Shania Twain sets the bar when it comes to singers who are not only talented but also extremely beautiful.

This combination of looks and skills paid off with her third album Come On Over as the biggest-selling album of all time by a female musician and the best-selling album in the history of country music. She is the only female musician to have three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, and is also the best selling artist in Canada, with all three of her studio albums being certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

Shania has achieved both critical and financial success, having received five Grammy awards, nearly 40 BMI Songwriter awards, and selling more than 65 million albums worldwide to date.

WHAT’S NEW WITH HER?

At the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 16, 2007, Twain said that she was currently writing songs for a new album, and that she is doing a "lot of soul searching" and "indulging in the writing". When asked with new music will come out she said "next year".

If this means more toe-tapping songs and midriff-baring music videos, we are so game for that!

WHY DO WE LIKE HER?

Shania is gorgeous enough that men can longingly gaze at her image in a music video but wholesome and talented enough for wives and girlfriends not to get to angry about it. In fact, most women wouldn’t mind BEING Shania or at least getting some of her beauty and talent to rub off on them. Even if you aren’t a fan of country music, Shania is a great ambassador for the genre with her crossover hitmaking tunes.

WHO IS SHE?

Shania was born as Eilleen Regina Edwards on Aug. 28, 1965, in Windsor, Ontario. Her background is Irish and French. She would eventually change her name to an Ojibwa word that means “On my way.”

It was a hard childhood as her mother and adoptive father earned little, and there was often a shortage of food and money in the household. She learned to hunt and chop wood. She earned money by singing in local bars at a very young age to support her family. At one point, her mother had to drive the family to a homeless shelter for assistance.

At the age of 13, Eilleen Twain began to develop a music career, but that was put on hold when her parents died in a car accident in 1987. She was 22 at the time and had to support her half-brothers and sister by singing at the Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario.

In 1993, got a recording contract and a self-titled debut album that sold fewer than 250,000 copies by the end of that year. But rock producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange heard those songs and offered to produce and write songs for her. At the time, she had no idea that he was the legendary producer behind groups like Australian hard rock band AC/DC.

Their collaboration, 1995’s The Woman in Me, produced her first #1 single, “Any Man of Mine”. The album topped the country charts for months and crossed over to mainstream charts, peaking at No. 5. As of 2007 it has sold more than 12 million copies. It won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well as the Academy of Country Music award for Album of the year; the latter group also awarded Twain as Best New Female Vocalist.

In 1997, Twain released her follow-up album, Come on Over. This was the album that established Twain as a successful crossover singer. Slowly, the album started racking up sales. It never hit the top spot, but with the multi-chart hit single "You're Still the One", sales skyrocketed. Songs like "Don't Be Stupid", "Honey, I'm Home", "Man! I Feel like a Woman!", "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "From This Moment On" joined the 12 songs that eventually saw release as singles.

The album stayed on the charts for the next two years. Come on Over had sold 20 million copies in the United States and 39 million worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album of all time by a female musician, and the biggest-selling country album of all time.

Songs from the album won four Grammy Awards over the next two years, including Best Country Song for Twain and Lange for "You're Still the One" and "Come on Over" and Best Female Country Performance for "You're Still the One" and "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!".

Despite the album's sale record it wasn't able to top the Billboard 200, reaching a peak of #2. In 1999, the "Come on Over" album was remixed for the European market as a pop version with less country instruments and actually gave her the big breakthrough in whole Europe. "Come on over" went to No.1 on the UK album charts for 11 weeks. It became the biggest selling album of the year in Great Britain and a bestseller in other big European markets as well, selling more than 1 million copies in both, the UK and Germany. The songs that had finally put the huge European attention to the album had been the (both pop remixed) singles "That don't impress me much", a No.3 in the UK and Top 10 hit in Germany in summer of 1999 and "Man! I feel like a woman!", peaking at No.3 in both, the UK and France in autumn. Additionally, the album set the record for the longest ever stay in the Top 20 of The US Billboard 200, remaining in the Top 20 for 99 weeks.

Twain's mainstream pop acceptance was further helped by her appearance in the 1998 first edition of the VH1 Divas concert, where she sang alongside Mariah Carey, Céline Dion, Gloria Estefan and Aretha Franklin and by VH1's 1999 heavily-aired Behind the Music treatment of her, which concentrated on the tragic aspects of her early life as well as her physical attractiveness and Nashville's early resistance to her bared-midriff music videos.

After a two year break, Twain went back into the studio, along with a management change, and recorded her latest CD. Up! was released on November 19, 2002. About a year later, she staged the Up! Tour to promote it.

Up! was released as a double album, with three different "remix" discs - pop (a red CD), country (a green CD) and Indian/Asian (a blue CD). For North American markets, the pop disc was paired with the country disc and in international markets, the pop disc was paired with the Indian/Latin disc. The Indian/Latin disc was recorded in Mumbai, India. Up! was given 4 out of 5 stars by Rolling Stone magazine, and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, selling 874,000 in the first week alone.

It charted at the top for five weeks. The success of the albums pop version outide the US was equally amazing when "Up!" reached No.1 in Germany, No.2 in Australia and the Top Five in the UK and France. Especially in Germany it became a real longseller, certified quadruple platinum and stayed in the Top 100 for 1 and a half years.

The first single from the album "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!", became a modest country hit in the US, but only made the Top 40 on the pop charts. It was a much bigger hit on the other side of the atlantic, released in a pop version, the single hit the Top Five in the UK and Australia as well as the Top 15 in Germany and France. The follow-up single "Up!" reached the top 15 in the US country charts but failed to reach the pop top 40.

The second European single became the mid tempo song "Ka-Ching!" (which was never released as a single in North America) with lyrics where Shania was criticising that money makes the world go around. The song eventually became another smash hit in the important European markets, reaching No.3 in Germany, the UK Top 10 and the Top 15 in France.

The third single from the album would be the most successful in the US. The romantic ballad "Forever and for Always" was released as a single in April 2003 and peaked at number four on the country chart and number one on the Adult Contemporary chart, and made as well the Billboard Top 20. Again success was even bigger on the other side of the Atlantic with "Forever and for always" again reaching the Top 10 in both, the UK and Germany. Further singles were "She's Not Just a Pretty Face" a country top-ten hit, while the last US single, "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing", made the top 20 on both Country and AC.

Due to the enormous European success of Up! and its first 3 singles, 2 more singles were released in the 2nd half of 2003 with up-tempo "Thank you baby" (No.11 in the UK, Top 20 in Germany) and just before Christmas the romantic, acoustic ballad "When You Kiss Me", at least a minor hit in both territories. The title track "Up!" also saw a single release in a limited edition of European countries, such as Germany, in early 2004.

To date , Up! has sold 5.5 million copies in the U.S. (Certified by the RIAA as 11 times platinum due to the organization's rules regarding double albums, which are counted as 2 units for certifications) and over 17 million copies worldwide.

In 2003, Twain participated in the Dolly Parton tribute album, Just Because I'm a Woman, covering Parton's classic "Coat of Many Colors", as a duet with Alison Krauss & Union Station. The cover peaked at #57 on the US Country charts as an album cut.

During the Super Bowl XXXVII halftime show Twain performed two songs, "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" and "Up!".

In 2004, she released the Greatest Hits album, with three new tracks. To date, it has sold over 3.5 million copies in the U.S., and over 7.5 million worldwide. The first single, the multi-format duet "Party for Two", made the country top ten with Billy Currington, while the pop version with Sugar Ray lead singer Mark McGrath made top ten in the United Kingdom and Germany. The follow-up singles, "Don't!" and "I Ain't No Quitter" didn't fare as well, the former made top twenty AC, while the latter didn't gain enough airplay to even crack the country top 40.[citation needed]

In August 2005, when Twain hit 40, she released the single "Shoes" from the Desperate Housewives soundtrack. It did not do well, and therefore, the video was cancelled.

Shania will be featured on the song, "You Needed Me", with Canadian country star Anne Murray on Anne's upcoming duets album due out November 13, 2007 in Canada, and in January 2008 in the US.


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On the web:

http://www.shaniatwain.com/

Universal Artist Profile Page

Shania Twain Centre

All images and information from outside sources in the public domain.