By now, if you say “country-pop,” the instant answer comes wrapped in leopard print and bellows from stadium speakers: Shania Twain, global disruptor, prairie survivor, and avatar of empowerment for bank-tellers, rodeo queens and karaoke fiends alike. On August 28, Shania turns 60, and the world gets to ponder an inflection point: What do you do after you’ve sold 100 million records, burned down every genre boundary, survived heartbreak and disease, and outlasted the judgements of cowboys, critics and record-company “suits”?
If there’s an answer, Twain is living it out loud. And in the most Shania way: with openness, mid-chorus reinvention and zero tolerance for BS.
Shania’s story isn’t just rags-to-riches; it’s more like rags-to-chart-topper-to-pop-icon-to-a-walk-in-the-wilderness-and-back. Raised in a struggling family in Timmins, Ontario, Eilleen Regina Twain (the original moniker has since ceded to “Shania,” an anthemic name with Ojibwa roots) learned resilience as her native language. Her self-titled 1993 debut album fizzled quietly, but the world would soon over-correct.
After teaming up with producer and future husband Robert “Mutt” Lange, the follow-up, The Woman in Me, detonated like a lariat wrapped around the globe. Sales soared past 20 million; the Grammys arrived, and so did the realisation that Twain was rewriting not just country, but pop culture.
Her 1997 record-busting album, Come On Over, confirmed the vault: over 40 million copies worldwide, crown for best-selling solo female album, best-selling country album, and fuel for karaoke nights the world over. With each new record, Twain shed more of the “Nashville darling” skin and walked ever bolder into the sun.
But commercial transformation is expensive. Twain endured more than superficial barbs about “popification” – she absorbed the jibes, the industry’s doubts and, after a mystifying cascade of vocal and health issues, the existential dread that comes for even the most bulletproof artists. In interviews, she has never sugarcoated the toll. “I say you should look in the mirror and be fine with that. I am only going to get older and saggier – if I hate myself now, then what state am I going to be in in five or 10 years?” she told the Mirror, in a line as honest as the bridges she writes for her best songs.
Shania’s 60th is less a victory lap than an encore. There’s no bitterness, no performative nostalgia for a youth painfully earned and bravely left behind. If there’s a word for Twain at this milestone, it’s unfazed. She’s ditched the expectation to edit herself for polite society. “The older I get, the more confident I feel … The filters are just coming off,” she’s stated.
She has also admitted the hardships. “I think as we get older especially, we do tend to get more shy or more critical of our bodies. Our skin starts to sag, it’s just part of growing old,” Twain confessed, a line that’s either defiance or the most gentle kind of self-forgiveness. Whether she’s lighting up a Las Vegas residency or experimenting for the sheer hell of it, the message is unchanged: Vitality doesn’t have a timestamp, and for a woman in an industry that wants to shrink you with every decade, that’s revolution.
Her perspective on letting go is clear-eyed. “What a waste of energy to live with fears about aging … It just takes so much time and effort away from enjoying your life. Menopause taught me to quickly say, ‘You know, it may only get worse. So, just love yourself now. Just get over your insecurities – they’re a waste of your energy’,” Twain said recently.
Twain’s recent years are a greatest hits setlist of creative pivots. After battling Lyme disease and the resulting dysphonia, she clawed back to the spotlight, mounting two massive Vegas residencies and torching the notion of “retirement” with albums like Now (2017) and Queen of Me (2023). The energy on stage: ferocious. The songwriting: reflective but never regressive.
During the pandemic, Shania told Today, “I found more energy. I’m choosing happiness and enjoying life more as I get older.” That joy radiates everywhere, in her willingness to experiment – with both the music and the self – long after she could have coasted on nostalgia tours.
Glance at Twain’s Instagram or tour footage and you’ll see an artist straddling confidence and humility, poking fun at herself, dropping wisdom like, “If I don’t give it my all right now I’ll regret it later. That’s very important to me because I’ve worked all my life to have this.”
Maybe it comes down to survival – literal and figurative. Twain’s songs are temples to resilience. “You’re Still the One” became a staple at weddings; “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” is both bachelorette fuel and a coded ode to freedom. The costumes got louder, the hooks sharper. Each anthem carried an undercurrent for anyone ever told to wait their turn: Go get it. Do what you dare. Don’t apologise for insisting on more.
It’s hard to think of a living artist who’s navigated as many existential pivots – a child lost in poverty, an ingenue dismissed as an industry experiment, an icon felled by disease, and yet still unbowed. Twain’s career is a Teflon miracle, proof that the best art transcends not just genre, but generation.
At 60, Shania Twain moves differently – but she’s still moving, and still not impressed by the things that used to rattle her. “Now, I look at myself naked and I like the honesty about myself,” she said. “If I hate myself now, then what state am I going to be in in five or 10 years?”. This isn’t a battle cry. It’s a survival guide.
In a culture obsessed with perpetual youth, Twain is flipping the script: The best years are always the ones where you quit being scared. For Shania – and for the millions who still belt out her songs in traffic jams and stadiums – that’s what being 60 looks like. Proud. Energised. Original. Absolutely, still the one.
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