Shania Twain

[Kim]

Shania Twain says she's making new music and preparing to return to stage


By Victoria Ahearn
The Canadian Press
Mon, 28 Mar, 2011


Shania Twain poses with two RCMP officers on the red carpet at the 2011 JUNO Awards …


TORONTO - Canadian country-pop darling Shania Twain is recording a new album and preparing to return to the stage.

The superstar singer from Timmins, Ont., made the revelation backstage at Sunday's Juno Awards, where she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

"I'm not really sure when I'll be able to get back up on that stage. I am preparing for it, I can tell you that, and I am already in the studio with new music and I'm very excited," she told reporters after a tearful speech onstage at the Air Canada Centre.

Twain added that fans will be able to hear her new music "soon," and that she's documented some of her songwriting process in an upcoming documentary-style TV series about her life.

Set to debut May 27 on the OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada, "Why Not? with Shania Twain" follows the chart-topper as she rediscovers herself after divorce and a break from recording.

Her journey includes a trip to her birthplace of Timmins with her sister, Carrie Ann, and a travelling adventure with her bandmates and closest confidantes.

"I actually created the concept myself," said the five-time Grammy winner, who also has an autobiography due out this spring.

"I actually went to (Winfrey), to be honest, initially, and said, 'What do you think of this idea that I have?' She loved it, and that was the end — that was the end of the beginning, I suppose."

Canuck rocker Bryan Adams introduced Twain during Sunday's Juno bash, calling her a "Canadian Treasure." In a video tribute, several music giants — including Kenny Rogers and Anne Murray — also sang her praises, and the crowd went wild as she walked onstage.

Backstage, Twain was humble and nearly speechless when she reflected on the accolades.

"I don't feel iconic, no, I can tell you that. I don't feel that way at all. I feel like a small-town girl from Timmins. That has never changed and it never will," she said, looking typically radiant in a long, flowing gown of black and white sequins with her long hair up in a ponytail.

"I was overwhelmed by the support. I feel wonderful in Canada. The people have never let me down, the fans have always been amazing and I just love this place, what can I say? I'm just at home here."

This year marked the 40th anniversary of the Junos, which Twain said she's watched since she was young.

"I was in awe of our Canadian awards show, I was in awe of our Canadian stars," said Twain, 45, who married businessman Frederic Thiebaud New Year's Day in Puerto Rico.

"And when I won my first Juno, that was it — I'd made it."

[Kim]

Dates and places for Shania's upcoming book tour:

Here’s her itinerary:

5/4 — New York, NY, Barnes & Noble — Fifth Ave at 46th Street
5/5 — New York, NY, Apple Store (SOHO EVENT) — Prince Street
5/7 — Princeton, NJ, Barnes & Noble — Market Fair Mall
5/7 — West Chester, PA, Chester County Book Company
5/9 — Toronto, ON (CAN), Indigo — Manulife Centre
5/12 — Los Angeles, CA, Barnes & Noble — The Grove
6/4 — Bloomington, MN, Mall of America and the Park at MOA

[Kim]

Shania Twain: My Divorce Was the Wake-Up Call I Needed


By Hilary Shenfeld
May 03, 2011
people.com


Shania Twain
Barry Talesnick/Globe


Shania Twain says the breakup of her marriage in 2008 left her devastated – then, finally, empowered.

"I didn't want to live," she tells Oprah Winfrey of being told that then-husband Robert "Mutt" Lange was having an affair with her assistant and close friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud, in an interview airing Tuesday.

Now, the singer says the dissolution of that 14-year marriage was "a very positive thing." Adds Twain: "I needed the wake-up."

Though she doesn't know the details of the alleged affair to this day – the couple has never admitted infidelity – the country superstar, 45, tells Winfrey she tried to get answers and even wanted her husband back. At one point, she recalls writing to Marie-Anne and asking, "Why are you torturing me? Let it go, please," she said. "Find love somewhere else from someone else."

"I know it was pathetic," Twain says of the letter. "But we all have pathetic moments. No one is above this type of low."


Finding Her Voice Again

While trying to heal from the divorce, Twain turned to the one person who truly could understand what she was going through: Marie-Anne's estranged husband, Frédéric. The two eventually fell in love, and married in January in Puerto Rico.

Happily married, Twain is now making an effort to reclaim her voice after a five year absence from the stage. She recently went to a doctor in Nashville to check her vocal cords and discovered that she suffers from a condition called dysphonia, which she describes as the muscles in her throat squeezing her voice box.

She attributes the condition to years of fear – from witnessing domestic violence as a child, her parents' deaths, the uncertainty that followed and battling longtime stage-fright. Still, Twain, who is releasing a new memoir, From This Moment On, and has a new show on Winfrey's network, OWN, debuting Sunday, says she plans to embrace music.

"I've trapped my own voice, and now I've got to unwipe all that," Twain says. "I really can't imagine not singing again."

[Kim]

Shania Twain On New Book, New Show and Life





Today on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Country Music superstar Shania Twain sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a candid conversation about her life, her new book From this Moment On, and her upcoming docu-series on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network titled “Why Not? with Shania Twain.”

During the hour-long episode, Twain surprised the entire studio audience with two-day passes to the 2011 CMA Music Festival and accommodations at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville (June 9-10). And not only that, Twain shared that she will host a private brunch for all of the audience members when they visit Nashville in June.

“The audience reaction was incredible,” said Jason Owen, Shania’s manager at Sandbox Entertainment and member of CMA’s volunteer Board of Directors. “People were crying, screaming. You wouldn’t believe how excited they were and how thrilled Shania was to make this experience possible for the fans.”

“For four decades, this festival has been about the relationship between the fans and the artists and this is a tremendous example of that bond,” said CMA CEO Steve Moore. “We are thrilled to host Shania and the ‘Oprah’ audience at our event.”

“We are delighted that guests of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ will be able to see firsthand that Gaylord Opryland Resort is back and more beautiful than ever after the devastating floods that hit Nashville this time last year,” said Pete Weien, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Gaylord Opryland Resort. “We look forward to showing them the award-winning hospitality and outstanding service for which Opryland and the Gaylord Hotels brand is known.”

Twain’s docu-series on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, “Why Not? with Shania Twain,” debuts Sunday and has been described as “revealing” and “emotionally riveting.” Twain’s first autobiography entitled From this Moment On is released today in bookstores across the country. The autobiography is published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster

Twain last appeared at CMA Music Festival in 1996, when it was still known as Fan Fair®. She will return in 2011 to sign copies of her autobiography at CMA Music Festival. With world-wide acclaim, a special CMA Music Festival offer was extended to Shania Twain fans through Oprah.com.

Twain rose to fame in the early 1990s with her debut album Shania Twain (1993), and achieved worldwide success with her 1997 album Come On Over, which became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician, and the best selling Country Music album of all time. A five-time Grammy award winner, Twain has also achieved major success as a songwriter, winning 27 BMI Songwriter awards. Despite the fact Twain has released very few albums, she has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide to date, including 48 million in the U.S.


Contact: [e-mail]

[Kim]

Shania Twain Appears on ‘Oprah,’ Announces Appearance at 2011 CMA Music Festival

By: Amanda Hensel
tasteofcountry.com



Jag Gundu, Getty Images


Shania Twain sat down with Oprah Winfrey today to chat about her journey to overcome the hardships she’s seen in her life, and unveiled that she will be performing at the 2011 CMA Music Festival.

Twain laid it all out there on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ her first television appearance in over five years. The five-time Grammy winning country superstar opened up about her gut-wrenching divorce from Mutt Lange and the loss of her voice, as well as her new book and television show, ‘Why Not? With Shania Twain,’ which premieres this weekend.

“Thank you for helping me come out of my shell,” Twain told Oprah, as she sat down in a chair facing her and finally unleashed some suppressed feelings as a part of her decision to take a journey in search of herself and her voice, and to make peace with her past.

Twain, whose album ‘Come On Over’ is the best-selling album of all time by a female artist in any genre, has seen a lot of behind-the-scenes turmoil in her life, despite being at the top musically. As a child, she witnessed intense acts of violence between her mother and stepfather — both of whom were killed in an accident when Twain was 22. Then, in 2008, Twain and her husband Lange divorced after 15 years of marriage, due to an act of adultery committed by her husband with her best friend.

Because of these events, Twain has over time developed an intense fear and anxiety, which caused her to lose her beautiful singing voice. Simply, she has muffled herself under years and years of anguish. “I want to, and that’s the whole point of doing this,” Twain admitted when Oprah asked whether she’ll sing again. “I really can’t imagine not singing again.”

In just a few years since the divorce, which Twain says actually made her want to die, she has remarried — to Fred Thiebaud, the ex-husband of the friend who stole hers, no less — and is on the path to total recovery. “Sometimes I think bad things have to happen to us to give us perspective,” she told Oprah and the audience.

The ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman’ hitmaker not only used her return to television to make leaps in her personal improvement. She wanted her appearance revival to be huge, and surprised the studio audience with tickets to the 2011 CMA Music Festival, where she announced she will be performing alongside Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, and recently added songstress Taylor Swift. Twain’s involvement in the fest will be the first time she has performed publicly in five years.

Her new tell-all television series, ‘Why Not,’ premieres on the OWN network this Sunday, May 9 at 11PM ET.

[Kim]

Shania Twain Reveals She Lost Her Voice and Confidence in ‘Why Not? With Shania Twain’ Preview

By: Amy Sciarretto
tasteofcountry.com


Jag Gundu, Getty Images

Shania Twain may be smiling right now, as her new Oprah Winfrey Network series ‘Why Not? With Shania Twain’ is set to premiere this Sunday, May 9 at 11PM ET, but it was a long, arduous, difficult road to happiness, as this five-minute preview of the series’ debut episode reveals.

Judging from the first few moments, the series is going to be an intimate, incredibly personal look into Twain’s life and her return to her first love: making music. Nothing appears to be held back, and rather than portraying herself in a woe-is-me fashion, Twain is inspiring others and proving she isn’t that much different from us in her heartaches, insecurities and passions. She is easy to relate to, and her story is one that will reel you in.

Twain, whose ‘Come On Over’ is the biggest selling country album of all time, had a brutal couple of years — and even that’s an understatement. In July 2004, she stopped performing publicly, despite hordes of adoring fans that wanted to hear her sing her massive string of hits.

With such success came increased pressure, especially for a perfectionist like Twain. “I was losing my voice and losing confidence,” Twain admits in the clip. Nothing made her feel good, so she simply stopped performing. And then her marriage to uber producer Robert “Mutt” Lange started breaking down in 2008. But it wasn’t just the average split, as Twain would soon find out.

“I was definitely shocked,” she says. “Mutt was my partner in every sense. It really hurt. First, I found out my marriage was over. The next day I found out about the affair. My own friend who I had confided in had an affair with my husband. I still can’t get my head around that. I really lost my sense of trust, compassion … honesty, forget that. That’s all gone. That’s dead. I crashed down into what I consider an emotional mess.”

The misery engulfed her full force, too, and she found herself asking if she even wanted tomorrow to come. “I was so miserable,” she says. “I have never been so miserable in my entire life. I came to the realization that I had lost my ability to express myself and ability to sing. It physically would not come out of my throat or voice.” Twain couldn’t even sing in the shower. It was that bad.

She doesn’t attribute her silence to the implosion of the marriage. “It wasn’t any one crisis that did it. It was a progressive thing,” she reveals. “What if I can never sing again? I will have lost my best friend. I reached a point where I had to do something.” That “something” was working diligently to find her voice in 2010 and recognizing that “I am responsible for the solution.”

Elsewhere in the debut episode, Twain returns to her hometown of Timmins in Ontario, Canada, to revisit her past. She faces her earliest demons — poverty, family violence, and the untimely death of her parents — and rehearses the first song she’s written on her own in more than a decade. Twain truly turns the microscope on her life and lets her fans in. We will be watching every episode, that’s for sure.

[Kim]

Shania Twain Covers Redbook, Wants Her New Music to ‘Affect People in a Positive Way’

By: Amy Sciarretto
tasteofcountry.com


Redbook


Singer Shania Twain is making her comeback with her new series ‘Why Not? With Shania Twain,’ which premieres Sunday night,’ and now she’s telling her story in Redbook, too. After sidestepping music for a while, the singer is writing again and learning to enjoy doing what she does best: singing.

Twain, who had a rough couple of years after splitting with her husband, rock producer Robert “Mutt” Lange, opens up in this revealing cover feature about the songs on her next album, what she hopes to convey to her contingent of female fans and where she is today, which is a much better place than she was a few years ago as her marriage crumbled from the ultimate of betrayals. What’s refreshing about Twain, especially in this interview, is that she isn’t afraid to admit her insecurities, which makes her that much more “real” to the fans who adore her.

“I am stronger,” Twain proclaims. “I’m more mature, but I’m more carefree. I feel like I’m in a transitional period. I’m really trying to get comfortable in my own skin because it’s not easy to do when you’re in the spotlight all the time. I don’t want someone photographing my cellulite — I can’t take it! See, this is where the push and pull comes in. It’s a very strange paradox: I don’t really want to share all my dirt with people, yet I want to be real. I want to be successful, but I don’t really have what it takes to do it comfortably.”

Twain says that the songs on her new album are more introspective, admitting, “They’re about the insecurity that the spotlight highlighted for me. I found it so hard to take the criticism — not the professional criticism, but the personal criticism. I don’t want people to care about my horrors. It frustrates me and makes me focus on the wrong things. I want to focus on my songs. So I struggle with that, and I’m just getting to the point now where I can honestly say, ‘I either get comfortable in my own skin, or I quit this industry.’”

Overall, though, Twain remains committed to a goal, and that’s being positive, especially in her songs. “I want to continue to write and record things that affect people in a positive way, and keep trying to make songs that are meaningful,” the singer says. “What I write and sing is a very big part of who I really am. I just want to write music that matters.”

Twain is also concerned about her fellow females; this is, after all, a woman who achieved her biggest success on the back of a single called ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman,’ said she hopes to translate a simple message to her female fans, saying, “I think for women’s mental health, honesty is crucial. We’re way too superficial. We need to be able to laugh at ourselves. I want to feel OK with being me.”

As for her future? Twain has interesting visions of what lies ahead, saying, “I was always very solitary growing up, and that made me creative. Then, all of a sudden, I became successful with music, which became an extremely extroverted thing. Now I’m somewhere in the middle, trying to balance my wish for solitude with the exposure fame brings. If you talk about the far future, I’ll probably be in the Canadian wilderness somewhere, living among the moose and bear [laughs].”

[Kim]

"Why Not? With Shania Twain" Premiere Dates

The premiere dates for Shania's OWN Network docuseries "Why Not? With Shania Twain" have been set.

U.S. Premiere date: Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 11 pm Eastern

After its premiere in the U.S., "Why Not? With Shania Twain" will move to its regular time period (Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT) beginning the following Sunday, May 15.


Canada Premiere Date: Friday, May 13, 2011 at 9 pm

[Kim]

Details from Shania Twain's Autobiography





Shania Twain on ex's affair: Accidents happen


It may seem hard to believe, but Shania Twain was able to forgive her ex-husband and best friend for their affair.

"Despite everything, I still loved my husband," the superstar singer says in her new memoir. "And I still loved my friend. I put myself in their shoes with the understanding that accidents happen, we're all human, and we all make mistakes....Eventually, I came to the point of accepting the end of my marriage."

Excerpts from Twain's new book, titled "From This Moment On," were published on Parade.com and give some insight into the dark days of the breakup of her marriage to famed producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange and her past as a witness of domestic violence.Discovering that her husband of 14 years and the father of her son had an affair with her best friend Marie-Anne was "the most shocking and painful truth of my life since the death of my parents twenty years earlier," Twain says.

"For the first week after finding out about the affair, I was ready to die–to go to bed forever and never wake up," the singer writes. "Or to hurt someone. I was ready to do something desperate, but in reality, there was nothing to do but to suffer through it. Fortunately, when you're a mom, the responsibility of caring for your child can keep you going."

Now happily married to Marie-Anne's ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, Twain reveals she grew up watching her stepfather physically abuse her mother.

"Jerry had her on the bathroom floor by the toilet, and, grabbing her hair, he slammed her head against the side of the basin, knocking her out cold," Twain says in her book. "I could see Jerry repeatedly plunge my mother's head into the toilet bowl, then pull it out again."

"I remember wondering, 'Why is he trying to drown her when she's already dead?' I wanted to scream, 'Stop, you already killed her!' I wanted to stop him, but I was too afraid...The enormity of that helplessness transferred to me, and I felt as limp as she was."

[Kim]

Shania Twain details family abuse and painful divorce in new memoir

by Adam Markovitz



Shania Twain’s personal struggles are already country music legend: Her poverty-stricken family, her struggle to support her younger relatives after the death of her parents, her recent divorce from Mutt Lange. But the 45-year-old singer’s new autobiography, From This Moment On (on sale today), is packed with intimate details that may surprise even her most dedicated fans. Here are a few of the most shocking:

-- Twain says her family was physically and emotionally abused for years by Jerry Twain, her mother’s husband. (Twain is estranged from her biological father.) In one chilling passage, Twain recalls watching Jerry plunge her mother’s head into the toilet repeatedly after knocking her out cold. Years later, 11-year-old Shania (then called Eilleen) would summon the courage to fight back against her father. “I ran up behind my dad with a chair in both hands and smashed it across his back… Before I could get away, he punched me in the jaw. Adrenaline pumping, I punched him back!”

-- Twain also says she was sexually abused by Jerry, who muttered obscene slurs at her while she was in bed and once fondled her when she was a teenager. She eventually convinced her mother to run away with the family to a shelter in Toronto.

-- Living in poverty in rural Canada often forced the family to make do with little. Twain recalls days on end when the family had nothing to eat but “goulash”: dry bread with boiled milk and brown sugar. She also mentions wearing bread bags on her feet when her family couldn’t afford proper boots for keeping warm in the winter.

-- Twain says she was devastated when her husband, Mutt Lange, left her for Marie-Anne Thiébaud in 2008. “I’ll be honest: when your husband leaves you, and falls into the arms of your close friend, your self-esteem can really suffer.”

-- Twain begged Marie-Anne Thiébaud to leave Lange in an email: “I don’t want life or love anymore… Why are you torturing me? Let it go. Pleeeeeaaaaaaasssseee!!!!!”

-- During the split, Twain cried constantly and took five baths a day. At one point, she helped herself recover from the pain of the split by allowing herself to call Marie-Anne Thiébaud an female anatomical epithet . “It was kind of cathartic. (Harsh, I know, but after all, it is only a word.) My emotions were so balled up inside me that it felt good to release.”

-- Now 45 and remarried to Marie-Anne’s ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, Twain deals with constant anxiety about her appearance and the effects of age. “I’m pretty insecure about my changing body… I’m letting ‘the girls’ hang loose under my sweat clothes around the house and when someone comes to the door, I cross my arms under them for support.”

Source

[Kim]

Shania Twain Opens Up to Oprah

by Beville Darden



"I didn't want to kill myself but I didn't want to live," a somber Shania Twain said in an interview that aired today (May 3) on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.' "Our lives were intertwined in every respect and I really was completely shocked."

The country music superstar was, of course, talking about her mindset in the aftermath of finding out her husband of 14 years, Robert "Mutt" Lange, was having an inappropriate relationship with one of her closest friends, Marie-Anne Thiébaud, who was also a secretary at the couple's Switzerland chateau. (Both Mutt and Marie-Anne continue to deny the claims.)

Shania revealed to Oprah that she took what she calls a "pathetic" measure to repair her marriage, writing a letter to Marie-Anne and asking, "Why are you torturing me? Let it go, please. Find love somewhere else from someone else."

When the letter went unanswered, Shania wouldn't give up. "By not understanding and not knowing the details your imagination is left to run wild," she explains. "I never got the details. I phoned Marie-Anne and did everything I could to get the details out of her and she changed her number and that was it."

But in a twist of fate that plays out like a movie, Shania found love with the other jilted party in the affair -- Marie-Anne's ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud. It was he, the handsome Swiss Nestle executive, who helped the singer get back on her feet and see the split as "a very positive thing."

"Frédéric Nicolas Thiébaud has been a true gift to me as a compassionate, understanding friend," Shania writes in a letter to fans on her website, "and over time, an amazing love has blossomed from this precious friendship."

Shania and Frédéric were married in a beach-side, sunset ceremony in Rincon, Puerto Rico on New Year's Day 2011.

Now that her personal life is back on track, fans are chomping at the bit for new Shania Twain music. The Canadian songbird retreated from the spotlight long before her personal turmoil began, moving to Europe to raise her son, Eja, and concentrate on being a wife and mom. She hasn't released new music since 2002's 'Up!' and hasn't performed publicly in five years.

"I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back up on that stage," she admitted back in March at the Juno Awards. "I'm preparing for it. I'm already in the studio working. You're going to hear new music soon ... When that will become an album? It's all happening as we speak."

That album has also been a long time coming due to a medical condition Shania recently discovered, dysphonia, which she explains causes the muscles in her throat to squeeze her voice box. She blames the condition on traumatic events in her life, including the death of her parents in a car accident when she was a teenager and witnessing domestic violence as a child. But this is a hurdle Shania fully plans to jump.

"I've trapped my own voice, and now I've got to unwipe all that," she insists. "I really can't imagine not singing again."

In the meantime, Shania is keeping busy with a whirlwind media tour supporting her new book, 'From This Moment On,' and new show, 'Why Not? With Shania Twain,' to air on Oprah's OWN Network.

"I actually created the concept myself," she says of the TV series. "It's not a reality show, it's a documentary type thing about an isolated experience in my life documented in real time. I actually went to Oprah, to be honest, and asked, 'What do you think of this idea that I have?' She loved it and that was the end."

'Why Not' premieres May 8 at 11:00 PM ET on OWN.


The Boot

[Kim]

Here's Why: The Message of Shania Twain's New Show

May 9, 2011 01:42 PM ET
by Rich Juzwiak



Why Not? With Shania Twain has a dubious cause: as the country superstar stated on Sunday night's premiere episode on OWN, "My purpose for doing this is to share with people so they can learn from it." That immediately sets it apart from other reality shows that matter-of-factly follow celebrities (the implicit fact of the matter being that fame makes them fascinating). This show is different, or so we're to believe. This show is special.

The irony of this needless qualification is that Shania Twain's story is, as a matter of fact, more fascinating than most. It's a story of a Canadian musician whose talent lifted her out of poverty and into the utterly Stateside genre of country music. It's a story of a girl who sometimes watched but mostly heard her stepfather beating her mother viciously, though that wasn't enough to make her write him off (her mixed feelings about her abusive stepfather are among the most nuanced and specific ever expressed on reality TV). It's a story of a wife whose first marriage ended after her music-producer husband Robert John "Mutt" Lange ran off with her best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud, and whose second marriage was with the ex-husband of the aforementioned best friend, Frederic Thiebaud. When Twain shares the story of the couple swap, she calls it "twisted" with a devilish grin, suggesting it's as fun to tell as it is to hear. Twain's is a story of a superstar who had it all, but who lost her voice through a vague condition that seems partially physiological and partially psychological, as a result of all of the strife.

The content of Twain's story is reason enough to share it — no pretensions of outreach necessary. Why Not? seems to want to gloss over its main service: getting Twain's career back off the ground after almost a decade of silence (her last album, Up!, was released in 2002). Indeed, in conjunction with last week's release of her memoir, From This Moment On, Why Not? is part of a cross-media campaign that will burn Twain back into our collective consciousness if it is successful. Yes, she does some actual work to back her charitable claims on the show, at one point meeting with a group of siblings who've been orphaned, much like Twain's family was when her mother and stepfather died in 1987. But even that was manipulated before our eyes for maximum watchability: When one of the Alexander family siblings broke down, unable to answer a question about missing her parents, Twain massaged her with, "You don't have to answer the question. Why don't you just tell us what you're thinking right now?" Perhaps Twain believes in equal opportunity healing through sharing, but she sounded more like a producer than a friend at that moment.

And maybe that was with good reason. Ultimately, Why Not? is entertainment and it was indeed riveting. At the end of the episode, we saw Twain writing a new song and then heard her discuss the "big decision" to share with the rest of the world a new composition. Coming from someone who's been musically paralyzed, that makes sense in theory. But in practice on reality TV, clearly it was the ending with the most satisfying potential. She got to heal; we got to hear. Win/win.

[Kim]

Shania Twain opens up about her husband's affair


In her moving memoir, From This Moment On, Twain reveals how her husband's infidelity devastated her and how she moved on. Here is an excerpt.

By Shania Twain Thu May 05 2011



Upon our return to Switzerland at the end of March 2008, I would face the most painful shock of my life since the death of my parents 20 years earlier. My husband was having an affair with Marie-Anne. Marie-Anne my confidante, the same friend who’d comforted me over the phone only weeks before, expressing how absurd it was of me to have any such suspicions of my husband. The idea that she was the mistress, after all the confiding I’d done in her, had not even entered my mind.

Denial can have multiple layers, and rationalizing is common when you’re trying to absorb something you just don’t want to believe. I thought: Okay, so maybe they made a mistake. My husband and my friend will come to their senses and realize that. I was ready to forgive, forget, make things right, move on, and get on with our lives. Not like nothing had happened, but like something had happened that I thought was fixable. But this was not to be. Because despite everything, I still loved my husband. And I still loved my friend. I put myself in their shoes with the understanding that accidents happen, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. It was love that allowed me to take that perspective at that moment, but considering my desperation to keep everything from falling apart, it was probably also in my naïve (and shell-shocked) state of mind that I wrote the following letter to Marie-Anne, treating her as a decent friend who’d temporarily lost her way and behaved in a manner that wasn’t really her. I just wanted everyone to get on with healing, including her:

Regardless of what has and hasn’t been said and done up to now, and that things have been changed forever for all of us, I do hope we all go into the future never having secrets from each other ever, ever again of any kind. That we take responsibility to make sure the ones we love can know they can trust us and never do things they cannot know about...

For the first week after finding out about the affair, I was ready to die—to go to bed forever and never wake up. Or to hurt someone. I was ready to do something desperate, but in reality, there was nothing to do but to suffer through it. Fortunately, when you’re a mom, the responsibility of caring for your child can keep you going. You have the routine of preparing your child for school in the morning, dragging yourself out of bed on autopilot and cheerfully keeping a brave face. And as soon as they’re off, at least in my case, I slipped back into my pajamas and spent the day in bed, crying and sleeping fitfully. I wasn’t eating at all; in fact, I went a whole week without any solid food and just drank orange juice. This can be considered healthy during a cleansing fast, for example, but I wouldn’t recommend it while trying to cope with the grief of a deep emotional crisis.

I was freezing cold all the time, and my only relief came when I’d strip off my clothes and climb a steaming hot bath. Five times a day. Yet I’d be shivering most of the time, shaking uncontrollably, my teeth chattering violently. Out of the bath, I’d wear a winter coat over my pajamas, plus wool socks and a scarf. It made no difference. I couldn’t get rid of the chills, and at the same time, I was sweating profusely. It was as if my body were trying to purge itself of the emotional agony inside by forcing the pain out of my pores so that I didn’t drown in it. I hurt physically, too, aching as though someone had sandpapered all my nerve endings. But when four o’clock arrived, and it was time to kick back into Mommy the Brave for the evening, I was there for my son with a hug and a smile. Believe me, it took all the courage I could muster to get through our morning and afternoon routines like everything was “okay.” However, the way I looked at it, this sudden, major change in our lives was going to be hard enough on him; I was not about to subject him to the pain that I was feeling on top of his own.

All things considered, I think I did a pretty good job of managing this “double life,” as my son didn’t seem unusually stressed. I resented Marie-Anne a great deal, knowing which end of the stick she was on. We were both new, single moms, going through our daily routines with our children, only I was drained of all my energy, as the façade I tried to keep up for my child’s sake took everything I had. She was going through her daily routine, however, while in a new and exciting romance with a man who decided to put her first, above his wife and his family. Love is energizing, and new love is especially blissful and makes you feel invincible. Boy, were she and I at opposite ends of the stick, all right. It must have felt so empowering to know that he risked it all for her.

Is this the way a mistress feels? That she is more valuable and important to the man than his wife and family? Perhaps it’s the unfaithful husband convincing her that she’s important enough to stake such a claim. Or is it her own sense of self-entitlement? In any case, at the time my perception was that my husband’s mistress was the winner, the one defended by my own husband. And when he wasn’t looking, she had the confidence to parade her cockiness and fearlessness with snarly looks and hisses when by chance our paths crossed in person, as they inevitably did, since we lived in the same small village.

This was extremely painful for me and left me feeling weak and defeated. She had nothing left to fear, and I’d lost. Every time she kicked me when I was down, she made sure Mutt wasn’t looking, and when I tried to explain to him what he couldn’t see, he refused to listen and didn’t want to know. I felt like I was trapped in some kind of childish game with my sadistic opponent standing just far enough away that I couldn’t reach her, all the while sticking out her tongue at me. It was degrading. I hated her because I felt she was making a fool of my husband, someone I considered to be intelligent, mature, and anything but vulnerable to the cliché of the temptress secretary, as she shamelessly “displayed” an attitude that seemed to say, “Mutt will never see my other face, and I will never show it to him, because I have his compassion, his sympathy and his credit card, and there is nothing you can do about it.” She was right, and I felt helpless for myself and for Mutt. I was disgusted that another woman’s lust for a lifestyle upgrade was worth the devastation of my family. She was pitiless, and I was a pitiful mess of “woe is me.”

Although I had known Frédéric for about nine years, I had never really known him; I mean, he was my close friend’s husband. I thought he was a wonderful, considerate person, and anyone could see that he was an attentive husband and father, but we were friends by association only. It was he and Mutt who were friends, meeting over dinners to discuss politics, sports, current events, and life in general. I always believed it’s one thing to be close to your friend, but another to be closer to your friend’s husband. The men had their bond, and Marie-Anne and I had ours. That is at least what I believed, of course. Fred was always the one to take the kids on Saturday mornings for bike rides or to the carnival passing through town. He loved being with the kids, and I admired his energy and dedication to his daughter. He would take Johanna on father-daughter vacations to give Marie-Anne time to herself, and his bond with my own son from the very beginning was also very touching. The two of them were always the best of friends, and both Mutt and I were happy that Eja had another male figure in his life, as the Thiébauds were the only friends we had in the country.

We all spent time together, but the kids gravitated toward Fred. He and I shared much of our family lives together, but in our appropriate places as the spouses of our friends. It stands to reason that we supported each other during this time of our mutual betrayal, staying in touch, mostly by phone and email every couple of days, as I’d left for Canada at this point. After all, who else could understand better what the other was going through? However, since our previous interactions had always been in the context of our two families, we almost didn’t know how to act with each other directly. We were polite, almost formal. Fred is especially gentle and traditional when it comes to social boundaries, always very friendly but appropriate. For both Mutt and me, teaching our son good manners has always been very important. Mutt reminds Eja often that “manners maketh man,” and I believe this is true. I also believe there is another layer to this philosophy that is equally important, if not more so: honesty maketh humanity. Fred is someone who possesses both manners and honesty with a natural ease. Raised in a family of doctors and lawyers on both his mother’s and his father’s side, Fred grew up in a formal, refined social environment—a privileged upbringing. Considering the comfort and stability growing up almost sheltered from social and economic struggle, Fred is still a real salt-of-the-earth kind of person. An open book, and deep in his natural being, he is a genuine and sincere human being. Together Fred and I tried to hash out what had happened to each of us.

Sometimes we argued over who was to blame for this disaster. “He” must have done this. No, “she” must have done that. We didn’t want any of it to be true and simply didn’t know who was responsible. I didn’t want it to be my husband any more than he wanted it to be his wife, and neither of us wanted to believe our friend would do such a thing. There were so many angles and tangles to the long web of lies and deception, it was enough to make you dizzy. Nearly six months later, in September 2009, I returned to Switzerland from the cottage in Canada so that Eja could go back to school. Fred and I continued bonding over our lives, our children, our woes, our dreams, our recovery. It was fall and getting cooler, and we would often have evening campfires outside the front door of the annex, as the main house was still under renovation. Roasting marshmallows, playing music, dancing, and singing—we had so much fun, and Fred and I were getting very good at swing dancing. The kids would join in and sometimes stand on the side to cheer us on. One night in December they were both up on the second-floor bedroom balcony watching us with a bird’s-eye view, while Fred and I danced below beside the campfire, unaware of their gazing down on us. Fred and I must have appeared to be pretty lost in each other because at one point the kids piped up and said, “Why don’t you guys kiss?” Fred and I stopped dead, stunned, and said in unison, “What?” “Why don’t you guys just kiss?” they repeated, rolling their eyes while smiling from ear to ear. We looked at each other, quite surprised that the kids had recognized a connection between us that we’d been feeling for some time but felt uncomfortable revealing openly. We responded to the kids with an “okay,” and we kissed on the cheek. The kids said, “No, on the lips.” Fred and I couldn’t believe our own children were cheering us on to kiss, for real, so we did. Fred and I perked our kissers, pecked on the lips, and the kids smiled and giggled. We were happy. Relief came rushing through us, as the ice had been broken. Fred and I were surprised and relieved by our children’s encouragement to be ourselves in love, and from that moment on, the four of us began to form a reassembled family, building a nest, a new foundation, reconstructing our lives as a unit after the fall of the ones we’d lost. Fred and I proceeded with caution, because we were both keenly aware that our mutual grief might be the main thing binding us together. We also considered the dangers of confusing the children with a rebound romance.

But it wasn’t. What attracted me to Fred was his selflessness. He was going through the same agony as I was—maybe even worse, because as a father, he would have to battle his soon-to-be ex for the right to see his own daughter. At least that was something I never had to face. Yet he was never too busy to nurse me through my emotional lows. I think it’s fair to say that he was more of a support to me than I was to him at first. While I was a self-pitying spigot of never-ending sadness in the initial period of my grief, he showed strength, kept a healthily clear, pragmatic perspective, and was infinitely patient and understanding. I admired him. He was also there for Eja, who had known Fred his whole life. In fact, not long ago, Fred showed me a picture taken of my son only hours after he was born. “I don’t recall ever seeing this photo before,” I said to Fred. “I don’t remember who took this photo.” “Me,” he responded. That warmed my heart. He really was always there, like a gift under the Christmas tree, pushed to the back where I couldn’t see it. A gift with my name on it, only hiding, as I wasn’t meant to open it till much later when it was time to take the tree down, then all of a sudden there it was, this present, for me! As if labeled “From heaven—to Eilleen,” Fred was for me; it was just a matter of time.

Adapted from From This Moment On, by Shania Twain. Copyright © 2011, Shania Twain.

[Mallrat]

New Shania Twain single, 'Today is Your Day,' to be released June 12

By The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – Fri, 3 Jun, 2011.. .
.
TORONTO - To Shania Twain fans who have waited patiently for new music: your day is coming.

The Timmins, Ont., country superstar has announced she will release a new single, "Today is Your Day," on June 12.

The song will first debut on Twain's reality TV show, "Why Not? With Shania Twain," and will then be available for purchase on iTunes at 11 p.m. ET.

It's the first song Twain has written solo in six years.

The song's release coincides with the U.S. finale of Twain's show, which features footage of her marriage to Swiss businessman Frederic Thiebaud.

The episode won't air in Canada until June 17 on the Oprah Winfrey Network, but a spokesperson for iTunes confirmed that Canadians would have access to the new song at the same time as customers in the U.S.[/b][/color][/font]

[Mallrat]

OFFSTAGE: Shania Twain’s Words to Live By

06/3/11, 3:30 pm EDT

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that's happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

I just re-read the Shania Twain story from Redbook magazine and found some refrigerator-worthy quotes in there. The ones you want to tear out and tape to your refrigerator because their messages remind you of simple-but-important life lessons, so you want to read them every day. At one point, she's talking about how much she hated being in the spotlight, but that she did it because her mother told her so. "Well, when your parent says, 'Eat your peas,' you eat peas. When your mom says, 'You're going to be a singer,' you become a singer," she admits. Other Twainisms I love:

"Wear your scars like a badge."

"I'm a mom first."

"I feel like there needs to be a warning sign on the book (From This Moment On) that nobody under 16 should read it."

"I think it's important that readers know that not every celebrity is a freak."

"I'm human, you're human, we all go through the same doo-doo."[/b][/font][/color]