Shania Twain announces comeback after losing voice
NEW YORK: Shania Twain, the crossover country star whose huge success in the 1990s was followed by troubled years in which she lost her voice and husband, is ready with a comeback album.
Twain, the top-selling woman in country music history, announced that she will put out a fifth album, “Now,” on Sept 29 — her first studio release since 2002.
The Canadian-born singer unveiled the album’s first single, “Life’s About to Get Good,” a buoyant tune about surviving setbacks that, true to Twain’s style, is driven by a pop rhythm.
“Life’s about pain / It’s all about forgiving and the will to walk away,” Twain sings.
The five-time Grammy winner previously said about writing the single: “I was at home looking out at the ocean and I said to myself, ‘Here I am stuck in this past of negativity, but it’s so beautiful out. I’m not in the mood to write a ‘feeling-sorry-for-myself’ song.” She continued, “You can’t have the good without the bad. And that’s what the song ended up being about.”
Twain, 51, wrote the album on her own after working on previous music with her then husband, the reclusive producer Mutt Lange. The two divorced after Lange began a relationship with Twain’s close friend, the singer said. Faced with both emotional turmoil and dysphonia, a vocal ailment, Twain said she lost her voice and required extensive therapy and treatment to sing again.
Twain, who has already returned to live performances, said she had to overcome fear to work on “Now.”
“Of course it was scary coming out after all these years and writing an album on my own, which I did on purpose to push myself and really find and rediscover myself as a songwriter,” she said on Friday on NBC’s “Today” show before a morning concert in New York’s Rockefeller Centre. Twain has sold more than 75 million albums as she found success beyond the confines of country music with songs such as “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” “You’re Still the One” and “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!”
Her sound, which brings pop production and rhythms to her country vocals, has proven to be a major influence in Nashville, with younger country artistes routinely pursuing the crossover style.