How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - ON THE IMPACT OF EARLY FAME… With Shania Twain and Charlotte Church

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Fame isn’t always limousines, five star hotels, champagne and private jets. I find this topic totally fascinating and these two past How to Fail guests give us a glimpse behind the curtain as to what becoming famous at a young age really means. Shania Twain takes us back to her childhood, singing late nights in smoke-filled bars, growing up far too fast and without real control over her own life. She speaks movingly about the emotional cost of starting so young. Charlotte Church reflects on how early fame shaped - and at times restricted – her creative freedom, the doors that were closed to her by the industry and the advice she would give her younger self now. Listen to Shania’s full episode of How to Fail here: https://play.megaphone.fm/cgztqicuqzic6lu1d75lka Listen to Charlotte’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/RZeSUcGaFgix3SsYMaBp 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's an age-old story that January is the best time for new beginnings, a fresh start and new ideas. Now, it might be a cliche, but it's true that the Christmas break and New Year always get me reflecting on the previous 12 months. In 2026, though, I want to look forwards. It's time to bite the bullet. If you've got a dream to launch a new business, now's the time. Whether it's a luxury cat hotel, yes please, a cheese shop, double yes, or starting your own clothing, I reckon you should embrace those creative juices and go for it. Shopify agrees with this philosophy and is here to help make your dream a reality.

Shopify is a platform that provides all the tools to easily build your dream store. You can choose from hundreds of templates to customize your brand, use their built-in AI tools and create email and social campaigns. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. Go to shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. Here your first this new year with Shopify by your side. Masterclass is the streaming platform that makes it possible for anyone to watch or listen to hundreds of video lessons taught by more than 200 of the world's best. Whether it be in business and leadership, photography, cooking, acting, music, sports and more,

Masterclass, delivers a world-class online learning experience. The classes that excited me the most were the ones on writing. So there's a session with actual Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point. He's done 24 classes on how to find, research and write stories that capture big ideas. And it's totally inspiring. I love that you can turn your commute or work out into a classroom with audio mode, so you can listen to a Masterclass lesson anytime, anywhere. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com

slash fail. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash fail. Masterclass.com slash fail. Hello. This episode explores. something that I find completely fascinating. What does it really mean to become famous at a young age? Charlotte Church reflects on how early fame shaped and at times restricted her creative freedom. She also examines the doors that were closed to her by the industry and the advice she would now

give her younger self. Shanaya Twain takes us back to her childhood, singing late nights in smoke-filled bars, growing up far too fast and without real control. over her own life. She speaks movingly about the emotional cost of starting so young and the heartbreaking realization that she felt old by the time she was just 20. We begin with Shania's childhood, so let's dive straight in. Because singing had been your companion from a very young age. You talk about forgetting your song lyrics, but when you were eight, you had a repertoire of a hundred songs, didn't you? because you were being taken to these bars by your mother to perform to earn money for your family. Were those bars the hardest place you've ever sung?

Yes, the bars when I was a child were definitely the hardest. They were smoke-filled rooms at the time. By the time I was allowed in the bar as a child, the law was, a child could, a child could enter a bar, a lecker premises, only after the physical bar was stopped serving. So after midnight. So I would go to do the after hours set, and everyone's already intoxicated. So it was a terrible environment for a kid. But I was very professional about it.

I took it very seriously. I was a performer, and I did have 100 song repertoire at all times because people like to take requests. Or people like to call out requests. And I wanted to be able to take the requests, so they would yell out songs. and I took pride in being able to do the song. I mean, the irony of that as well, and I'm laughing because it is funny, but a big fail is obviously now forgetting my own lyrics,

but at the time, nobody in the audience probably would have ever even remember the lyrics I was singing, even if they had called out a request. Yeah, no, very difficult. Just dark, smelly, smoky places, you know, with a lot of, and people fight, and it's very, you know, the bar fright breaks out after midnight. Given where you are now, and we'll talk a little bit more about your mother in particular

coming on to your other failures, would you change anything about your childhood? No, I wouldn't want to ever live it again. Once is enough. Once is enough all the way through, all the way around, and I don't regret any of it. And a lot of it, I didn't have control over anyway. You know, so much of my life I lived before I had control of my life, it was a very jam. impact, intense young life, considering the career, considering the family dynamics and all of that, that I felt old already by the time I was 20.

By the time my parents died, by the time I was 22, I already felt like a grown woman with. I was already not hard, but I was more experienced than I probably should have been with a lot of things. And by the time I did set off into my own independent life and career, meaning not, you know, of not having dependence, I was starting my life for the second time I felt. You touch on the bad elements of your childhood. Could you just explain what you mean by that? Yeah, sure. For example, if there was an opportunity for me to go singing at the local. a bar. My mother would find every opportunity possible so I could get out and get exposure and get experience as a professional performer because that was my education. Those were my schools. Those were my classrooms, the bar stages. If I didn't earn anything from it, it was going to be

a domestic problem because we were using gas in the car to get there. You know, we would at least have to be able to put the gas back in the car. We at least needed 20 bucks, or we needed 50 bucks. We needed to be able to contribute something to the groceries, for example. So the cupboards were often empty. The gas tank was often empty. We were living hand to mouth week to week or sometimes day to day. The heat would get turned off in the middle of winter. So, you know, any, any, five dollars went a long way. So I couldn't just go do it for nothing. If we did get home without making any money and we used up the gas money in the car, then my parents would fight. And there was a lot of violence in our home.

So that was a big challenge as well, living in a violent household. I'm so sorry you went through that, and I'm so sorry you must have felt so responsible on many levels from the age of eight. Well, that's the part where you don't really, when you're not in control of what's going on in your environment, I mean, obviously no child is. You're just a victim of the environment, of the circumstances. and you do what is, it's your norm anyway, right? It's almost like I'm more affected by it,

or the further I got away from it, the more affected I, or more aware of it of what reality is really supposed to look like and how dysfunctional it was at the time. And, I mean, I knew it wasn't, you know, you know, you have a sense when you were a child, you go to school with other kids. You know there's no other kid in the class

that's up till two in the morning in local bar, you know, maybe singing to somebody's parents or whatever. I mean, it's just, so you know that. But you don't really, really absorb it, I don't think. I didn't anyway until I started getting further away from it. I totally get that. You had this innate, extraordinary talent for singing and songwriting, and you took it and made something magical of it,

and you made it as a recording artist. And that brings us onto, I think, your second failure, which is your failure to stick to the rules or to not speak your mind. So, and what do you mean, what period of your life are you attaching that failure to? It's just my character. Okay. It's like, it's my lifetime failure. And I hope it never, I hope I never succeed at changing, you know, at fixing that because I think it's not broken. And I guess I like to, I like to include this as a failure only because even at times when I know better to maybe monitor my forward nature more, I fail at that. And a good example of that is when I first got signed in Nashville for my recording contract, I left Canada with high Canadians, some Canadians, anyway, swear a lot.

I love that you swear loads. You're very welcome for you swear on this podcast. I'm huge swear. It was just shocking to so many people. I'm thinking, wow, this is, you know, this is quite my norm. I'm, you know, I really, and I had to reel that in. And there were a lot of things I had to reel in, but almost got, you know, rejected out of that community over things like that, over just being myself. But I found other ways to express myself. And it became more productive. So I think there's something really good about, well, there's everything good about being aware of where you are, when, where, where, how, all of those things. I ended up just putting it into my music, into the visuals, especially being very expressive. I knew

that I was maybe taking a left turn from the norm, certain times, or maybe a sharp right or whatever. I knew I was definitely going uphill a lot by choice because I wanted to self-express. I had my own ideas and I was going to follow them through. It's very interesting to me because you clearly have a strong sense of what you want. And yet earlier you were saying that it was only with man, I feel like a woman, that you felt you were coming into yourself and being able to almost put aside an insecurity. So how have those two things coexist? That's great. You said it just so well. I was at that moment taking ownership of the fact that, you know what, I think all of these things. I'm very frank and very, very cut and dry about a lot of things. But I realized that

I was holding back. Not unless, trust me, I'm sure that the community of Nashville didn't think I was holding back, you know, in their mind, I was already way, way too forward about being, you know, a confident woman and a thinker and a writer and a, you know, playing with language that they felt I was sending a message. Well, I was sending messages, but I was, I'm a writer. So when I, when I want to say something, I find a way to say it that gets my point across and is absorbed still, is relatable. Yes. That's a skill. That's something you develop. I'm serious. I'm a writer. I'm not just somebody trying to stir up problems. But I didn't realize how insecure I was about my own, my body, how, like I started to only realize then. I'm like, you know, I've never actually worn a bathing suit on the beach ever in my youth. Really? Never.

All my other friends, all through our teens, especially, everybody, you know, we're at the beach. Never wore bathing suit. And I didn't really. It started to connect when I wrote men. I feel like a woman. Was there a sort of lack of ease around your sexiness in the sense that men were projecting that on you? And also you were being criticized for it by this Nashville community.

You weren't country enough. You were too sexy. Women in country were only allowed to sing innocent songs, whereas men could sing about whatever they wanted. Is it something about that that felt uncomfortable? It was a process. So the insecurities, not about being female, but about expressing being female, was the issue. So I could do it with the lyrics.

And I was playing already with the visual silhouettes and everything. And I was doing what I thought was comfortable. But it's only when I was writing man, I feel like a woman that I really, I'm like, this is a, I mean this. Like, I really, this is like a statement. This is not now just me being a woman saying, you know, I can think for myself. This was beyond that. This started from super young age. Only men in my industry when I was a kid.

There was the odd female singer. But when there was a female singer in the bars, I wasn't normally then going to the bar to sing because they already had a female singer. And if I was going, it was just, you know, my mother would take me to then, you know, maybe meet another female. artist. But when I was performing in those bars, it was an all-male band, all-male environment. Very few. There were strippers often in the other side of the bar. Like some Canadian bars have two sides to the bars open, but one side's got a band, and then the other side has like music and strippers on other stage. So there's more men in those bars. And men just, I've had just way too many men get weird and cross-boundaries.

And just make me uncomfortable too many times from very, very, very young. So I'm thinking the last thing I want to do is I'm strong, but I'm not, I can't go on the beach with a bathing suit. In other words, I had put limits on my own self. Yes. But when I wrote, man, I feel like a woman. That was the beginning of a big change for me. I'm like, okay. Now I'm definitely, I'm going to put a short skirt on.

I was kind of pushing myself through fears. Yes. You know, I was now, I wasn't looking at them anymore. I was actually pushing myself through them and felt great. I love that you were reclaiming really your own womanhood from the male gaze and male exploitation. Absolutely. Yes, no, absolutely. And, you know, from a very young age, I was retreating, retreating, retreating, retreating.

I would not wear shorts. I would not wear a bit. I wouldn't even wear shorts. I was in tractsuits and I was very athletic. Can I ask you something that you don't have to answer? Yeah. How much of that was to do with your relationship with your father? Oh, there's definitely part of it for sure.

You know, at every age pretty much, and from various angles, there's always been discomfort there. That's why I was saying earlier, no, I just grew up way too fast. for a lot of those reasons as well. When you're in the company of men that are intoxicated, just boundaries get blurry. And you learn young as a girl in a very, very men's world, especially then. You learn how to navigate that. And by the time I went to Nashville, which was still, you know,

much later in my life, I mean, later I say, because, you know, I started singing at the age of age of age. in public, but in my career, you know, I was already in my later 20s. I'm fearless at this point. I'm like, there is no man in my presence that intimidates me for one second in this room. I am just savvy now. By now, I'm way more confident about how to be the only woman in the room and without being timid. Yes. So by then I'd already learned how to express what I had. had to say. I just had to find a more polite way to say things, you know, coming from all the cursing and everything like that. So I had to culturally adjust more than anything. My sense of

humor was more crude, things like that. So by the time I was recording the music that I was writing, I was already in a stable, you know, as a woman, I was very stable and confident in my, and what I wanted to say and really had already loved. learn how to say it. Final question on this failure, because you were someone who was accused of not being country enough, and it really made me realize doing research for this, how difficult it is, how conventional in many respects and how limiting the world of country music certainly was. And we're talking at a time when Beyonce has just released her country album, Cowboy Carter,

and I wonder what you think of it. Well, I love the fact. This is like a present. You know, there's an opportunity to reembrace, and I'll explain that, but to reembrace and to have another opportunity to enjoy a country music that is so much more diverse than it's been for a long time. Because the country music that my grandparents introduced me to, there were country artists that had come from rock bands. it was quite common. Dolly Parton, she's a Tennessee Mountain girl. She's not a cowgirl.

She was a Tennis, smoky mountain girl singing bluegrass folk songs, and the Nashville community didn't stop her from getting her augmentation and wearing, you know, sequin and crystals from head to toe, and nobody expected her to wear cowboy boots and tame her image.

So when to her, did that start exactly where we couldn't, you know, like Barb, the Mandrell sisters, they were incredibly sexy. They were like a group of sisters that remind me a lot of Anne Margaret, for example. They were flashy and they danced and they weren't line dancing. So historically it was much more diverse. It was much more diverse. So you see it as a reintroduction of that. Yes. It was way more diverse. We had more folk. We had more rock and country. We had more soul. We had more, we had bluegrass. It just was more diverse. And then when I got to Nashville, I don't know, all of a sudden it's like, where are all my heroes?

Yes. Your final failure, and it's a big one, and it's sad, and it's also beautiful, and I'm so grateful to you for choosing it, is your failure to not wish my mom was at every award show. Yeah. The reason that I include this is because they say not to wish for things you can't. change. And so there's truth to that. But I think you have triggers like an award show. Any moment that triggers where I started. Because I'm always thinking, you know, oh, look where I am now. How in the world did I ever get here from way over there from where I started? Yes. And I always reflect on that every time something really great happens like an award, you know,

I'm recognized, where it reminds me of where I am, you know, things that remind me of what's been accomplished. And then, of course, it's that trigger of my mother. She was there for all of the beginning and none of the success. Obviously, it's a regret in certain terms. It's not a regret in the sense I can't change it. It was out of my hands, but it's regrettable in the deepest way that she never got to witness anything. Your first failure is your failure to truly allow your creative voice and the music in your soul to reign supreme. Yes. So tell us about that tension, the music in your soul and the music that for many years, I imagine, you were producing and selling. Did that tension feel difficult at times? So I suppose at the beginning,

I loved singing and I loved music so much and it was just so very natural. And it was just so very natural. to me, but then to sort of have everything handed to me on a plate in terms of like, you know, all like a record deal and all of this success and travel and glamour and all of that, I didn't have a chance to become ambitious or hungry. And also what was really wonderful about doing the music that I did then was that I was constantly getting to sing with orchestras all over the world. I was like, yeah, wherever I was going, I would be singing with the music. the National State Orchestra of Pennsylvania or Chicago or wherever I was. So that's a wonderful thing to be held in that sonic sphere as a vocalist as a singer.

But it wasn't what I loved, you know? Because actually, at that time, what I loved was the spice girls. Yes. You know, and... And Pietrangelo. That's fine. That's accessible. Mysterious girl.

It's not really acceptable at all. Amongst others. And then as I grew older, actually all of the music that I loved was sort of new soul. People like DiAngelo and Jill Scott and India Ari. And so as soon as I was allowed to break away from the sort of classical crossover stuff, and all I wanted to do was go and make R&B. And so the record company were like, I don't think so. That's not going to be happening anytime soon.

General record company man. And it was like my tiny little startings of writing and making my own music and exploring my own soul. And that very quickly got sort of shut down by the people that I was working with in the industry. And how would they do that? How would they shut it down? And how would they not allow you to do things? Well, they would just basically say that this song was. was no good. I spent a long time having to rehabilitate my creative self because for a very long time I didn't think I was creative. I didn't think I was artistic. I knew that I was talented. I knew that

I could sing. But the rest of it, I just thought, oh, well, that's not me. That's these other people who are, who play instruments and who write music and, you know, all of that sort of stuff. So I've lived with a lot of doubt around my own creative. and my own capacity to write songs and create music. And then in my 20s, when I met my now husband, I started writing music with him. And so then I was starting to write some really fucking weird stuff, which was sort of like prog, R&B, folk, polyphonic,

I mean, just like all over the shop, very experimental music. but then because I'd been so badly wounded by the industry I wanted nothing to do with the industry anymore and so I self-released it, self-funded it all and that was really difficult as well you know then that's a whole area of the business and I'm like oh God I don't know any of this stuff how do we do all of this stuff

and so now I feel like I'm finally at a place I've been working for the last year on music that is feeling just so free and golden and just like easeful and juicy. That's so beautiful to hear and I wonder if you feel that your singing is now in alignment with your purpose. Interesting.

Yes. I think that in a way, my singing, because I had such a deep, genuine, love for it. And because it was before I had a chance to become like affected, you know, like lots of singers have sort of affectations in their voice and it's very stylized. And not that that's a bad thing, you know, some of the best singers in the world are very sort of stylized. But my voice was always very like right from the center of my being. And do you now believe inside that you are creative? Have you worked on that piece of self-worth? Yes.

Absolutely. And I think that it really came from outside of music. So I think when I started to really go, hang on a minute. If I do this, was actually creating the dreaming. Because again, it was so out of my sphere and frame of reference. And every time people would come in and look at the interiors and every time people have gone through the experience as well that I have spent like meticulous. time, love, energy detail in curating and making it exactly as I want it to be. People are like, wow, this is like so incredibly creative and thought about and these interiors, and I feel so held and this, that and the other one.

I'm like, so that was the thing, the thing that really first started to make me accept and realize that I was a creative being and I was a creative person. And that very quickly then has gone, straight back into music. Talk to me a little bit about the music industry as you experienced it.

I mean, you were very funny when you did that impression of the standard man in the music industry. But I imagine it was such a specific time. You know, and you became famous age 12 from a TV phone in and then you're pitched into this industry that is incredibly male-dominated

at the time that you were in it. What were your experiences like? How do you feel about it now? They were terrible. There's no two ways about it. I was not looked after. I was not nurtured. I was just totally exploited.

Like I was a commodity and the industry was incredibly razor sharp. And, you know, even from having, like, I had 40% of my earnings taken from me by my manager at the time. So even stuff like that, even stuff like the deals that I got into

and that my parents signed on my behalf, but they were also totally green and naive. So we got massively taken advantage of without a shadow of a doubt. And you know, I've made my peace with it now because, you know, I understand the wider context. You know, I'm a deeply politicised person and so I'm not looking at myself

from a victim mindset in terms of like, poor me, this thing happened to me. I've sort of worked through a lot of that stuff and I can understand the soil in which I was growing and that soil was full of shit. Yeah. Actually, full of shit wouldn't be too bad, weren't it? Full of chemical, no, worms is great.

Full of terrible chemical compounds of which shouldn't have been there and were strangling lots of young women at that time. Yeah. what advice would you give to your pre-fame self? I would say, I mean, it's almost impossible. Just hold steady. And actually, I'm really proud.

When I look back at, you know, and I sort of do inner child work, and I look back at my little self, I'm really proud of her. I'm really proud of the poise that she showed and the bravery and the calm and the storm. There was like a, And I feel it still, I'm quite lucky to have a sort of quite a calm centre.

And I think that I, I think that I've always had it my whole life. But I think that really kicked in because, you know, when things started to get really heightened, and even, even things like before a big show. So, you know, I'd be doing the Olympics or, you know, George Bush's inauguration, like insane world events. And my mother would be there, like, flapping, breathing. breathing, like so nervous for me and I would just be like

just super chilled because I had to be but that also I think then helped me cultivate a sense of calm in my life and a sense of self because it feels like I mean I don't know you although I feel like I know you which must be the weird thing about fame but it feels from my perspective as though

you haven't changed your essence is not altered yeah totally and I I think that's probably the same for everybody in a way that we are within us is that that's that same soul essence that has been with us since conception and that has absolutely grown in complexity and beauty and shadow and all of it but is essentially the same person. You've got three children. I wonder if any of them want to be famous? I mean they don't want to be famous necessarily. I mean, they don't want to be famous necessarily. I mean,

It is funny sometimes when they're like, can we get on your Instagram or? And I'm like, absolutely not. I'm very protective, very lioness about, you know, as much as I possibly can keeping them out of the limelight, just because I know, I know what it means to not consent, I suppose. And so I want to make sure that if that is something

that they choose for themselves, that it is something that they have as much capacity and wherewithal to consent to. But they're both interested in lots of artistic things. My son does a lot of acting, and my daughter does acting and singing, and she's set for world domination. She's studying power dynamics currently in the Western world. She's built herself a curriculum. She's amazing.

She's amazing.