Yes, he is so cute and hunky, but to have he chance to meet the iconic Shania Twain … yeah, that would be a tough decision.
"To all the mean kids at school who made fun of me for singing 'Man! I Feel Like a Woman,'" said Nick Jonas, before presenting Shania Twain with the Icon award at Billboard's 2016 Women in Music honors, "Suck it — I'm getting a hug." – billboard.com
We would have the same sentiments Nick! How many times have we sung her hits? Too many is not an answer (said as I rummage through my iTunes). When that song came out in 1997, I wasn't even out, but I think it helped me feel like a gay boy.
Shania Twain is the best-selling female artist in the country music history selling 75 million records to date all done with releasing just four studio albums. I've given up on finding out what her biggest selling song is since every single list I look at has the "Top 10" or the "Ten Best" but they're all based on opinions. And maybe that is the way it should remain. We all have our favorites. I started looking at all the lists and forgot how many I liked, love, sung.
The legendary singer and songwriter took the stage at New York's Pier 36 to accept her award Friday (Dec. 9), just a cherry on top of her 35 million albums sold domestically and five Grammy Awards, among many other honors. "I think I was 3 when I realized this was what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life," said Twain, now 51, in the video preceding her award. For Billboard's Women in Music issue, Twain spoke about working on new music for an upcoming album that would be her first since 2002's Up! 0 – billboard.com
I am far from a country western music fan, but I am not a hater. If a good song comes on, I'll listen and maybe sing along. But I am a lover of Shania and her music, but what I did not know was her personal history.
When Eilleen Twain was in 12th grade — not yet Shania, not yet a global star — her music teacher asked her to sing an original song at a high school concert in Ottawa, Ontario. Though she had been singing professionally since she was 8, often to help her parents pay the bills, performing made her so nervous, she could feel it in her bladder. When the MC called her name, she was sitting in the trumpet section of her school orchestra and felt a warm trickle down her leg. Thinking fast, she kicked over the glass of water next to her chair and said, “Damn! I spilled my water!” Then she took center stage with her acoustic guitar and knocked ’em dead.
Every enduringly successful artist has a survival instinct, but Shania Twain’s is in Joan of Arc territory. Her impoverished childhood in Ontario, detailed in her best-selling memoir From This Moment On, reads like Dickens: parents who didn’t always have money for groceries and moved the family from place to place, sometimes to dodge the rent; five kids who would sleep in dirt-floored basements; a father who would get into violent fights with her mother, who sank into chronic depression. One of Twain’s first attempts at songwriting was titled “Won’t You Come Out to Play” — a plea for her mother to get out of bed.
All that happened before her 22nd year, when Twain was living in Toronto, trying to make it as a singer-songwriter, and got a call that her parents had been killed in a car accident. To support herself and her younger brothers (Twain has one older sister), she took a job in a Las Vegas-style revue in Huntsville, Ontario, where she lived in a cabin with no running water and washed her clothes in a stream. “Music has been my greatest therapy,” reflects Twain, 51, today. “It always has been. It’s a very great friend.” – billboard.com
What is even better is an Icon Award is not a lifetime achievement award. That will come later I am sure. And what else will come later from this icon? A NEW RECORD! Here Shania talk about the award and her upcoming new music.
What is your favorite Shania song?
I'll just leave this one here for some inspiration.
h/t: billboard.com