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 Eilleen
Regina Edwards, 28 August 1965,
Windsor, Ontario, Canada. This
glamorous Canadian country/pop star
(her first name is pronounced "Shu-nye-ah')
grew up in the mining town of
Timmins. Before her musical career
began she planted trees with her
Native American stepfather as part
of a forest crew. Poor even by rural
Canadian standards, her family made
great sacrifices to support her
embryonic career. She took a job at
the Deerhurst resort in northern
Ontario as the headline vocalist in
a variety of musical productions.
Afterwards she concentrated on
country music, employing her friend
and former performer Mary Bailey as
her manager. Bailey put her in
contact with attorney Dick Frank in
1991, leading to a demo tape
recorded in Nashville with
songwriter and producer Norro Wilson
and Buddy Cannon,
Mercury Records'
A&R manager. Both the tragedy of her
parents" death (they were both
killed in an automobile accident in
November 1987) and their musical
legacy were explored on her debut,
with songs written by
Mike Reid
and
Kent Robbins.
The album's best song, "God Ain't
Gonna Get You For That", was the
only one part-composed by the
artist, pointing the way to future
artistic growth. Elsewhere the
single "Dance With The One That
Brought You", a staple of Country
MTV,
directed by Sean Penn, provoked
comparisons with
Trisha Yearwood.
Twain's follow-up album saw a rare
non-rock outing for her producer,
songwriting partner and husband
Robert "Mutt" Lange (Def Leppard,
Foreigner),
who spent much of 1994 working on
sessions with the singer in
Nashville.
The Woman In
Me was an extraordinary
crossover success in the USA, not
only when it was first released, but
over a year later, when it went back
to the top of the album charts for
another six months. Sales of this
album had topped 10 million by 1998
and yielded four Top 10 country
hits. During that eventful year,
Twain won most of the country music
awards, including the Entertainer Of
The Year trophy, and released her
follow-up album,
Come On Over.
This was predominantly a pop
collection, with Twain's country
roots buried beneath Lange's glossy
production. "You're Still The One"
was a crossover hit, peaking at
number 2 on the
Billboard Hot
100 in May, and the album became a
permanent fixture in both the US and
UK Top 10. Another huge US hit,
"From This Moment On", was the
single which broke Twain in the UK,
debuting at number 9 in November.
"That Don't Impress Me Much" and
"Man! I Feel Like A Woman" were also
huge US/UK hit singles the following
year, and by March 2000 the album
was confirmed as both the
bestselling album in country music
history, and the bestselling album
ever by a female artist.
By
altering her musical course
slightly, Twain has done much to
popularize country music to a wider
US audience and to reinvent herself
in the UK as a pop singer. The
heavily hyped follow-up
Up!
became another huge chart-topping
success, showing that any country
fans lost on the way were more than
compensated for by the legions of
new young female pop fans.
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