Shania Twain Q+A, Part 1: New life in Las Vegas, conquering fears of singing again
ountry pop queen and five-time Grammy Award winner Shania Twain admits that even after 17 years of recording and performing, she’s still nervous every night she steps onstage. “I will probably always get butterflies. I would forget where I was sometimes, just out of panic. I am sure I will have that as well here in Las Vegas. Fortunately, it dissipates once I get out there,” said the Canadian superstar, who is one of the bestselling female artists in music history.
In one of her first interviews since arriving here last week, Shania talked with me Sunday at length about her new Caesars Palace show and its horses, her new gowns and how she’s only here because of her younger sister Carrie Ann, who will be one of her three backup singers in the new Colosseum show premiering Dec 1.
We’ll have all that in the second part of our interview Tuesday, but today our talk focuses on how she’s going to live in Vegas -- and last week’s incredible arrival on horseback on the Strip. Shania cleared up a misunderstanding that the horse she rode on was not El Alcazar. That’s her white horse that appears in all her show photos and in the Caesars Palace hotel commercial.
“He’ll be onstage with me,” she said. “We’ll also have onstage the horse I rode on the Strip for the arrival, Molesso. I don’t know why everybody got them confused. He’s the black horse and Alacazar is the white Spanish horse you see me with.”
It’s the point at which we began chatting.
Robin Leach: You sure know how to make an entrance!
Shania Twain: Well, you know I love to ride horses, so that was a fun thing to do.
R.L.: What is it about you and horses?
S.T.: Horses calm me. I love being around them. They smell great, they are beautiful to look at, they are loving, demanding, temperamental, and they settle you. The other day riding down the Strip on that horse, that was the first time I had ridden on that horse, so I don’t know that horse, which is a dangerous thing to do. It is not something that I would do every day.
When we got to the red carpet, I thought this horse may not go on the red carpet, he may decide, “No, I’m not going on the red carpet.” Horses don’t like change, for example, of going from concrete to whatever, the sound change, hard lines or anything like that. So, I’m thinking all right, I’ve got to stay completely calm and completely relaxed, no matter what.
If I am going to stay safe on this horse, because I don’t know what he is going to do, but at the same time, I have to act like everything is OK and that I am not thinking too much. So, horses really get you to stop, think and reflect. It is good for me, and you have no choice but to really just keep your cool. It is hard to do that when you are excited, because I was very excited to see everybody, and I had to keep it cool because of the horse.