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SHANIA RICHLY BLESSED

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As she dwells on her Greatest Hits, which caps her rags-to-riches fairytale, Shania Twain tells of her fears for her child, her disdain for fame and unnerving encounters with Australian cockroaches.

By Ben English
Herald Sun
November 28, 2004

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Shania Twain screwed her nose up, her fingers extended and waving.

"I love Australia, but I could never live there," she explained.

"I can't get past your cockroaches. They're giant. They're disgusting. And they have no qualms about crawling all over you. Eeewwww!"

On stage, Twain is a swaggering, high-kicking country pop diva whose big-arena act matches her high-voltage sex appeal.

But here, in the mahoganied restraint of the Dorchester hotel in London to promote her greatest hits album and new single Party For Two, she could pass for the well-groomed personal assistant to any of the executives who breeze through daily.

Perched on the hand-embroidered armchair, with her thick brown locks pinned back and her casually elegant singlet, fake-fur-trimmed cotton overcoat and knickerbockers ensemble, Shania was the image of understatement.

Only the knee-high stilettos hinted at the on-stage persona that for 11 years has defined her as the undisputed queen of musical "crossover".

It is the sort of paradox she is getting used to.

Raised in abject poverty marked by shivering winters and nights without dinner, she now has more money than she could ever spend -- despite her generous donations to charity.

And having struggled for 20 years to achieve fame, she has moved 6000km from her Canadian homeland to escape it. Now she luxuriates in a 46-room Swiss chateau with her husband and producer Robert "Mutt" Lange and their three-year-old boy Eja.

It is a splendour that would have been unimaginable to the Eileen Twain of her youth, whose mum used to haul her out in the middle of the night to sing in $20 gigs at rough and tumble saloon bars in country Ontario.

The family was so poor, Shania recalled walking home and smelling with envy the hot dinners of her brick-homed neighbours. She'd call them the "roast beef families".

Today, she frets her boy will be ruined by riches.

"Eja is a privileged child. He needs to be exposed in his life to some different realities.

"So it's our goal to make sure that he is educated on many different levels and that he isn't separated and protected completely from the realities of what's going on around him."

But Shania would never wish her childhood on Eja, from the night her father walked out to buy cigarettes and bread and never returned, to the moment, at 22, she learnt her parents had been killed in a head-on collision.

Then working towards her dream of country stardom in Nashville, she felt her only choice was to return to look after her younger siblings.

That was 1987. She returned to Nashville three years later with the stage name now known the world over. Shania means "On My Way" in the native tongue of her late adopted father, the Ojibwa Indian Jerry Twain. The moniker has proved more prophetic than she could have dreamed.

In 1995 she cracked not only America's country capital, but the mainstream scene, too, with her breakthrough album The Woman In Me.

After marrying her producer, the two went on to create the biggest-selling album by a woman country artist, Come On Over. The 1997 release sold 34 million copies to cement Shania's place at the apex of modern music's holy trinity: country, pop and rock.

Her hard-won triumphs provide lessons for Eja to absorb.

"I think one of the greatest things you can experience as a child is to build character, to see yourself through difficult times," she said.

"They provide an education that you will never get in any private school or from any elite college.

"I have been on both sides of the fence. I understand. I know what it's like to be the poor one looking at the rich.

"And now I know what it's like to be rich."

So which is better?

"To be honest the best place to be is poor without struggle," she said.

Now in her 40th year, Shania's next challenge is to write a new album -- anything but bask in the fame that has seen, among other things, a multimillion-dollar museum built in her hometown of Timmin and her crowning as world's sexiest vegetarian.

"Having Eja, I see the world in a more emotional way," she explained.

"I have, for instance, more anxieties than I used to have about the future.

"These are all emotions that we've always had, but they're stronger now. You love stronger, you fear stronger, everything's stronger so this, of course, will affect my music. And I think I need more purpose in my life now. I don't want to just leave a legacy of being a famous artist.

"It's not enough. It seems so shallow to me. There are a lot of people that are becoming famous for absolutely nothing, so it's cheapened the effort and the validity of achieving fame.

"If you're talking about deep satisfaction, I only get that from songwriting because it's such an expressive thing. It's like writing in your diary or something. It's permanent."

There is one aspect of Shania's early days she misses: belting out old favourites on a dodgy sound system in a small, smoky bar.

"I find that it's difficult in a big concert with the kind of music that I like to indulge in. It doesn't translate as well."

Shania says she is sitting on a pile of unpublished songs that she has penned over the years -- a treasure trove that would be worth a fortune. But if she has her way, it may never be seen.

"I would be so embarrassed to think anybody may find it -- even in a 100 years.

"It's like anything. Before you finish something you don't want anyone to see it. That would be the most embarrassing thing. I don't even let Mutt hear it!

"I felt that way when John Lennon died and they brought out his unreleased material. As a writer I felt a pang. And there was that exhibition of Picasso's unfinished works.

"I felt like I was intruding. It was fascinating, but I still felt wrong. I thought, `He doesn't know we're all peering at his private thoughts'."

An Australian tour is not on the horizon. She must write, record and release a new album first; a process that could take years. Beyond that, there is the charity work to which Shania has long been devoted.

"I want to get more involved in charity. Nothing like Band Aid -- more at a grassroots level, looking at the causes for childhood trauma.

"I want to get to the reasons they're not eating. They're not eating properly because they come from dysfunctional families or they come from neglectful families or irresponsible parents, whatever, but there's a reason, so I just want to get more involved in helping these kids before they end up having to experience the things that I experienced growing up."

Shania Twain's Greatest Hits is out now.

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