Shania Boards - View Single Post - Shania in this weeks issue of Time

In high school Twain balanced homework and a counter job at McDonald's--"I learned tons about the meaning of service there," she says enthusiastically — with singing in an '80s-rock cover band. After high school she moved to Toronto and worked as a secretary while hopping from band to band. Three years later, Twain was still struggling for a break when she received a phone call saying her parents were dead. Their car had collided head-on with a logging truck.

Her older sister was married, so it fell to Twain to take care of the three youngest Twains. She got a job as a revue singer at a resort 300 miles from Timmins and moved the whole family to a cabin with no running water. Once the siblings were adults and out of the house, Twain says she felt "very old." With no idea of what she wanted from life, she nevertheless put together a demo tape, and in 1991 Mercury Nashville gave her a $20,000 advance and signed her to a contract.

After adopting the stage name Shania, an Ojibwa word meaning "I'm on my way," Twain released her self-titled debut. It sold a respectable 100,000 copies, although no one, not even Twain, seemed to like it. She had visions of being a songwriter, but only one of her compositions made the album. Then her manager got a message from a man calling himself Mutt, who said he had seen one of Twain's kittenish videos while exercising in his London home and was interested in writing songs with her. The manager sent Mutt an autographed photo with generic "Best wishes," unaware that Mutt was Robert John (Mutt) Lange, producer of seven of the 100 best-selling albums of all time. After the mistake was realized, Twain and Mutt started writing songs together over the phone. A few months later, they met in person at a Nashville, Tenn., music festival; a few months after that, they were married. Together they have co-written and produced two Twain albums, which together have sold 50 million copies worldwide.

The journey from poverty to stardom is all the more notable because Twain would have you believe she was never intent on taking it. "If I hadn't gotten signed, I would have done something else," she says. "I always wanted to be a veterinarian." In what must be a new achievement in both self-abnegation and repression, Twain swears that she harbors no resentment toward her mother: "My mother had a very difficult life, and when you're a parent and you can't feed your kids, it's gonna bum you out. So she had this dream. I did it. But it was never really my dream."

Twain and Lange now live in their chateau in Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, one of the more beautiful places in the world in which to bore yourself to tears. The food is great, the mountains are mountainous, and the people are impenetrable. "Hello" from a stranger is an embarrassing monologue. They moved there in part for tax purposes and in part because their 3,000-acre spread in upstate New York was no longer private enough. Twain has persuaded her record label not to promote her music in Switzerland. They really like their privacy.

At home, Twain and Lange hike, ride horses and eat at local restaurants. Every morning the world's biggest commercial singer grabs an acoustic guitar and goes into a centuries-old wine cave to write songs — just for herself. "I write crazy things," she says, "vulnerable things that I wouldn't want to play for anybody." She records these songs on a handheld cassette player and plays them only for her husband.

Twain's desire for privacy is hardly discouraged by him. The Rhodesian-born Lange, 53, started out writing radio jingles before producing heavy metal for AC/DC, disco for Billy Ocean, arena rock for Foreigner and adult contemporary for Bryan Adams. Lange has also written or co-written 135 pop songs, including Do You Believe in Love for Huey Lewis & the News and I Finally Found Someone for Barbra Streisand. He has been honored with numerous awards from the American Society of Composers and Producers and has never accepted a single one. He has not done an interview for 30 years, rarely leaves his home and recently purchased the rights to nearly every extant photo of him. Luke Lewis, head of Twain's record label and one of Lange's few confidants, says, "I don't think he's an agoraphobe." But he adds, "You wouldn't be the first to call Mutt Lange a little strange." And more than a little rich. He has an undisclosed stake in Zomba Music Group, which was purchased by BMG last week for $2.7 billion, and with his songwriting and production royalties, he is one of the wealthiest men in music.