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The early years: Her birth name is Eileen Regina Edwards and she was born August 28, 1965 in Windsor, Ontario and raised in Timmins, Ontario. She is Irish and French-Canadian and was raised with the Ojibwa Indian Culture. Yes she is over 40, but she is wearing her age very well. Her parents were Clarence and Sharon Edwards. They got 3 girls; Jill, Carrie-Ann and Eileen. Eileen is the second oldest. When she was 2 years old her father left his family and they never heard from him after that. A couple of years later Sharon met and married Gerald ‘Jerry’ Twain (he was a native of the Objiwas tribe) – thus the Twain name. Jerry Twain adopted Sharon’s daughters who became members of the tribe (at 50%). Eileen was 4 at the time. Suddenly there were 5 kids in the little home of Sharon and Jerry. They had two boys and called them Mark and Darryl.
From the beginning it was a music loving family. They were very short on cash so the possibilities were small. “There were plenty of mornings when I took only a mustard sandwich to school”, she recalls. “For me it wasn’t a sad situation. I just didn’t want to go to school one more day and have to make an excuse for why I didn’t have a lunch. It taught me a lot of good things in life.” Since the beginning of her career, she has been involved in two charities that are dedicated to helping children in need - Kids Café and Breakfast for Learning – both dedicated to helping children who’s having a hard life.
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Trying to make it: Sharon saw Eileen’s talent when she was very young. At the age of 3 years old, Eileen began to sing in the restaurants' juke -boxes. Her first songs were the ones her mother was teaching her. It was the same year that Eileen started to play the guitar. Jerry taught her. At the age of 6 Eileen was asked to sing at the school fair. She performed ‘Country Roads’ of John Denver. The pupils, a bit jeering nicknamed her "Twang". This event has let a mark on her. In 1975 at the age of 10 she was introduced to country music. She started to perform in taverns and pubs in Timmins and she participated in amateur competitions, where she did very well. She performed with songs which were not really of her age and she wrote her own. With the assistance of her mother, Eileen got to on to perform 5 songs, and people stayed to hear her. "My mother lived for my career. We were extremely poor when I was a kid, and my mother had five children and no food to feed them. She knew I was talented, and she lived with the hope that my abilities were my chance to do something special,” she recalls. Jerry now decided to move to the Indian Objiwas reservation 65 km away from Timmins. Eileen learned how to snare hares and she came to like big spaces. In 1977 Eileen participated to the Opry North tour. She did the opening of the show performing: ‘I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry’ by Hank Williams. As a teenager she was already a name on the Canadian country scene. When she wasn’t helping her father in the woods in the Northern Canada she was singing in tv-shows or helping her mother doing her job pumping gas at a gas station.
In early 1984, she took her first trip to Nashville with Toronto DJ and Record Producer, Stan Campbell to record three songs. After a falling out with Campbell's wife-partner, the recordings were never released. She also sang a duet performance on an album by Canadian artist Tim Denis. In 1987 the tragedy happened. Eileen’s parents sadly died in a car crash, she was only 22 at the time and she had to take care of her younger sister and brothers. Her musical career was now on hold. She and her half-brothers Mark and Darryl, and sister Carrie-Ann moved to Huntsville, Ontario, where she supported them by performing at the nearby Deerhurts Resort. |
It did happen: In the year of 1991 Eileen adopted the name Shania – means “On my way” in Ojibway. She was also invited to record a demo tape. That led to her first recording contract with Richard Frank of Mercury Nashville. Shania only co-wrote one of the songs (God ain’t gonna getcha for that”) on her self-titled album from 1993. The first two singles from the album (“What made you say that” and “Dance with the one that brought you”) peaked at #55 on the Billboard Country Charts. By the end of the year, the album had sold less than 250,000 copies. She also made videos for the two songs and it was one of them that got rock producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange interested in her. He called her and offered to produce her and to write songs with her. After many telephone conversations, they met in person at Nashville’s Fan Fair in June 1993. Shania and Mutt married on December 28, 1993 in Huntsville, just six months after they met.
They started working on a second album, and in 1995 “The Woman in Me” produced her first #1 single, "Any man of Mine”. The album topped the country charts for months and crossed over to mainstream charts, peaking at No. 5. As of 2007 it has sold over 12 million copies. This album went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well as the Academy of Country Music award for Album of the Year; the latter group also awarded Shania as Best New Female Vocalist. It is also from this album we find hits like: “Whose bed have your boots been under?” “(If you’re not in I for love) I’m outta here” and “God bless the child”.
In 1997, she released her follow-up album, ”Come on over”. This was the album that established Shania as a successful crossover artist. Selling 172,000 copies out of the gate, the album was at first seen by many as a disappointment, given the massive success of her last album. But slowly, the album started racking up sales. It never hit the top spot though, but with the multi-chart hit single "You’re still the one”, sales skyrocketed. Songs like “You’ve got a way”, “Honey I’m home", “Don’t be stupid”, “That don’t impress me much”, “From this moment on” and “Man! I feel like a woman” joined the 12 songs that eventually saw release as singles. Over the next two years, the album stayed on the charts all over the world. When the dust finally settled, “Come on over” had sold 20 million copies in the United States and 34 million worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album of all time by a female artist, and the biggest-selling country album of all time. Who would have thought of that back in the hard days? Shania wouldn’t: "It was never my dream to be a star. That was my parents dream. I guess they prayed real hard," she recalls. Shania was a big success now. Songs from the album won four Grammy Awards over the next two years. Despite the album's sale record it wasn't able to top the Billboard 200, reaching a peak of #2. It did however top the charts for 11 weeks in the UK. Additionally, the album set the record for the longest ever stay in the Top 20 of The Billboard 200, remaining in the Top 20 for 99 weeks.
Shania’s mainstream pop acceptance was further helped by her appearance in the first edition of the “VH1 Divas” concert in 1998, where she sang alongside Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey and Aretha Franklin. 1998 was also the year where she got on a concert tour for the first time aided by her manager Jon Landau. The “Come on over”-tour shows were greatly received by the audiences around the world and answered critics who speculated in her talent of singing and performing live. After a very long tour Shania needed a break to have some family-life. In 2001 the couple had a son, Eja. |
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After "Come on over": In November 2002 Shania was ready with a new album: “Up!” About a year later she began touring to promote the album. “Up!” was released as a double album, with three different "remix" discs - pop (a red CD), country (a green CD) and Indian/Asian (a blue CD). For North American markets, the pop disc was paired with the country disc and in international markets, the pop disc was paired with the Indian/Latin disc. If one wanted to listen to the country disc, it was possible on the internet. The Indian/Latin disc was recorded in Mumbai, India. This album was given 4 out of 5 stars by Rolling Stone magazine, and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, selling 874,000 in the first week alone. It charted at the top for five weeks. The first single from the album "I’m gonna getcha good!", became a modest country hit that did not do much on the pop charts, however in the UK it peaking at #4 in the UK singles chart. The follow-up single "Up!" reached the top 15 in the country charts but failed to reach the pop top 40. The third single from the album would be the most successful. The romantic ballad "Forever and for always" was released as a single in April 2003 and peaked at number four on the country chart and number one on the Adult Contemporary chart, spending six weeks there. "She’s not just a pretty face" was a country top-ten hit, while the last North American single, "It only hurts when I’m breathing", made the top 20 on both Country and AC. By the year 2007 , “Up!” has sold 5.5 million copies in the U.S. (Certified by the RIAA as 11 times platinum due to the organization's rules regarding double albums, which are counted as 2 units for certifications) and over 17 million copies worldwide.
In 2004, she released the “Greatest Hits” album, with three new tracks. In 2007 , it has sold over 3.5 million copies in the U.S., and over 7.5 million worldwide. The first single, the multi-format duet "Party for two", made the country top ten with Billy Currington, while the pop version with Mark McGrath made top ten in the United Kingdom and Germany. The follow-up singles, "Don’t!" and "I ain’t no quitter” did for some reason not fare as well, the former made top twenty AC, while the latter didn't gain enough airplay to even crack the country top 40. In August 2005, when she hit 40, she released the single "Shoes" from the the hit tv-series “Desperate Housewives” soundtrack; it barely entered the top 30 on the country charts and did not chart elsewhere due to the lack of a video or promotion from Shania.
The future: At the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 16, 2007, Shania said that she was currently writing songs for a new album, and that she is doing a "lot of soul searching" and "indulging in the writing". When asked with new music will come out she said "next year".
The year 2008 went by without new music from Shania. There was a good reason though. A sad one. She and Mutt was going through a divorce and she had to think about their son and how she should go on after that. Her family asked her to use her music as theraphy.
In the spring of 2009 there was rumours about new music. Nothing happed though. When asked Shania told about her progress in writing but she couldn't say when the public will hear new music from her. We just have to wait. |
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