Shania Twain, born Eilleen Regina Edwards, August 28, 1965) is a Canadian country pop performer. Her third LP Come on Over is the best-selling album of all time by a female performer plus the best-selling album in the history of country music.[2] She is the only female musician to boast three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and is also the second best-selling artist in Canada, behind fellow Canadian Céline Dion, with three of her studio albums being certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Twain has achieved mutually critical and financial success, having acknowledged five Grammy awards, 27 BMI Songwriter awards,[3] and she has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide to date including 48 million in the USA alone.[4] She is ranked as the 10th best-selling singer of the Nielsen Soundscan era, with around 33,591,000 sales through April 5 2008, based on comparatively few releases.
Twain was born in Windsor, Ontario, spawn of Clarence Edwards and Sharon (née Morrison). Her parents divorced when she was two, furthermore her mother then moved with Eileen and her sister Jill to Timmins, Ontario, where she married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwa. He adopted the girls, legally changing their last name to Twain. Because of her connection to her stepfather, in the past, people had presumed Twain's origin was Ojibwa, however she affirmed in an interview that her genetic father was part Cree.
One of five kids, Eileen Twain had a hard childhood in Timmins. Her parents earned little, plus there was often a shortage of food in the house. At one point, while Jerry was at work, her mother drove the rest of the family 425 miles (684 km) toward a Toronto homeless shelter for help.[7] She did not reveal her condition to school authorities, fearing they might break up the family. In the remote, rugged community, she learned to hunt and to cut wood. Apart from working at an Ontario McDonald's restaurant,[8] Twain began to earn money by singing in local clubs and bars from a incredibly early age to support her family. She was singing in bars at the age of just eight to try to make ends meet, often earning twenty dollars between midnight and one in the morning performing for enduring customers after the bar had stopped serving. Although she has uttered a dislike for singing in such a smoky environment at such a young age, Shania believes that this was her performing arts school on the road to becoming a thriving singer. Shania has said of the ordeal, "My genuine passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought 'I hate this'. I hated going into bars and being with alchoholics. But I loved the music and so I survived".[10]