How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Shania Twain - ‘There is no man that intimidates me’

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Today’s guest has the biggest selling studio album ever in the UK by an international female artist. She has won five Grammys, sold more than 100 million albums worldwide and, at 58, remains the top-selling female country pop artist of all time. This year, she makes her Glastonbury debut in the coveted Legends slot, undertakes a new tour of the UK and Ireland and returns to Las Vegas for her third residency. And yet Shania Twain has battled adversity from a young age; her childhood was challenging and impoverished. From the age of eight, she was helping to support her family by singing in bars. Today, she is a cultural icon who has influenced a new wave of artists including Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. Shania and I talk about her inability to remember song lyrics, her failure to stick to the rules and the grief she felt after her parents died in a car accident. Plus, why recording Man, I Feel Like A Woman, was a transformative experience for how she felt about her own body and her own femininity. It was such an honour being in the same room as this total icon, and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. As always, I’d LOVE to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Tickell and Josh Gibbs Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This podcast puts failure in the spotlight and asks us what we learn from the moments in life that don't go according to plan. Because I firmly believe that most failure can teach us something if we let it. Every week I talk to a new guest about the times they failed and how their perspective on life and what success really means was shaped along the way. Before we

begin, I just wanted to remind you about my subscriber series. This week in Failing With Friends, I cover the stress of full weekends away for hen-do's, the difference between having a failure and feeling like a failure, the importance of listening to your inner voice, a failure to have a baby and to manage that at work, and much, much more. We'd love to hear from you. Please follow the link in the podcast notes. Despite being famous for singing the phrase, that don't impress me much, it's fair to say that today's guest impresses me a whole lot. To try and summarise her career in just a few words is to attempt the impossible. The facts are astonishing.

Her album, Come On Over, is the biggest selling studio album ever in the UK by an international female artist. She has won five Grammys, sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and at 58 remains the top-selling female country pop artist of all time. This year, she makes her Glastonbury debut in the coveted Legends slot, undertakes a new tour of the UK and Ireland, and returns to Las Vegas for her third residency. for her third residency. Her greatest hits album, to be re-released in November on vinyl, is certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest-selling hits collection by a female artist in the US. It contains another of her iconic songs, Man, I Feel Like a Woman. And yet her childhood was challenging and impoverished. Raised in Canada by her mother, Sharon, and her stepfather Jerry, from the age of eight she was helping to support her family by singing in bars. Today she is a

cultural icon who has influenced a new wave of artists including Taylor Swift and Harry Styles with whom she performed at Coachella in 2022. It's only in looking back that Shania Twain says she can appreciate the level of her success, as she was always too busy to celebrate in the moment. And although she has endured her fair share of struggle, including 2018 surgery to reconstruct her vocal box after contracting Lyme's disease, Twain says that these days, whatever scars I have, I've earned. I'm comfortable in my own skin. Shania Twain, welcome to How to Fail. I can't believe I get to say that. That was such a, I just, that was really fun listening all about myself. In a sort of a surreal way. Yes. It. I mean, it must be incredibly surreal

to imagine that you have achieved all of those things. And here you are. I guess I consider them more as experiences than achievements, really. Because some of them, of course, are related to accolades. But mostly, you know, I've just always been a very hard worker

and came from not much. So I would say that I attribute where I am now to just one experience at a time. You mean so much to so many of us. How does that feel when you walk about on the London street? What is the number one thing that people say to you when they see you and recognize you? Most people want to make sure that it's me first because I don't look, you know, I'm always really pretty low key when I'm walking around the streets of London or any streets of any city for that matter, unless I'm dressed up to go to a red carpet or something like that. But I think a lot

of people just feel like I look related to Shania Twain. Could that really be Shania Twain? So they're always very polite and ask first. And of course, you know, I'm honest and say yes, but then they get excited and it's just fun. I wanted to end on that quote about being proud of your scars, because it really goes to the root of so much of what this podcast is about, how we can learn from our failures, our perceived imperfections. How do you feel about your scars? Boy, I have a lot of scars. Well, I have a lot of scars from cooking. I have a lot of scars from working in the bush with sharp tools. I have a lot of emotional scars, losing my parents together in a car accident, very shocking. I've been through a sad divorce. I've been through challenging childhood and then

my open throat surgery. Over time, I have realized that all of those experiences have really made me who I am today. And I wear them well, I think. Well in the sense I feel well about it. I feel fine. When I first got this throat scar, for example, I was wearing a scarf around my neck to cover it up. Because I thought, I don't know how people are going to react to this. They don't even know that I've had throat surgery. They don't even know that I've had this voice issue yet. I'm just starting to talk about it. I don't want them to be distracted by it without being able to

explain it first. And then I just got over it. Maybe saying that is a little bit, maybe too light of a language to use. I wouldn't say I'm over it, but it's there and I accept it and I don't really feel like I need to cover it up, like any of my scars. Someone once said to me that we should write from the scar and not the wound. And I think there's something really profound about that. The wound that you initially have, which is so painful and seeping and bleeding, which is so painful and seeping and bleeding, and then the scar, which is the recovery process that teaches you how to live again.

I wonder if that resonates with you, because so much of your music really does connect to our vulnerability as listeners and fans. And I wonder how difficult that is sometimes to dig into your own sadness. That's a very good question. I like the way you put that question. Because the process while you are in pain or struggling or suffering is often when I write about things, I'll document my feelings. I'll put things down. They're very raw,

they're very real, they're very in the moment. And I live them. I like to live through my suffering. I like to understand myself. I'm the kind of person that goes over it and over it and over it and over again and reanalyzes and turns it around in every direction till I finally get to the other side of it, which is then, you know, you're left with a wound. You're healed, but you've got this wound to remind you. That is normally when I release a song that may have been written or in the process of being written while I was going through a struggle. So my songs often have a sense of humor to them. They're now reflections of what I've been through, but they are on the other side. They are the healed experience with a scar. So when I'm writing something like Man, I Feel Like a Woman, it's me writing about

being someone that wasn't comfortable in their own skin for a very long time. And then all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but after going through the process, reaching a point in my life where I can say, wow, you know what? I'm actually really glad I'm a woman with all the things that come with it. So that song is a song of celebration and realization and ownership of the fact that I've been through the challenges that a lot of other women have been through. And I can talk about them now more easily, but they're all from experience of having those challenges. Well, thank you for that alchemy, because I'm so grateful for that song,

Man, I Feel Like a Woman, which has seen me through so many hard times and good times and karaoke times and all of the rest of it. And part of the reason it's so iconic is also the video and your outfit in the video. And I know the outfits in videos were very important and continue to be very important to you. Can you talk us through why that visual was so crucial? The visuals for me are always very, very, very important because they are the continuation of the idea of the song. It's being realized visually. It becomes tactile. It becomes a different medium. It's a different platform altogether. And it is an extension of the song.

So, Man, I Feel Like a Woman, all about the layers and the more rigid, structured over layer, peeling off the structured, very confident, but nondescript. The personality is really underneath and the celebration is underneath and the celebration of having those layers and recognizing those layers. And so there was a lot to that one, not just the fashion. And how do you feel? You touched that on the idea that it took you a while to feel comfortable in your own skin. How do you feel now in your womanhood?

Big question. Three words or less. Well, let's start with the man I feel like a woman video because wearing the short skirt. So first I wrote about wearing the short skirt in the song. Now in the video, I'm literally wearing a short skirt. And I'm thinking, I've never performed in a short skirt. I actually don't even know what I'm going to do. This is what it's all about, owning your body and feeling confident and

expressive. But I've never performed in a short skirt. So now I'm thinking, okay, now you're the performer. You're not just the songwriter. You are now the performer. And you're creating this silhouette, which is the fashion, the look, and the story. How are you going to look? I hadn't worked it out yet. I worked it out on the set. And so I've been someone that has been coming into my comfort my whole life. I think it's just a process.

I live it every day. So now, now I'm very fine with wearing short skirts. What do you all want at Coachella when you performed with Harry Styles and looked fantastic yeah that was a short dress yeah now I'm perfectly fine but it's been a process for me interesting and the man I feel like a woman video was the very first time I'd ever performed with legs at all that's amazing but before we get onto your failures how are you feeling about performing at Glastonbury I'm very excited about it I am getting into the spirit of the whole experience.

I will be bringing, well, I call them rubber boots, but I will be bringing wellies, as you call them here. Wise. I'll make sure. And the reason is because I want to see some other, I want to go to some other stages and get out there. And I mean, maybe it won't be raining, but I've heard that you should be prepared for the mud.

I will probably wear a cowboy hat if it's raining, if I'm going around the stage just so I can keep myself from looking like a wet rat. And, of course, being on the stage will be very exciting. So I'm already thinking about what to, I haven't worked out what I'm wearing yet, but I will, I'll figure it out by then, no problem. Okay. But you're not camping. You're not going that far.

I'm not going to go that far. More because I won't have time to go camping. But, yeah, I'll figure it out by then, no problem. Okay, but you're not camping, you're not going that far. I'm not going to go that far. More because I won't have time to go camping, but yeah, I would love to. I said before we get onto your failures, I lied. I've got one more question. You and I are both in our second marriages. My personal opinion is that second marriages are so much better because for me anyway,

I'm very grateful to have been given a second chance and I also never take what I have for granted because I know how easily it can go awry. How do you feel about second marriages? I reflect very regularly in my marriage right now about what I've learned, where I probably was not doing my best as a partner, where I recognize a lot more about, I've learned so much about myself and I realize, you know, okay, I don't want to make the same mistakes again. It's been more of a self-reflection while now being in a second marriage, realizing that let's not repeat the same thing twice. Stop and study myself often when there's tension or I mean any marriage is gonna have ups and downs any relationship and I definitely reflect more than I definitely did in my first marriage

I'm better at that now I think your first failure is as you put it your failure to remember all your own song lyrics is this a recent thing no I'll tell you what happens. Just over time, after you've recorded and written so many songs, as your catalog gets larger and your career gets longer, you get further and further away from the earlier things that you've written. What I do now sometimes when I'm in a live show, because people are always yelling out, you know, songs that they haven't heard me do in a long time or that they've never heard me do live. And I started paying attention more to that and thought, you know, I don't even remember the lyrics to that song. So they'll sing a little bit of it to me,

and then I get started, and it's really fun to go back and revisit it. So I don't beat myself too much up when it comes to that failure, because it's challenging to remember all my lyrics. But when people are singing along with a song that I do regularly or a more recent song, and they get the lyrics wrong, it throws me right off and I'm lost. Yes. I don't know where I am.

Yes. Because I'm singing along with them. And even if they stop singing for a minute, I don't know where I am. So this is a big fail in my opinion. It's like, oh, come on, keep it together. You're supposed to be leading the audience, not the audience leading you. So to me, that's a fail. Okay. And I wondered whether it had got any worse after Lyme's disease, because Lyme's disease is

one of those things that seems to spool out in a million different unexpected directions. It can affect so many things. I wonder how it affected you other than the vocal box. It didn't affect my brain. It is very often a heart issue often, which is not the case for me, thankfully. So the brain and the heart are the two most vulnerable with Lyme's disease and the nervous system. I do have some nerve sensitivities that will be there forever, apparently, and then the nerve damage to the vocal cords, but not the brain. You know, I consider myself lucky. So even though it was the voice, I mean, it wasn't the voice, but it was the cables, the lifeline to the vocal cords. Were you scared when you had Lyme's disease? Because often it takes a while to get it diagnosed

and you don't know what it is. I did find the tick the day I was bit. So I knew to get checked right away. The issue with Lyme's disease is that it doesn't show up in your blood right away. So it took two to three weeks before it showed up in my blood. So until it shows in your blood, they can't start treating you. So for those two and a half weeks, as the symptoms were building, I was starting to get more and more afraid. So those were,

you know, a good, almost three weeks of non-treated Lyme disease. That scared me the most. Yes. And those, some of those symptoms do linger. I was lucky also in the sense that because I was on tour, there was a real immediacy to getting me treated. Everybody wants you to get back up on that stage. You want to just keep going. The show must go on.

You're in that mindset. The show must go on. And I was, until I was diagnosed with it, I was on stage doing shows and almost falling off the stage. I mean, I was having these terrible dizzy spells and little mini blackouts. So that was scary. So it was, until I was treated, it was really, really scary. It was terrible. The symptoms were terrible.

Were there moments where you thought you'd never be able to sing again? Yes, once I got off that tour, that was the up tour. It was terrible. The symptoms were terrible. Were there moments where you thought you'd never be able to sing again? Yes. Once I got off that tour, that was the up tour, I was exhausted anyway naturally. And I never did recover my voice for the rest of that tour. And I didn't realize that I'd had any permanent damage to nerves. permanent damage to nerves, just attributing my fatigue to long touring, a young child, and this recovery from this virus. So I wasn't panicking about losing my voice in any permanent way for about a year. And then I realized it was not coming back.

And then I, you know, after seeing several specialists, there was no explanation at all. No damage to my vocal cords. Most singers after many years of singing have some either thickening of the cords or maybe slight nodule or blood vessels that show up on your scans. Mine were just in fabulous shape. It was a bit like a sick joke. Yes. In the end, that it would be the larynx that would suffer. 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 enter a bar, a liquor 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 a hundred song repertoire at all times because

people like to take requests or people like to call out requests. So, and I wanted to be able to take the requests. So they would, you know, 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 remembered 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 fight 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-packed, 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. 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. 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 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 $5 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 on many levels at the age from the age of eight well that's 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, you're just a victim of, of, 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 know, you have a sense when you're a child, you go to school with other kids, you, 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. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?

This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words, supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters, and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 what do you mean? What period of your life are you attaching that failure to? It's just my character. It's like, it's my lifetime failure. And I hope I never succeed at fixing that because I think it's not broken. And I guess 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, I, Canadians, some Canadians

anyway, swear a lot. I love that you swear loads. You're very welcome to swear on this podcast. I'm a huge swearer. It was just shocking to so many people. I'm thinking, wow, this is, you know, this is quite my norm. I, I'm, you know, I really, and, and I had to, I had to reel that in. And, 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 you're, when, 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 norms 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 do 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. Trust me, I'm sure that the community of Nashville didn't think I was holding back. In their mind, I was already way, way too forward

about being 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. Ever. Never. All my other friends, all through our teens especially, everybody, you know, we're at the beach, never wore a bathing suit. And I didn't really, it started to connect when I wrote Man, I Feel Like a Woman. 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, I Feel Like a Woman that it really, I'm like,

this is, 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 another 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 want, I'm strong, but I'm not, I can't go on the beach with a bathing suit. In other words, I had limits on my own self. Yes. But when I wrote Man, I Felt 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 beanie. I wouldn't even wear shorts. I was in track suits 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 man'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 eight in public, but in my career, you know, I was already in my later twenties. 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 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 what I wanted to say and really had already learned now 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 re-embrace, and I'll explain that, but to re-embrace 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 Tennessee mountain girl singing bluegrass folk songs. And the Nashville community didn't stop her from getting her augmentations and wearing, you know, sequins and crystals from head to toe. And nobody expected her to wear cowboy boots and tame her image. So when 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. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online.

It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions. If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris.

And me, Peyton Dix. The host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry.

The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime Day is here with epic deals exclusively for Prime members. You'll feel like you just won an award.

Oh, wow. I didn't even prepare a speech. I'd like to thank my family for always needing stuff. Also, Sam, my delivery guy, for bringing all my awesome deals so fast. You're the man, Sam! Shop deals on electronics, home, and more this Prime Day, July 16th and 17th. Home and more this Prime Day, July 16th and 17th. 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 always think, 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, where I'm recognized, where it reminds me of where I am. 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. I cannot even begin to imagine the devastation and the shock of losing both of your parents in a car crash. And from having read a little bit about your life, the fact that you immediately had to care for your siblings and immediately had to earn a living for all of you.

Did that mean that it took you a long time to process the grief because you were in shock for a lot of it? Yes, I really did struggle with that. I mean, there's pros and cons to not being able to fall into this well of grief that maybe you will struggle to climb out of. So in a way, being intensely preoccupied with caring for the family, dealing with the lawyers, the insurance companies, because it was a vehicle accident, there were all kinds of logistics involved. Right down to the actual accident reports, looking at the drawings, understanding the things that I was signing for, representing

the family. I mean, it was very in-depth. The banks, there were just a, oh, I was constantly opening their mail for months. It was a lot. I was preoccupied. I was distracted. I was, obviously, the kids were still very young. My brothers were 13 and 14 years old when my parents died, so they were completely dependent. You were 22. Yes. They were still in school, so I'm now like a single mom overnight. And I had to move the family in order to make a living. It took me probably a good two years before I could really think about myself even and what I even needed. I mean, it was not even on my mind at the time. It was just automatic. I was on automatic pilot, really. I read somewhere that when your first marriage ended and when your ex-husband had an affair,

that dealing with that meant that there were memories of your parents' death that resurfaced. Because the grief, it was like an origami grief that folded in on a previous one. I had never felt any grief like my parents dying. You know, their death was the first of all, and you know, the shock factor because it was an accident. When somebody, when you're not prepared, you know, you have no, it's just dropping out of the sky, this enormous devastation. There was the shock and the loss and that never goes away. Which I think the depth of that can resurface any grief. I think along the way in my life will always resurface that.

It'll always be under the surface, I think. So my divorce was, because it's true, it's almost like I, maybe if it had just been the divorce as my first most, like, devastating shock, surprise thing, because it was right out of the blue, maybe it would have been different. I'll never know. But I think it did open up the well of grief that was already living there of just loss and disappointment and all of that. And things you can't change, the finality of something like that as well. I think it depends on the situation in a divorce. It depends on the circumstances. Mine just happened to be very shocking all of a sudden. What's going on as well. You wrote an incredible album off the back of it.

And really a very brave album because talk about vulnerability. But I know that that album has helped a lot of people who found themselves in a similar situation. And I just want to say thank you for that. Well, thank you. It helped me too. That was my self-help album. I really loved the process for that reason. I really enjoyed getting all so many things out.

It was wonderful. Just the process of it. This failure, you say that it's a failure for you not to imagine that you'll see your mother at every award ceremony, but you don't mention your father. Why is that? Well, it's a different loss and it's a different grief. In the moment when they first died, it was, there was no distinction. It was just my world is, there's a carpet that's now, you know, been ripped out from under my feet, and I'm on my head kind of thing. And it's, there was no distinguishing anything.

It was just a very horrible thing. And I also knew so much about, it was a very graphic experience for me because I was going through the accident reports on what it physically, how my mother died physically, how my father died, when they died, all about their injuries on accident reports. They indicate all of those things, every wound, everything. So I'm looking at them as human beings as well, not just my parents. It's just a whole other thing altogether.

And I never really registered one over the other as far as who was the greater loss in any way. But now when I think of the suffering my mother went through, as a grown woman myself and as a parent now as well. I just think, oh, my mother suffered so much in her whole life and then in their marriage. She lived for my music. That was her lifeline. That was the sunshine in her day sometimes, a lot of times. And not me, but the music, the fact that there was maybe some hope that the cycle of our lives would change and the course of our life would change because of the music. She might have the next Tanya Tucker on her hands, that sort of thing. And to never see it break the cycle, to never see me succeed,

to never be a part of experiencing the payoff of this incredible investment that she had made all of my childhood in the music and in nurturing me. And that meant bringing me to bars, to the only classroom she could find for me to learn how to be a singer and would always be on, you know, like, oh, because I started writing songs at 10 years old. And my mother said, what did you write today? Can I hear something? So, you know, like as if I was studying at the National Ballet or something, you know, at 10 years old and your mother wants to see every little, you know, she goes to every class she wants to see.

She was this proud mother who wanted to see my development and was always looking to what I was writing and reading my lyrics and listening to my cassettes and all that sort of thing. So she was the one that was the soccer mom of the two of my parents for my talent. And my father was supportive of my talent. He loved my voice. I don't think he knew a thing about anything about, you know, what it was to be the next Tanya Tucker. You know, he was, that was, it was not part of his dream. So it is only when we talk about them not being here for my success that I think of her more.

Yes. Do you remember the first song you ever wrote? Yes. What was it called? Actually, the first three songs I ever wrote. The first one was called Just Like the Storybooks. I guess sort of lyrically typical. I think it would be something, it was more like something you would write

about a prince and princess kind of story. It had a great little melody, though, and I would do it live as well. Sometimes I would play it. Another one was called Is Love a Rose? And that was way more mature lyrically. I didn't have a clue what I was saying. And in fact, I remember when I would sing in bars, of course, there would always be the odd person that would comment out loud,

you know, like, you don't even know what you're singing, you're only 10. And I'm singing about divorce or whatever, let's say, for example. And they were right. I mean, I guess I'm sure some of them would have found it very difficult to take me very seriously, not buying into the song that was coming out of this little girl. So there would be comments, you know, people could be crude sometimes and they were drunk, like I said, half the time. But anyway, so, but through learning this repertoire of these more mature songs, I would, I started just saying, well, I'm just going to start writing. I'm going to start making them up. I don't need to know. I don't need to have lived it. I just became just an extremely very creative writer because of that. So it really

encouraged me to really make my stories believable. And then I wrote another song that was more autobiographical, which was, Will You Come Out to Play? And it was all about, it was about my mother that would always, she would never go outside almost ever in the day or even at night. She was, you know, unless it was to take me to the bar. Like if we were going for groceries, she might send us in first and we would get the cart going and everything, and then she'd come into pay. Or we often didn't have a washer and a dryer, so they would just drop us off at the laundromat and we would just stay there as little kids and do all the laundry. And then we'd just pick us up. They'd never leave the car. So my mother was living, watching us through the window, never joining us, never part of life, never engaging. She a lot of times had bruises on

her face from domestic violence. It was challenging for her and she retreated a lot from life. So I wrote that song about her living on the other side of the glass. Shania, that is so beautiful. No, I'm not laughing out of laughter, but I didn't mean to surprise you, but yeah. That's so beautiful because really what your life has become and how you live it is a testament to that early desire that your mother came out and lived on the other side of the glass. She's living through you right now. When you're going to be on the Glastonbury stage, you're doing it for that, for that child, for her, and asking her to come out and play. And I believe there's part of her that is, that can. Well, you know, I do also realize very, very much and deeply how much she did live for my music and

how much she got out of it at the time. She was really absorbing everything. And so for as long as my mother was alive, she died at 42. My dad was 40 and she was 42. And you know what? My music brought her so much joy, honestly. So she did get that, which to me is everything anyway. Shania Twain, your mother, you brought her so much joy. You bring so many women so much joy, but also so much empowerment. And I can't thank you enough

for being so beautifully open and vulnerable and strong and for coming on How To Fail. Thank you so much. I'm going to be answering your failures over on my subscriber series, Failing With Friends. And remember to follow us to get new episodes as they land, wherever you get your podcasts, or on Spotify, Amazon Music, or Apple Podcasts. And please, share a link with everyone you know. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.