Also her husband ran off with her best friend. But then she ended up marrying the best friend’s ex husband who was a major upgrade so she really won in the end.
They weren't. Her husband and best friend were cheating with each other. Shania and her current husband decided to stay friends and were friends for nearly 2 decades before getting together.
Edit: Mutt left her in 2008. And she remarried in 2011. Somehow I got it in my head her left her a few years earlier and the divorce took a while.
Shania also had suspicions that her ex, Mutt, was cheating on her but every time she would go to her best friend and be told she was crazy or making it up. It really fucked with her mind so I'm glad she eventually ended up with someone that was good for her
i really dont understand how people can be so disgustingly selfish.
like obviously it would be easier to just break up with the partner and then go be with the other person, but they don't because kinds of people either delude themselves into justifying their bullshit and pain inflicted on someone they supposedly care about (when really they only care about themselves), or get a fucked up thrill out of sneaking around.
There was also a financial element in it too as her ex was her manager so it was beneficial for him to remain married to her so he could continue to profit off her career. It was all around disgusting and I was so angry at the cheaters the first time I read about it
Edit: Mutt was a producer and helped her write songs, not her manager
He wasn’t actually her manger, and I’m not sure if a financial element had much to do with it. Her ex was Mutt Lange who cowrote and produced not just her biggest albums but many other big acts as well. He is worth a couple hundred million on his own.
Thanks, made the edit. I do think it's still possible he had financial reasons to stay married to her even tho he's already well off. It's not like there isn't a precedent for rich ppl wanting to get ever more wealthy but admittedly, that is speculation on my part
Wikipedia says that she was acting as Twain's secretary at the time so yeah, very integrated into the singer's life. Probably made cheating easier since she always knew her schedule
Yeah, it was in my 20s and it was a 6 year relationship but we weren’t married. At least I was a little younger and it wasn’t a husband, but damn that came up in therapy for years. Unfortunately, I carried trust issues for female friends for quite a while.
The way the world (and especially the economy) works, the breakup of a long-term relationship can leave you financially screwed. Therefore people are incentivized to keep a relationship they no longer care about, going. Because of how much they stand to lose, materially and parentally. And even taking finances out of the equation, a selfish person might still see value in stringing a person along: for example a selfish guy could think it's genius to have one woman to clean up after him and another woman to suck his dick.
There are a bunch of relationships there are only still going because one person hasn't figured out where they'd live if they broke up.
Could maybe make "You're Still The One" a bit of a bummer, since that one is about her and Mutt Lange, but I remember an interview where she had a good perspective about it, something like it belongs to the fans and their relationships now
Edit: I think it was on Song Exploder, which is a very cool podcast btw
Is that a revenge story though? Seems to me that it turned out well for every person involved lol. I don't think the other couple cared about that one bit
Well, the thing about people willing to cheat is that often they’re willing to cheat again. There’s several crude adages about the Other Woman not being able to relax once she snags her lover, because now she has to watch out for Other Women.
My father in law has a saying about his ex (thankfully not related to my wife) “if the bitch does it once, she’ll do it again.” And he’s been right so many times about her.
Her husband was also her producer and songwriting partner. Everything changed for her, and her albums became intensely personal. Also, his name is Mutt Lange and he is the reason music sounded the way it did in the eighties. Huge and clean. AC/DC, the Cars, Def Leppard, a million songs with huge drums and anthemic choruses.
I have a buddy whose fiance cheated on him. The guy she cheated with was also in a relationship. My buddy and the other girl that got cheated on got to know each other when the affair came out and are now engaged, and she's infinitely better than the old one. Sometimes it works out OK.
Two of my techs working out of a small town in northern BC. They spent a lot of time on the road or on call. They were living in company houses separated by a back fence. Each was having an affair with the others wife.
At some point the women both found out, and decided that each preferred the affair partner to their spouse. The men, who apparently were agreeable, swapped partners.
It absolutely is unsettling. Shania herself has spoken about how much she hated that part of her childhood, saying, "I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived." It really underscores the severe poverty and necessity that drove her family.
I saw her perform at the Zoo, the Central, I think it was called in South Porcupine when I was in college. I was underage so they snuck me in the back. She was an amazing performer, and this was when her first cd came out. I bought a cd, signed by herself, the label looked like it was printed from a printer. She looked so young in that crowd. It took big balls to accomplish what she did. Fast forward 30 years and I meet up with her at the check out counter in Wanaka, New Zealand where I lived. Had a great chat in French. Wonderful woman, and a true aspiration. She owned a station in the area, not sure if she still does.
Omg I looked it up and its terrible. She could only perform after last call, made $20 a night, and sometimes the bars had that metal screen so it was like being in a cage. Her mom would wake her up at 2 or 3 am to go perform.
“Although she expressed a dislike for singing in those bars, she believes that this was her own kind of performing-arts school on the road. She has said of the ordeal, "My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought, 'I hate this.' I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived." She said that the art of creating, of actually writing songs, "was very different from performing them and became progressively important".”
I find this hard to believe. What strip club manager is thinking "you know what this place needs to keep the mood going at midnight? A 3rd grader singing live music!"
There's a nonzero number of disgusting clientele who would absolutely be into that.
This is a friendly reminder that Reddit used to have "jailbait" subreddits where men would post pics of young girls in revealing outfits, and when it was banned the users freaked out about being censored
Yeah we've got some relatively "family friendly" bars here in Wisconsin, so maybe her part of Canada is similar, but the "until 1 am" thing is still pretty extreme. Like it's not too weird to bring the kids to a Friday fish fry, but those people have cleared out by 8 or so.
Basically the entirety of Ontario between North Bay and the Manitoba border is untamed wilderness, with only small pockets of civilization in the form of towns like Timmins and some First Nation reservations. The entire region has a population under 800k in a region that would be the 35th largest country on the planet were it independent.
Lived in Timmins all my life, can say that this used to be a very stereotypical Canadian small town where nobody needs to lock their doors. Very friendly and little to no crime. That changed drastically in the past 10-15 years though. It's actually kind of sad to see just how bad it is. It's mostly theft and drugs that's the issue but lot of assaults too.
We have more UK-style pubs here than US-style bars.
The pubs often have live entertainment and, when Shania was growing up in the 1970s, you absolutely could bring your kids along for a show - even the Legion let kids stay for the shows. Actually you could still bring your kids today but you'd get some sideye if you didn't bring ear protection and take them home after the first set lol
It wasn't typical for the kid to be the show, but Céline Dion did a lot of it too. People smoked so much in the 70s that must have been awful for little lungs :(
My mom took me to bars as a kid (in Ottawa), as she loved live blues music. But it was usually like the Sunday afternoon jam session, or maybe dinner time and I’d have my French fries and colouring book. Definitely not midnight.
My dad went in to the social security office to explain that he had lied about his age to be able to work and they just handed him the “lied about your age to work/join the military” form. It was very common back in the day.
By the time my dad was 10 he had three jobs and was the sole source of income for his parents and three siblings. Still finished school, though. Before school he worked for the milk man getting the horses hooked up to the wagon. After school he was a veterinarian's assistant. And on Saturdays he sold fish at the market.
It was the 40s, and they were very poor. Grandpa was a drunk. But the whole neighbourhood (in Toronto) knew their situation, so first the milk man told him to come work for him, then the fishmonger. Then the vet. Dad said the vet just walked up to him when he was playing ball in the street and said "You know who I am? You know where my clinic is? From now on you come there straight after school and you work for me. See you tomorrow." And he said if his grades dropped he'd fire him.
Things did get better for them and both my grandparents found work eventually, but my dad worked for the vet practically full-time until after high school, long after the original vet had retired and sold the practice. Then they told him if he wasn't going to university he should start a career, and one of them got a friend to hire him in sales, and he flew up the ladder. My family growing up was basically the Wheelers from Stranger Things.
And one of the vets he worked for went back to school, became an OBGYN, and delivered my brother and me.
As someone who frequents bars, one of the last things I'd want to have to listen to at midnight is an 8 year old singing, even one with her level of talent.
I've seen some of the best shows I've ever seen in dives, but the musicians were at least teenagers or higher. An elementary schooler would never be allowed in.
Born in 1965, so 8 years old would've been 1973. That poor kiddo. And as 40-something mom to a daughter, my imagination worries that more than simply singing in bars happened.
Human decency still existed. If you are uncomfortable with an 8 year old girl on stage singing in a bar full of drunks today, you would've been uncomfortable 50, 100 years ago.
If you were comfortable with an 8 year old girl on stage singing in a bar full of drunks 50 years ago, you'd still be comfortable with it today. You may hide it better because of societal norms but the underlying feeling doesn't change.
I remember seeing a documentary on her. Her friend from school was slipping her bags of milk (Canada) from her own home to help Shania feed her siblings whenever she could.
She lived in my great grandfather’s house with them kids. We lived down the street. The brothers would climb to the roof and jump from house to house along the street
As an adult now, i totally understand lmaoo but as a kid? Leaping from house to house and risking life and limb like an unsupervised mini Batman?? Sign me the fuck up!
Yeah adult parent me has a very different visceral reaction than childhood me (who broke an ankle rollerblading off the roof of a park pavilion, what the first 2 times went just fine).
I scrolled through her Wikipedia since it's linked to this TIL and saw this pic. I know it's not in style today but it was when I was a teenage boy and she's smoking in that pic
I remember reading an article years ago about how scientists determined that facial symmetry was a key component of beauty, and in their study Shania Twain had the most symmetrical face they were able to find. And I thought to myself, sounds about right
Same although I still do. I am so here for her post-Lyme Disease era and loved her last couple of albums, I think she looks and sounds amazing at 60 and the little 90s girl is now a 30-something lesbian with an unyielding crush.
The reason you don't hear much from her is because she's a good and decent person. She moved to Switzerland decades ago but still has her Canadian roots. She also promoted and essentially bumped Avril Lavigne into the spotlight as well.
I think if she was POS she'd be in the news lots more
I remember them talking about her navel, her mediocre first album, and people being upset that she wasn't indigenous because her stepfather was and "Shania" was supposed to be Ojibwe.
In the early 2000s I was leaving a Sox or Cubs game and there was this 8-9 year old boy wearing a cowboy costume, very similar to Woody from Toy Story, playing a violin for tips to the crowds of people leaving, while his parents stood by. I've never forgotten the dead look in his eyes
I saw "Behind the Music" - her parents would wake her up and take her to bars at midnight when they stopped serving alcohol and she would sing for an hour for tips. It was bad but probably not as bad as it sounds.
I listened to the podcast she did with Louis Theroux where she talked about this. Apparently at that age it would be illegal for her to perform whilst the bar is serving alcohol… so she’d have to start performing after bars closed.
The men would obviously be absolutely hammered at that point, meaning their treatment of her was, questionable.
Damn, Shania's a legit OG. Respect level 100! Ppl should know it's not always glitz n glam in the biz, sometimes it's pure grind. FYI, she didn't just 'rise to fame', she crawled up from the very bottom, much love.
She was singing at a casino when her mom and step dad died. She quit and went home to take care of her siblings. Once the youngest graduated high school and was out of the house, she went to Nashville.
Her name isn’t really Shania. Her step dad was a native and she got a lot of flak for using a native word as her stage name because she’s not native.
She also helped her parents by planting trees as a job. Her mom and step dad and her worked together. She thinks that’s when she got lyme’s disease.
Also her husband ran off with her best friend. But then she ended up marrying the best friend’s ex husband who was a major upgrade so she really won in the end.
Uno reverse card, I guess.
Sounds like they were swinging.
They weren't. Her husband and best friend were cheating with each other. Shania and her current husband decided to stay friends and were friends for nearly 2 decades before getting together.
Edit: Mutt left her in 2008. And she remarried in 2011. Somehow I got it in my head her left her a few years earlier and the divorce took a while.
Shania also had suspicions that her ex, Mutt, was cheating on her but every time she would go to her best friend and be told she was crazy or making it up. It really fucked with her mind so I'm glad she eventually ended up with someone that was good for her
i really dont understand how people can be so disgustingly selfish.
like obviously it would be easier to just break up with the partner and then go be with the other person, but they don't because kinds of people either delude themselves into justifying their bullshit and pain inflicted on someone they supposedly care about (when really they only care about themselves), or get a fucked up thrill out of sneaking around.
Utter trash.
There was also a financial element in it too as her ex was her manager so it was beneficial for him to remain married to her so he could continue to profit off her career. It was all around disgusting and I was so angry at the cheaters the first time I read about it
Edit: Mutt was a producer and helped her write songs, not her manager
He wasn’t actually her manger, and I’m not sure if a financial element had much to do with it. Her ex was Mutt Lange who cowrote and produced not just her biggest albums but many other big acts as well. He is worth a couple hundred million on his own.
Thanks, made the edit. I do think it's still possible he had financial reasons to stay married to her even tho he's already well off. It's not like there isn't a precedent for rich ppl wanting to get ever more wealthy but admittedly, that is speculation on my part
And wasn't the best friend an employee too? Like a house manager/caretaker for one of their properties?
Wikipedia says that she was acting as Twain's secretary at the time so yeah, very integrated into the singer's life. Probably made cheating easier since she always knew her schedule
I went through something similar. It’s excruciating and the effects last for a very long time.
Ultimate Judas type betrayal personally I’d just check out if it was me
Yeah, it was in my 20s and it was a 6 year relationship but we weren’t married. At least I was a little younger and it wasn’t a husband, but damn that came up in therapy for years. Unfortunately, I carried trust issues for female friends for quite a while.
The way the world (and especially the economy) works, the breakup of a long-term relationship can leave you financially screwed. Therefore people are incentivized to keep a relationship they no longer care about, going. Because of how much they stand to lose, materially and parentally. And even taking finances out of the equation, a selfish person might still see value in stringing a person along: for example a selfish guy could think it's genius to have one woman to clean up after him and another woman to suck his dick.
There are a bunch of relationships there are only still going because one person hasn't figured out where they'd live if they broke up.
I think being named Mutt is the first red flag
No it's short for Mud Butt so it's fine.
Mud Butt Cheater Scutt
Her ex husband's name is Mutt?! That's the first red flag right there.
Hell yeah you love to hear it
you mean 2 years? The wiki page says she separated in 2008 and then got married to the current husband in 2011
Brother's on the sofa eating chocolate pie. Just a swinging.
Could maybe make "You're Still The One" a bit of a bummer, since that one is about her and Mutt Lange, but I remember an interview where she had a good perspective about it, something like it belongs to the fans and their relationships now
Edit: I think it was on Song Exploder, which is a very cool podcast btw
I think she also said she thinks of the love her parents had when she sings it 🥲
That’s kinda heartbreaking
Imagine cheating on Shania Twain
I know right?
Like how fucking dumb do you have to be to risk losing that woman to fuck around with someone who isn’t Shania Twain ffs
When this story first broke I remember commenting the same thing..
A coworker said "Some women won't put nothin' in their mouth"
🤣
Talk about turning a negative into a major win! It's one of the best celebrity revenge stories out there.
Is that a revenge story though? Seems to me that it turned out well for every person involved lol. I don't think the other couple cared about that one bit
It is if you consider the best revenge being a life well lived
False. Revenge is a dish best served naked.
Well, the thing about people willing to cheat is that often they’re willing to cheat again. There’s several crude adages about the Other Woman not being able to relax once she snags her lover, because now she has to watch out for Other Women.
My father in law has a saying about his ex (thankfully not related to my wife) “if the bitch does it once, she’ll do it again.” And he’s been right so many times about her.
I've seen it put as: "If they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you."
That's how my mom put it, she didn't speak on other people's relationships that much.....but honestly she was probably correct with that one
Her husband was also her producer and songwriting partner. Everything changed for her, and her albums became intensely personal. Also, his name is Mutt Lange and he is the reason music sounded the way it did in the eighties. Huge and clean. AC/DC, the Cars, Def Leppard, a million songs with huge drums and anthemic choruses.
He is a nestle executive though
I have a buddy whose fiance cheated on him. The guy she cheated with was also in a relationship. My buddy and the other girl that got cheated on got to know each other when the affair came out and are now engaged, and she's infinitely better than the old one. Sometimes it works out OK.
Two of my techs working out of a small town in northern BC. They spent a lot of time on the road or on call. They were living in company houses separated by a back fence. Each was having an affair with the others wife.
At some point the women both found out, and decided that each preferred the affair partner to their spouse. The men, who apparently were agreeable, swapped partners.
Both couples are still together 20 years later.
An episode of that show Wife* Swap but make it a permanent upgrade
*edit for an egregious error
Two Yankees players tried it in the 70s.
Well that was an interesting read.
Interesting indeed, especially considering one of the “swapped” couples is still together.
It apparently not the one that originally prompted the move. Some quality schadenfreude for the other two.
Ew
thank you for notifying me of my typo. Have a good weekend at the bar, BarKnight
do we swap the toilet paper after we wipe?
or
wipe each other?
Her husband made her entire career, got his name on all her songs for royalties then ditched her when he was done with her.
Haha I came here to say this too. Way more wild story lol.
Good for her!!
Her music starts to make sense
They got their keys mixed up
Brad Pitt and rocket scientists didn't impress her so she married her ex husband's mistress' ex husband
I would watch the shit outta this movie.
Holy moly
I don't care how good someone is I would feel a bit weird about an 8 year old in a bar, especially at midnight.
It absolutely is unsettling. Shania herself has spoken about how much she hated that part of her childhood, saying, "I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived." It really underscores the severe poverty and necessity that drove her family.
I saw her perform at the Zoo, the Central, I think it was called in South Porcupine when I was in college. I was underage so they snuck me in the back. She was an amazing performer, and this was when her first cd came out. I bought a cd, signed by herself, the label looked like it was printed from a printer. She looked so young in that crowd. It took big balls to accomplish what she did. Fast forward 30 years and I meet up with her at the check out counter in Wanaka, New Zealand where I lived. Had a great chat in French. Wonderful woman, and a true aspiration. She owned a station in the area, not sure if she still does.
Like a gas station?
It's NZ, so I'm thinking like a ranch type station.
Gotta translate the English between dialects.
Yep station usually means a massive farm, often up in the high country.
Omg I looked it up and its terrible. She could only perform after last call, made $20 a night, and sometimes the bars had that metal screen so it was like being in a cage. Her mom would wake her up at 2 or 3 am to go perform.
metal screen?
Roadhouse chain fence?
The full quote, though:
“Although she expressed a dislike for singing in those bars, she believes that this was her own kind of performing-arts school on the road. She has said of the ordeal, "My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought, 'I hate this.' I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived." She said that the art of creating, of actually writing songs, "was very different from performing them and became progressively important".”
A lot of them were strip clubs and she would play before. I think it was a Louis theroux podcast
I find this hard to believe. What strip club manager is thinking "you know what this place needs to keep the mood going at midnight? A 3rd grader singing live music!"
They weren't always strip clubs. Certain nights strippers were in, other nights was live music.
My uncle owned one about 2 hours away from where Shania grew up. Ngl, she probably sang at his.
That's much more believable. Sort of a mixed use venue.
There's a nonzero number of disgusting clientele who would absolutely be into that.
This is a friendly reminder that Reddit used to have "jailbait" subreddits where men would post pics of young girls in revealing outfits, and when it was banned the users freaked out about being censored
Just to be super clear for anyone who wasn't around back then, the subreddit was literally called /r/jailbait.
A whole island full of 'em.
She says she was on before them then ushered out but sort of knew what was going on. I duno, people in rural places are weird
That makes more sense. A mixed use venue shifting over between crowds
You got to remember this is in Canada.
There's poverty, and then there's exploiting your kid.
Yeah we've got some relatively "family friendly" bars here in Wisconsin, so maybe her part of Canada is similar, but the "until 1 am" thing is still pretty extreme. Like it's not too weird to bring the kids to a Friday fish fry, but those people have cleared out by 8 or so.
Timmins ON is a town built on mining and logging. Even today, it's not wrong to call it a frontier town.
Basically the entirety of Ontario between North Bay and the Manitoba border is untamed wilderness, with only small pockets of civilization in the form of towns like Timmins and some First Nation reservations. The entire region has a population under 800k in a region that would be the 35th largest country on the planet were it independent.
I mean timmins is a city. But there are some sketchy ass bars
Lived in Timmins all my life, can say that this used to be a very stereotypical Canadian small town where nobody needs to lock their doors. Very friendly and little to no crime. That changed drastically in the past 10-15 years though. It's actually kind of sad to see just how bad it is. It's mostly theft and drugs that's the issue but lot of assaults too.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that a bar that lets a child work until 1am is not a family-friendly bar.
We have more UK-style pubs here than US-style bars.
The pubs often have live entertainment and, when Shania was growing up in the 1970s, you absolutely could bring your kids along for a show - even the Legion let kids stay for the shows. Actually you could still bring your kids today but you'd get some sideye if you didn't bring ear protection and take them home after the first set lol
It wasn't typical for the kid to be the show, but Céline Dion did a lot of it too. People smoked so much in the 70s that must have been awful for little lungs :(
My mom took me to bars as a kid (in Ottawa), as she loved live blues music. But it was usually like the Sunday afternoon jam session, or maybe dinner time and I’d have my French fries and colouring book. Definitely not midnight.
The guy who works on my house repairing it, he told me he had to drop out of school age 10 and join the workforce. He's 79 now, so in 1956 I guess.
My dad went in to the social security office to explain that he had lied about his age to be able to work and they just handed him the “lied about your age to work/join the military” form. It was very common back in the day.
By the time my dad was 10 he had three jobs and was the sole source of income for his parents and three siblings. Still finished school, though. Before school he worked for the milk man getting the horses hooked up to the wagon. After school he was a veterinarian's assistant. And on Saturdays he sold fish at the market.
Jesus Christ sole source? I can't imagine. Do you know what happened to his parents?
My mom told me her grandma was a widow at 16, and had to raise two kids with no man while managing their land too.
It was the 40s, and they were very poor. Grandpa was a drunk. But the whole neighbourhood (in Toronto) knew their situation, so first the milk man told him to come work for him, then the fishmonger. Then the vet. Dad said the vet just walked up to him when he was playing ball in the street and said "You know who I am? You know where my clinic is? From now on you come there straight after school and you work for me. See you tomorrow." And he said if his grades dropped he'd fire him.
Things did get better for them and both my grandparents found work eventually, but my dad worked for the vet practically full-time until after high school, long after the original vet had retired and sold the practice. Then they told him if he wasn't going to university he should start a career, and one of them got a friend to hire him in sales, and he flew up the ladder. My family growing up was basically the Wheelers from Stranger Things.
And one of the vets he worked for went back to school, became an OBGYN, and delivered my brother and me.
It's funny, I actually live in Toronto and the guy I'm telling the story about grew up here too lol.
Damn, I guess they indeed went to school uphill both ways.
As someone who frequents bars, one of the last things I'd want to have to listen to at midnight is an 8 year old singing, even one with her level of talent.
I've seen some of the best shows I've ever seen in dives, but the musicians were at least teenagers or higher. An elementary schooler would never be allowed in.
On a podcast she said she was basically put on a train at 13 on her own to go and perform on a TV show.
It was the 80's.
Born in 1965, so 8 years old would've been 1973. That poor kiddo. And as 40-something mom to a daughter, my imagination worries that more than simply singing in bars happened.
Okay. I change my answer to
It was the 70's.
You know it did.
It was the 70s, source my uncle went to school with her
Well that still explains things here! Thank you for the correction.
Nuf said. Case closed. Next case on the docket.
Idk why the after 8 mints popped into my head after reading this
Especially in a tiny northern town.
If i walked into a bar at midnight and there was an 8 year old on stage i would nope the fuck out of there and call the police.
It’s northern Ontario decades ago… normal occurrence.
I feel like I would be very confused and uncomfortable to see an 8 year old singing in a bar at 1 am
Close to 50 years ago was a different world.
Over 50 years ago! She would have been 8 in 73
Wait, she's 60?!
Not possible, "I feel like a woman" came out like 8 years ago right?
Yes. It is OP who is wrong.
Yup.
Human decency still existed. If you are uncomfortable with an 8 year old girl on stage singing in a bar full of drunks today, you would've been uncomfortable 50, 100 years ago.
If you were comfortable with an 8 year old girl on stage singing in a bar full of drunks 50 years ago, you'd still be comfortable with it today. You may hide it better because of societal norms but the underlying feeling doesn't change.
Yes it does… we are a product of our upbringings and the communities around us. Stating otherwise is purely ignorance
Didn't the Jackson 5 play in strip clubs while many of them were still children as well?
Well, you weren't the target audience anyways.
.....wait. Ew.
I remember seeing a documentary on her. Her friend from school was slipping her bags of milk (Canada) from her own home to help Shania feed her siblings whenever she could.
My best friend and I saw her perform this past summer and she put on a GREAT show!
Isn't that the best when an artist actually delivers a GREAT show?
that is great
I saw her at Glastonbury last year. Had a good time, but she didn't sound great.
She lived in my great grandfather’s house with them kids. We lived down the street. The brothers would climb to the roof and jump from house to house along the street
That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing that!
Man that would've been so cool to do when i was a kid
As I recall the owners of the houses were none pleased by this behaviour
As an adult now, i totally understand lmaoo but as a kid? Leaping from house to house and risking life and limb like an unsupervised mini Batman?? Sign me the fuck up!
Yeah adult parent me has a very different visceral reaction than childhood me (who broke an ankle rollerblading off the roof of a park pavilion, what the first 2 times went just fine).
I used to party at her cottage on lake of bays. Nephew went to my high school.
As a 90s kid, I can’t stress enough how huge of a crush I had on her.
I scrolled through her Wikipedia since it's linked to this TIL and saw this pic. I know it's not in style today but it was when I was a teenage boy and she's smoking in that pic
We all did.
She’s 59 in that Wikipedia picture and it was taken last year. She’s still hot even at 60
Had? I still do.
I remember reading an article years ago about how scientists determined that facial symmetry was a key component of beauty, and in their study Shania Twain had the most symmetrical face they were able to find. And I thought to myself, sounds about right
Had?
Was it her or her leather pants?
Same although I still do. I am so here for her post-Lyme Disease era and loved her last couple of albums, I think she looks and sounds amazing at 60 and the little 90s girl is now a 30-something lesbian with an unyielding crush.
Who’s that?
Oh, that’s just the 8-year-old who sings until 1 AM for tips
I would've called the cops, I think.
Pffft. That don't impress me much.
Man!
I feel like a woman!
i’m gonna getcha good
Damn im 12 minutes late
She took care of all of them while putting her career on hold by performing at a local resort
The reason you don't hear much from her is because she's a good and decent person. She moved to Switzerland decades ago but still has her Canadian roots. She also promoted and essentially bumped Avril Lavigne into the spotlight as well.
I think if she was POS she'd be in the news lots more
I thought this thumbnail was Avril.
Respect. That DOES impress me much
Tell me you're too young to remember Behind the Music without telling me you're too young to remember Behind the Music.
I prefer to learn about artists from Pop-Up Video
I think if we can bring back exactly one thing from the 90s it should be Pop Up Video.
I loved it so much...
I remember them talking about her navel, her mediocre first album, and people being upset that she wasn't indigenous because her stepfather was and "Shania" was supposed to be Ojibwe.
They should make a biopic on her
There is a Netflix documentary.
I believe there already is a movie about her life.
Big YES!
Holy moly, I just checked her page out.
What a talented, stunning lady.
I hope her life moving forward is amazing.
Its crazy to me that some people dont know who Shania Twain is. Are you very young?
I feel so old right now.
… well you’ll be happy to know she’s done a few things since 1973.
Hopefully she makes it big one day.
She's one of the last credible pop-country artists before it descended into its current weird phase where it's obsessed with politics and identity
Right?? So talented and I'm rooting for her too!
I think they need to start replaying VH1's Behind the Music documentaries freely somewhere. That's where I learned all of this stuff 28 years ago.
In the early 2000s I was leaving a Sox or Cubs game and there was this 8-9 year old boy wearing a cowboy costume, very similar to Woody from Toy Story, playing a violin for tips to the crowds of people leaving, while his parents stood by. I've never forgotten the dead look in his eyes
I’ve seen this post multiple times in the last 24 hours. I’d bet she has an album coming out
This is just commonly known Canadian history. We read about it in grade 4 history.
Instead of saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" we say "be more like Shania."
Just don’t give the woman chicken salad!
Shania Twain when the became the legal guardian of her younger siblings at age 14:
“Man, I feel like a woman.”
Her entrance to the Grey Cup was the most Canadian thing I've ever seen.
Absolutely and what a legend she is!
Whew! She's still a knockout!
I know, I think she made a great choice going blonde. Same with Angelina Jolie.
Back in the 90s when country was good
I find this sentiment amusing because I remember people in the '90s talking about how '60s/'70s country was when country was good.
Shania was hated for turning country into pop by the country singers of the time. Steve Earle called her the world's highest-paid lap dancer
I remember she was insulted and belittled by the country music industry for showing her midriff. In the fucking 1990s. Such puritanical bullshit.
“No mayo.”
That goes hard
So did I watching her music videos back in the day.
I saw "Behind the Music" - her parents would wake her up and take her to bars at midnight when they stopped serving alcohol and she would sing for an hour for tips. It was bad but probably not as bad as it sounds.
Well guess that explains why she's so hard to impress
I can see now how brad pitt would not impress her much
Her parents were pieces of shit.
I listened to the podcast she did with Louis Theroux where she talked about this. Apparently at that age it would be illegal for her to perform whilst the bar is serving alcohol… so she’d have to start performing after bars closed.
The men would obviously be absolutely hammered at that point, meaning their treatment of her was, questionable.
She had a very hard life.
Damn, Shania's a legit OG. Respect level 100! Ppl should know it's not always glitz n glam in the biz, sometimes it's pure grind. FYI, she didn't just 'rise to fame', she crawled up from the very bottom, much love.
The fuck kind of bar wants a singing 8 year old?
I hope this beautiful lady is enjoying every minute of her wealth and fame!
I dont care what year it is, that one cheetah outfit will always be iconic af too.
Reading that wiki page almost gave me a whiplash when I saw Henk Wijngaard of all people is her half uncle.
Although that probably means nothing to anyone outside of the Netherlands, it's pretty baffling for the people here that know him.
"Met de vlam in de pijp" is an iconic song of his.
She was singing at a casino when her mom and step dad died. She quit and went home to take care of her siblings. Once the youngest graduated high school and was out of the house, she went to Nashville.
Her name isn’t really Shania. Her step dad was a native and she got a lot of flak for using a native word as her stage name because she’s not native.
She also helped her parents by planting trees as a job. Her mom and step dad and her worked together. She thinks that’s when she got lyme’s disease.
She also fought her way back into the industry after basically losing her voice due to Lyme disease. She's pretty incredible.
That does impress me much!
That DOES impress me much! Way to go lady!
Lol no. My ex father in law went to school with her and she grew up middle class not nearly as poor as she likes to make it out
ETA I lived in timmins for years and heard the same from others, that she greatly exaggerated how bad her childhood was
Okay, so she sang in some bars. That don’t impress me much
That’s don’t impress me much