of having those layers and recognizing those layers. And so there was a lot to that one, not just the fashion. And how do you feel? You touched that on the idea that it took you a while to feel comfortable in your own skin. How do you feel now in your womanhood? Big question. Three words or less. Well, let's start with the man I feel like a woman video because wearing the short skirt. So first I wrote about wearing the short skirt in the song. Now in the video, I'm literally wearing a short skirt. And I'm thinking I've never performed in a short skirt.

10:34I actually don't even know what I'm going to do. This is what it's all about, owning your body and feeling confident and expressive. But I've never performed in a short skirt. So now I'm thinking, okay, now you're the performer. You're not just the songwriter. You are now the performer. And you're creating this silhouette, which is the fashion, the look, and the story. How are you going to look? I hadn't worked it out yet. I worked it out on the set. And so I've been someone that has been coming into my comfort my whole life. I think it's just a process. I live it every day. So now, now I'm very fine with wearing short skirts.

11:20What do you wore on at Coachella when you performed with Harry Styles and looked fantastic? Yeah, that was a short dress. Yeah, now I'm perfectly fine, but it's been a process for me. Interesting. And the Man, I Feel Like a Woman video was the very first time I'd ever performed with legs at all. That's amazing. But before we get onto your failures, how are you feeling about performing at Glastonbury? I'm very excited about it. I am getting into the spirit of the whole experience. I will be bringing, well, I call them rubber boots, but I will be bringing wellies, as you call them here. Wise. I'll make sure.

11:51And the reason is because I want to see some other, or I want to go to some other stages. Yeah. And get out there and, I mean, maybe it won't be raining, but I've heard that you should be prepared for the mud. I will probably wear a cowboy hat if it's raining, if I'm going around the stage, just so I can keep myself from looking like a wet rat. And of course, being on the stage will be very exciting. So I'm already thinking about what to, I haven't worked out what I'm wearing yet, but I will, I'll figure it out by then, no problem. Okay. But you're not camping, you're not going that far. I'm not going to go that far.

12:22More because I won't have time to go camping, but yeah, I would love to. I said before we get onto your failures, I lied. I've got one more question. You and I are both in our second marriages. My personal opinion is that second marriages are so much better because for me anyway, I'm very grateful to have been given a second chance. And I also never take what I have for granted because I know how easily it can go awry. How do you feel about second marriages? I reflect very regularly in my marriage right now about what I've learned, where I probably was not doing my best as a partner, where I recognize a lot more about, I've learned so much about myself and I realize, you know, okay, I don't want to make those same mistakes again.

13:06It's been more of a self-reflection while now being in a second marriage, realizing that let's not repeat the same thing twice. Stop and study myself often when there's tension. I mean, any marriage is going to have ups and downs, any relationship. And I definitely reflect more than I definitely did in my first marriage. I'm better at that now, I think. Your first failure is, as you put it, your failure to remember all your own song lyrics. Is this a recent thing? No. I'll tell you what happens. Just over time, after you've recorded and written so many songs, as your catalogue gets larger and your career gets longer, you get further and further away from the earlier things that you've written.

13:53What I do now sometimes when I'm in a live show, because people are always yelling out, you know, songs that they haven't heard me do in a long time or that they've never heard me do live. And I started paying attention more to that and thought, you know, I don't even remember the lyrics to that song. So they'll sing a little bit of it to me and then I get started and it's really fun to go back and revisit it. So I don't beat myself too much up when it comes to that failure because it's challenging to remember all my lyrics. But when people are singing along with a song that I do regularly or a more recent song and they get the lyrics wrong, it throws me right off and I'm just, I'm lost.

14:31Yes. I don't know where I am. Yes. Because I'm singing along with them. And even if they stop singing for a minute, I don't know where I am. So this is a big fail in my opinion. It's like, oh, come on, keep it together. You're supposed to be leading the audience, not the audience leading you. So to me, that's a fail. Okay. And I wondered whether it had got any worse after Lyme's disease, because Lyme's disease is one of those things that seems to spool out in a million different unexpected directions. It can affect so many things. I wonder how it affected you other than the vocal box. It didn't affect my brain.

15:07It is very often a heart issue, often, which is not the case for me, thankfully. So the brain and the heart are the two most vulnerable with Lyme's disease and the nervous system. I do have some nerve sensitivities that will be there forever, apparently. And then the nerve damage to the vocal cords, but not the brain. You know, I consider myself lucky. So even though it was the voice, I mean, it wasn't the voice, but it was the cables, the lifeline to the vocal cords. Were you scared when you had Lyme's disease? because often it takes a while to get it diagnosed and you don't know what it is. I did find the tick the day I was bit.

15:50So I knew to get checked right away. The issue with Lyme's disease is that it doesn't show up in your blood right away. So it took two to three weeks before it showed up in my blood. So until it shows in your blood, they can't start treating you. So for those two and a half weeks, as the symptoms were building, I was starting to get more and more afraid. So those were, you know, a good almost three weeks of non-treated Lyme disease. That scared me the most. Yes. And some of those symptoms do linger. I was lucky also in the sense that because I was on tour, there was a real immediacy to getting me treated.

16:28Everybody wants you to get back up on that stage. You know, you want to just keep going. The show must go on. You're in that mindset, the show must go on. And I was, until I was diagnosed with it, I was on stage doing shows and almost falling off the stage. I mean, I was having these terrible dizzy spells and little mini blackouts. So that was scary. So until I was treated, it was really, really scary. It was terrible. The symptoms were terrible. Were there moments where you thought you'd never be able to sing again? Yes. Once I got off that tour, that was the up tour. I was exhausted anyway, naturally.

17:06And I never did recover my voice for the rest of that tour. And I didn't realize that I'd had any permanent damage to nerves. Just attributing my fatigue to long touring, a young child, and this recovery from this virus. So I wasn't panicking about losing my voice in any permanent way for about a year. And then I realized it was not coming back. And then I, you know, after seeing several specialists, there was no explanation at all. No damage to my vocal cords. Most singers, after many years of singing, have some either thickening of the cords or maybe slight nodule. or blood vessels that show up on your scans.

18:06Mine were just in fabulous shape. It was a bit like a sick joke. Yes. In the end, that it would be the larynx that would suffer. Because singing had been your companion from a very young age. You talk about forgetting your song lyrics, but when you were eight, you had a repertoire of 100 songs, didn't you? Because you were being taken to these bars by your mother to perform to earn money for your family. Were those bars the hardest place you've ever sung? Yes, the bars when I was a child were definitely the hardest. They were smoke-filled rooms at the time. By the time I was allowed in the bar as a child, the law was a child could enter a bar, a liquor premises, only after the physical bar was stopped serving, so after midnight.

18:59so I would go to do the after hours set and everyone's already intoxicated so it was a terrible environment for a kid but I was very professional about it I took it very seriously I was a performer and I did have a hundred song repertoire at all times because people like to take requests or people like to call out requests so and I wanted to be able to take the requests So they would, you know, yell out songs, and I took pride in being able to do the song. I mean, the irony of that as well, and I'm laughing because it is funny, but a big fail is obviously now forgetting my own lyrics. But at the time, nobody in the audience probably would have ever even remembered the lyrics I was singing, even if they had called out a request.

19:44Yeah, no, very difficult. Just dark, smelly, smoky places, you know, and people fight. And it's very, you know, the bar fright breaks out after midnight. Given where you are now, and we'll talk a little bit more about your mother in particular coming on to your other failures. Would you change anything about your childhood? No, I wouldn't want to ever live it again. Once is enough. Once is enough all the way through, all the way around. And I don't regret any of it. And a lot of it I didn't have control over anyway. You know, so much of my life I lived before I had control of my life. It was a very jam-packed, intense, young life, considering the career, considering the family dynamics and all of that.

20:34That I felt old already by the time I was 20. You know, by the time my parents died, you know, by the time I was 22, I already felt like a grown woman. I was already not hard, but I was more experienced than I probably should have been with a lot of things. And by the time I did set off into my own independent life and career, meaning not, you know, of not having dependence, I was starting my life for the second time, I felt. You touch on the bad elements of your childhood. Could you just explain what you mean by that? Yeah, sure. For example, if there was an opportunity for me to go singing at the local bar, my mother would find every opportunity possible so I could get out and get exposure and get experience as a professional performer because that was my education.

21:34Those were my schools. Those were my classrooms, the bar stages. If I didn't earn anything from it, it was going to be a domestic problem because we were using gas in the car to get there. You know, we would at least have to be able to put the gas back in the car. We at least needed 20 bucks or we needed 50 bucks. We needed to be able to contribute something to the groceries, for example. So the cupboards were often empty. The gas tank was often empty. We were living hand to mouth, week to week or sometimes day to day. And the heat would get turned off in the middle of winter. So, you know, any$5 went a long way.

22:16So I couldn't just go do it for nothing. If we did get home without making any money and we used up the gas money in the car, then my parents would fight. And there was a lot of violence in our home. So that was a big challenge as well, living in a violent household. I'm so sorry you went through that. And I'm so sorry you must have felt so responsible on many levels from the age of eight. Well, that's the part where you don't really, when you're not in control of what's going on in your environment. I mean, obviously no child is. You're just a victim of the environment, of the circumstances. And you do what is, it's your norm anyway, right?

22:55It's almost like I'm more affected by it. Or the further I got away from it, the more affected I am. Or more aware of what reality is really supposed to look like. and how dysfunctional it was at the time. And I mean, I knew it was, you know, you know, you have a sense when you're a child, you go to school with other kids. You know there's no other kid in the class that's up till two in the morning in local bar, you know, maybe singing to somebody's parents or whatever. I mean, it's just, so you know that, but you don't really, really absorb it. I don't think, I didn't anyway until I started getting further away from it.

23:33I totally get that.

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24:43you had this innate extraordinary talent for singing and songwriting and you took it and made something magical of it and you made it as a recording artist and that brings us on to I think your second failure which is your failure to stick to the rules or to not speak your mind So what period of your life are you attaching that failure to? It's just my character. Okay. I love that, Maddie. It's my lifetime failure. And I hope I never succeed at fixing that because I think it's not broken. And I guess I like to include this as a failure only because even at times when I know better to maybe monitor my forward nature more, I fail at that.

25:38And a good example of that is when I first got signed in Nashville for my recording contract, I left Canada with, I Canadians, some Canadians anyway, swear a lot. I love that you swear loads. You're very welcome to swear on this podcast. I'm a huge swearer. It was just shocking to so many people. I'm thinking, wow, this is, you know, this is quite my norm. I'm, you know, I really, and I had to reel that in. And there were a lot of things I had to reel in, but I almost got, you know, rejected out of that community over things like that, over just being myself. But I found other ways to express myself.

26:21And it became more productive. So I think there's something really good about, well, there's everything good about being aware of where you are, when, where, how, all of those things. I ended up just putting it into my music, into the visuals, especially being very expressive. I knew that I was maybe taking a left turn from the norm certain times or maybe a sharp right or whatever. I knew I was definitely going uphill a lot by choice because I wanted to self-express. I had my own ideas and I was going to follow them through. It's very interesting to me because you clearly have a strong sense of what you want.

27:04and yet earlier you were saying that it was only with man I feel like a woman that you felt you were coming into yourself and being able to almost put aside an insecurity so how do those two things coexist that's great I you said it just so well I was at that moment taking ownership of the fact that, you know what? I think all of these things. I'm very frank and very, very cut and dry about a lot of things. But I realized that I was holding back. Trust me, I'm sure that the community of Nashville didn't think I was holding back. In their mind, I was already way, way too forward about being a confident woman and a thinker and a writer and playing with language that they felt felt I was sending a message.