For the record

Shania has sold more than 85 million records, including That Don’t Impress Me Much, Man! I Feel Like A Woman and You’re Still The One. ✶✶✶✶✶✶ She has a teenage son, Eja, from her marriage to record producer Robert Lange. The pair divorced and she married Frederic Thiebaud in 2011. ✶✶✶✶✶✶ Her new album, Now, out on 29 September, is her first studio release in 15 years.

Ambition can get in our way and mess up our priorities. Instead, I like to ask: what are your intentions? What motivates you? Where does your enthusiasm come from? For me, it’s the desire to be my best and make people happy. I want my music to matter to them and to touch their lives. Those are my wishes, and that’s what I set out to do.

I’m more in tune now with what I need. I went through over-exercising and injuring myself, then having to give my body a break. So it’s about listening more to myself. I force myself to relax, but I’m a very active person, and antsy and restless. Song writing is a great meditative and reflective time for me. I’d rather sit with my guitar than watch TV.

Happiness is there all the time. If you lift your head and open your eyes, it’s there. You have to remind yourself to do that, though. Recently, I was sitting on a beach writing a song called Life’s About To Get Good. When I lifted my head between writing lines, I thought: ‘Here I am writing this broken song with such an incredible view.’ I feel like I’ve been in transition for a long time. But life is pretty beautiful. And if you’re not looking, you’re not going to see it.