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Shania Twain: "I've Realized How Fragile I Am"

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RedbookMag.com
By Holly George Warren

Shania Twain had to step out of the spotlight to understand what she really wanted from her life and her career. Now, five years later, with the help of her husband and a whole lot of soul-searching, she's finally ready to come back—and be 100 percent who she is.

Shania Twain had to step out of the spotlight to understand what she really wanted from her life and her career. Now, five years later, with the help of her husband and a whole lot of soul-searching, she's finally ready to come back—and be 100 percent who she is.

Shania Twain is clearly having fun. The toned, bronzed singer is tossing her brunette mane for the camera as the soulful sounds of Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Barry White purr from the speakers of Miami's stark Glasshaus Studios. "Music is my drug!" Shania enthuses during a break, explaining that a brief distraction from the lens minutes before was due to the sensual pull of Gaye's voice. "When something comes on that I like, I have to stop everything I'm doing. The sheer pleasure of music is an escape. Like some people love chocolate, I love music."

Shania's own music has been just as addictive for millions of fans. The top-selling female artist of all time, Shania has collaborated with her husband of 14 years, producer-songwriter Robert John "Mutt" Lange, on four multiplatinum albums beginning with 1995's The Woman in Me. Come On Over, released in 1997, sold 19 million copies in the United States alone and became the sixth most successful album in recording history.

Shania, 42, has seen cataclysmic changes over the course of her life: an impoverished childhood in rural Ontario, Canada; the death of her parents in a car accident when Shania was 21; and her subsequent role as provider for three teenage siblings (a sister and two brothers).

In 1993, she made her musical debut on Mercury Records and followed it up two years later with the megaseller The Woman in Me, which had an astounding eight hit singles, including "Any Man of Mine" and "No One Needs to Know." And with that, her days of struggling to make ends meet were done. Shania had become a household name with a huge fan following. But after the release of 2002's UP!, the enormous changes and success caught up with her. Grappling with the repercussions of fame, Shania stepped out of the celebrity fray and retreated to her home in Switzerland, a 45-room 19th-century chateau. There, as she puts it, she "nested" with Mutt and their son, Eja (pronounced "Asia"), who was born in 2001. She also set aside some time for introspection. The result of these five years of soul-searching, says Shania, is that she's stronger and less self-critical.

And at last, she's ready to return to the hustle-bustle life of a superstar—first, with this fall's launch of her new perfume, Shania Starlight, a follow-up to her best-selling fragrance, Shania by Stetson. She's also working on an album for 2008. "I relate better today to the songs I used to write," she confides, referring to working-girl anthems and odes to empowerment such as "Honey, I'm Home" and "Any Man of Mine." "Before, I was observing others and relating to their experiences. Writing those lyrics was like looking into my future. They're more who I am now." And it sounds like who Shania is now is someone she's finally content to be.

Why did you need those five years away?
My music must reflect whatever's going on in my mind, and my life needs to evolve for me to discover who it is I'm becoming. When everything is happening to you all at one time—which, in this industry, it does—there's not a lot of time to reflect. What's it like to get back in the spotlight after spending so much time at home with your husband and son? I'm not naturally a spotlight person anyway, but this [doing a cover shoot for REDBOOK] is a nice way to do it. I don't mind being the center of attention in controlled, comfortable environments like this. The red-carpet spotlight is a little bit more nerve-racking when you haven't been doing it all the time.

Who are you now versus five years ago?
I am stronger. I'm more mature, but I'm more carefree. I feel like I'm in a transitional period. I'm really trying to get comfortable in my own skin, because it's not easy to do when you're in the spotlight all the time. I don't want someone photographing my cellulite—I can't take it! See, this is where the push and pull comes in. It's a very strange paradox: I don't really want to share all my dirt with people, yet I want to be real. I want to be successful, but I don't really have what it takes to do it comfortably.

You experienced such huge and sudden success in the 1990s. How did you stay grounded and not go off the deep end?
I've been off the deep end, but in a different way. I struggled a lot internally with my fame, and coping with it has been very difficult. My fame made me very introverted in a lot of ways, and I'm just dealing with that now. I was at the point where I would never look anyone in the eye. It was like living in prison. People would recognize me, which was, to me, a horrific thing. They wanted something from me, or they wanted too much, or they wanted to criticize me, or they wanted to praise me when I didn't feel worthy of it, and it embarrassed me. Sometimes at concerts I would look out at the fans and think, How can you guys even give me the time of day? They were so loving and giving, and I thought, I do my best and I love what I do, but I'm not worthy of all that! It was very, very hard. But I've learned that a lot of my reaction was just my own insecurity. My husband told me, "You don't understand how much you affect those people—don't take it personally. You've got to let your ego go." I realize now, it's about them. I don't have to be as good as they think I am. I don't have to be anything. I just have to be myself, and if they think it's fantastic and they love it and they're getting something from it, then that's what matters.

What are your priorities now?
My health in every way—my emotional health, my mental health, my physical health. Over the last few years, I've realized how fragile I am. How are you taking care of yourself? I'm not such a slave to pleasing everyone, which I think is a female tendency. I take more time for myself; that's a very big part of mental, emotional, and physical health. I'm starting yoga very soon, which is exciting. I've been a vegetarian now for about 15 years, and I eat a lot of raw food.

Did your new priorities come from major life changes—having a child and turning 40? Those are big changes.
My son is 6 now, and the timing of being 40 and the fact that I've been through so much with my career.... Now, I relate more strongly to those lyrics about being a woman in a man's world than when I wrote them. I feel even more adamant that the world is still that way than I ever did before. Where do you see this in your own life? If you are a woman at any age, you have this instinct that feeds you your future script: You've got to abandon your tomboy heroes. You've got to become the skirt. You have to consider educating yourself because these days you're expected to be more independent, instead of marrying your bread and butter. But then, you're going to have children, which means you'll abandon your career at that point, so what was the education for after all? It's quite an issue we women face, and if we're really talented, we also face the question: Do we abandon our talent? Can we do it all? Can we do it all halfway? A lot of women can't accept that. I know now how powerful we are and how hard it is to be that powerful. I'm not saying we're stronger by choice. No, we have to be. It's almost a survival instinct. It is—that's why I used the word "instinct" earlier, because as a girl, you're born with this ability. I'm not against men at all. I love men—we need men for so many things. I just have more to say about what it is to be a woman now than I ever did—and I thought I'd said everything I needed to say! [Laughs]

Do women face certain prejudices in the entertainment industry?
Yes. "Women have babies, women get fat, women are emotional"—all those things. They're all true, but you can't just take our goods and throw the rest of us away! That's what I like to sing about. I still feel the need to stand up, even in my own personal life.

What's an example in your personal life of how you've stood up for yourself?
In our household, just with domestic things with my son. My husband and I are both good parents. He is great with our son. But it's up to me to give my husband responsibilities to take on. If I don't, they're automatically mine. In a way, we women take on more than we need to sometimes. We don't need to control everything. So choose what you want to control, and usually what you want to control the most are the things that you enjoy. I try to prioritize that way. For instance, I love doing laundry.

What do you like about it?
I like handling my son's school clothes and his little socks. I like putting new sheets on our bed. It's soothing; it's therapeutic. Do I expect my husband to do that? No! If I want things done a certain way, I don't expect him to do that. He's very good at doing dishes, and you know what? I rarely load the dishwasher now because I just stopped taking responsibility for it.

Now that Eja's getting older, will you give him certain household responsibilities?
Absolutely. He already likes cooking. He doesn't love cleaning up his toys, but he'll do it. A couple of months ago I started saying, "Eja, I'm your mummy, not your slave. I am not going to be picking that up for you." Now I'll ask, "Eja, will you please grab my water?" and he'll say, "Mom, I'm not your slave!"

What do you hope for Eja's childhood?
I would like him to be well-rounded, humble, and honest, without having to be deprived to develop that character. When you don't come from struggle, gaining appreciation is a quality that's difficult to come by. So we go out of our way to try to keep him appreciative. We don't keep him in a bubble.

What lessons did your childhood teach you that have come into play with Eja?
I didn't have a choice growing up but to be insecure because others had more. But I'm grateful for it because it also taught me humility. Now that I have and I'm not a have-not, I've learned how important it is to maintain humility.

What are the holidays like for you and your family? Your siblings are still in Canada. Do you see them at Christmas?
Last year we had a big Christmas all together, and that was really great. Usually, though, Mutt, Eja, and I do a very low-key Christmas. It's too commercial for us, personally. We get involved in the community. There are a couple of programs in our neighborhood where we collect toys and donate them.

Has music always been a big part of your home life? Do you listen to music a lot when you're at home?
No. I don't really enjoy music as background. I need to get everything from it, get lost in it. When I was a teenager, I'd be running around with my friends, and if my favorite song came on, I'd say, "Shut up!"

What music have you gotten lost in lately?
I listen to so many things. I put on songs by Michael Bublé that I just love; I can get lost in Etta James.

Are the songs you're writing for your next album more introspective than usual?
Yeah, definitely. They're about the insecurity that the spotlight highlighted for me. I found it so hard to take the criticism—not the professional criticism but the personal criticism. I don't want people to care about my horrors. It frustrates me and makes me focus on the wrong things. I want to focus on my songs. So I struggle with that, and I'm just getting to the point now where I can honestly say, "I either get comfortable in my own skin, or I quit this industry."

What kind of messages do you want to convey to your women listeners?
I think for women's mental health, honesty is crucial. We're way too superficial. We need to be able to laugh at ourselves. I want to feel okay with being me.

Does everything you experience or feel somehow find its way into your songs?
Absolutely. Everything I write is inspired by something that's coming from me somewhere. In what ways is creating a fragrance like creating a song? Normally, I put my creative ideas into music, so it was very different putting it into something more tangible—in a bottle. But I still wanted it to be original and reflect who I am.

How did you approach Shania Starlight as compared with your first fragrance?
For the new one, the idea of romance and having something for evening appealed to me. And like my music, I wanted it to go in that direction of female strength. That's who I am right now in my life and where I'll probably be, it seems, for a while. So it's not necessarily something you'd wear just because your boyfriend thinks it smells great, but something that you feel good putting on yourself. I find we have less and less time nowadays to do that sort of thing, and it's all about those few moments of self-indulgence and feeling glamorous.

How do you imagine your future?
I was always very solitary growing up, and that made me creative. Then, all of a sudden, I became successful with music, which became an extremely extroverted thing. Now I'm somewhere in the middle, trying to balance my wish for solitude with the exposure fame brings. If you talk about the far future, I'll probably be in the Canadian wilderness somewhere, living among the moose and bear. [Laughs]

What do you strive for in your music now?
I want to continue to write and record things that affect people in a positive way, and keep trying to make songs that are meaningful. What I write and sing is a very big part of who I really am. I just want to write music that matters.

Behind the Scenes with Shania Twain

Sweet, energetic, and flexible—those are the words our editors used to describe Shania Twain after this month’s cover shoot. Here, more scoop from that day.

REDBOOK art director, Emily Furlani, talked food, fitness, and family with Shania during a break in shooting. “Shania is super in to taking care of her body,” said Emily. “She mentioned she’d been on a raw food diet for a year and said she’d started the diet ‘for the discipline’—that was pretty impressive.” The conversation then moved to children. “We shared this mom moment of discussing how tough it is to manage our kid’s dietary restrictions—my daughter is allergic to egg and her son is only eating raw foods, which means no egg. It’s hard to manage when the kids are at school,” said Emily.

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