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IT CAN’T be easy returning to something after 15 years. Especially when that something is a very successful music career.
There would be so many reasons to run in the opposite direction: new, younger artists, a different musical landscape, fans who can praise or tear you down on social media in an instant...
If you’re Shania Twain though, you return in style and you make cementing your place as the queen of country pop look effortless.
Canadian-born Shania, 52, returned this year with a new album – her first full-length one in 15 years – titled NOW, which hit number one on the UK album charts shortly after its release.
“It’s a big undertaking to put another album out,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Especially because I wrote all the music alone, which was another huge commitment and responsibility, so that was a bit nerve-wracking. But now that it’s finished, I’m relieved and excited.”
I meet Shania at a listening session for the album. In my head I can see her in her 1999 music video for her hit song Man! I Feel Like A Woman, peeking out from under her top hat and purring: “Let’s go, girls!”
Shania is warm and understated in person – and you can sense a quiet confidence brimming under the surface as she talks about her music.
“Just getting to the point where I would even be able to make a record, record the voice, that was the scariest part, and committing myself to writing it alone,” she explains.
When we talk again a few weeks later, this time
on the telephone, she’s completed one “scary” mission – putting her music out there.
There’s a very catchy tune called Life’s About To Get Good on the new record, and I wonder if she ever considered that as a title.
She explains her choice of NOW: “Since I haven’t had an album in so long and fans have been waiting so many years, it was more of a statement to say that this who I was, I was someone 15 years ago and I’m a different person now.
“And also, being ready now, I’d had a lot of vocal problems, that’s the main reason why I wasn’t able to make albums prior to now, the last 15 years has been a long transition to now.”
She’s referencing a struggle with Lyme Disease and nearly losing her voice for good.
She says: “I lost my voice. It was terrible and so for seven years I really just believed I would never even know what was wrong with it, it was very scary and very sad, obviously you know, I felt like I’d lost one of the great joys of my life. It was very long and painful, I mean the first seven years were just really a mystery of what was wrong with it, so that was terrifying and then the last seven years have been all about the rehabilitation and hard work.”
There was also her divorce from her producer husband Robert “Mutt” Lange following 15 years of marriage after he had an affair with her best friend.
Shania is very clear though when I ask her if this is in any way a divorce album.
She says: “Well, I would describe this as a transition album. I went through a very long transitional phase of recovering from a lot of things, reflecting on my whole life and recovering my voice... so it’s definitely not a divorce album. There’s just way too much that’s happened over the last 16 years.
“It’s more about a much longer phase in my life than just the divorce period, and it’s also helped put things in perspective. “There are so many more things in my life of importance and that’s why there’s a lot of positivity in the album as well. There’s a lot of optimism, I touch on the dark side and I also touch on coming out the other end.”
And she’s right. The album is dangerously catchy and a few of the songs – anthems such as Swingin’ With My Eyes Closed – you can sense will be played on repeat.
Shania is a five-time Grammy award winner and has sold more than 75 million albums. Last year she ranked ninth on the Forbes Highest Paid Women in Music list, with a rumoured fortune of around £20.7 million ($27.5m), one position above other music big hitters such as Celine Dion.
Before her recent return to the studio, she performed regularly as part of a residency in Las Vegas.
Fans won’t be disappointed with her new album.
“I really do hope that it inspires people... this album still has all the optimism that my other music has, but there is more of a contrast between reality and how difficult life can really be and also how great it feels to survive those times,” she says.
Around the time that I’m talking to Shania, the film industry is reeling from sexual harassment claims against a string of high-profile figures.
“I’m inspired by the fact this light is being finally turned on and in a really big way. I think culturally for the kids growing up right now in this time, maybe they will be liberated from this, from what was considered more of the norm,” she says.
“The winds of change are here and I’m excited about it. It’s a dark, unfortunate thing to be going through for the women that are having to go back through their pasts and deal with all of this in the press and it’s taken courage, but it is such a fantastic exposure that is so beyond necessary, so I’m inspired by what is going on right now. “I hope we never stop highlighting that, so that our kids grow up with a different norm.”