Recognise this woman? Here’s a clue: She’s sold over 100 million records and has one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.
Country-pop superstar Shania Twain is proving blondes have more fun as she steps out to promote her new album, released this week.
The Canadian Come On Over singer, 57, looked near-unrecognisable as she stepped out at a Los Angeles event this week with striking platinum-blonde locks.
The new look comes as Twain yesterday released her new album, Queen Of Me, featuring the singles Waking Up Dreaming and Giddy Up.
Another song on the new album, titled Inhale/Exhale Air, references Twain’s “scary” experience battling Covid while at her home on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
Twain with Mr Brainwash (left) and Republic Records CEO Monte Lipman (right). Picture: Phillip Faraone/Getty
Shania and singer Stephen Sanchez at the event. Picture: Phillip Faraone/Getty
“It was progressively getting worse. My vital signs were getting worse,” Twain told The Mirror in an interview this month. Eventually she had to be flown to hospital, where she made a full recovery.
Twain’s blonde red carpet look isn’t the first time she’s turned heads with a bold new look recently – she performed at December’s People’s Choice Awards in a skin-tight catsuit with pink-hued hair.
Shania at December’s People’s Choice Awards.
Shania circa 1998.
Twain’s new album comes after she only released one album in the past 20 years – 2017’s Now.
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to Twain releasing new music was her painful, public divorce from the man who had co-written and produced all of her music.
Twain and producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange married in 1993, and their romantic partnership also produced some of the biggest hits of the ’90s – Lange’s fingerprints were all over Twain’s glossy, radio-friendly country pop singles.
But their marriage dissolved amid scandal in 2008, when it emerged that Lange had an affair with Twain’s best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud.
Shania Twain and Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange on their wedding day.
Confronted with the fact her husband and best friend were having an affair, Twain fell into a deep depression. She even emailed her (now former) friend to beg for her husband back.
“I am dying, and I can’t take it any more. This is killing me. Have mercy,” she wrote.
In her 2011 memoir From This Moment On, she wrote that she barely ate or slept and felt “ready to die”.
The person who broke the news of the affair to Twain was her best friend’s husband, Frederic, who had stumbled across evidence that his wife was cheating with Lange.
Both shattered by their spouses’ betrayal, Twain and Frederic found solace with each other – and soon embarked upon a relationship of their own.
On January 1, 2011, three years after she and Frederic discovered they were both being cheated on by their respective partners, Shania Twain married her ex-best friend’s ex-husband. Mutt and Marie-Anne were not invited to the wedding.
The other big obstacle stopping Twain from resuming her singing career: The stress of the divorce made her quite literally lose her voice.
Following the split she was diagnosed with dysphonia, a vocal cord disorder that made it difficult for her to speak, let alone sing, and it took years for her voice to recover.
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