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Something was wrong. Whenever she tried to sing, the old power would not come. The pitch was wobbly. Her voice was choked. And nothing seemed to help.
“When you get older, you have so much experience at falling and getting up. You're not going to stop falling. But you will get better at getting up and brushing yourself off. I believe that. I've lived it.
In 2003, Shania Twain, a five-time Grammy winner and the top-selling female country artist in history, started losing the gift that had taken her from poverty to stardom. She wasn't sure she would ever sing again.
"I was slowly losing my voice and slowly losing my confidence,” she has said of that time in her life. “And nothing that I could achieve in my career made me feel good enough."
What could feel worse than losing a voice that had saved your life? Perhaps losing your marriage. A few years after she left the limelight, Twain's husband, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who was also her cowriter and producer, told her their 14-year marriage was over. Within weeks she discovered the reason: He'd been cheating with her best friend.
Twain plunged into a depression. “There were days I didn't really care if tomorrow came,” she once admitted.
This story, though, is not a sad country song but a feel-good pop anthem. Some 16 years after the hard times started, Twain is back with a revitalized voice, a happy second marriage, a return engagement in Las Vegas and even a budding film career. The title of her second movie, I Still Believe, out March 20, could describe her own comeback story.
"Survival is everything,” Twain says over a glass of white wine. “I was in quicksand. I panicked, like everybody does, but I didn't surrender. I found a way out."
We're seated at a long wooden table in the sewing room of her home, a horse farm on the outskirts of Las Vegas. This is where Twain designed the costumes for her current Vegas show — Let's Go! — which draws heavily on her long run of hits (such as “Forever and for Always,” “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!").
Today, Twain is wearing a brown ball cap and a white hoodie handed down from her son, Eja (pronounced “Asia"), now 18. Onstage, however, her wardrobe is more stylish than ever. At 54, Twain doesn't shy away from baring the midriff that once put Nashville traditionalists in a dither.
"I'm more comfortable with my body now than I was when I was younger. It was really a struggle back then,” she says. “But with age, you ask, OK, how many more years do I have to live, and do I really want to live them feeling negative about myself and the things I can't change? "
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