"If I'm at home, I'm worried about what am I gonna make for dinner. What do I need to go shopping for? I'm totally in domestic mode," Twain told TV Guide recently about her life in a Swiss chateau where she lives with her husband/producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange and their one year-old son, Eja. In fact, Shania is so not in the business when she's at home, she acts, and is treated like, an ordinary citizen of the exclusive Montreaux area. She's known to her neighbors as Eileen (her real first name) Lange and enjoys the privacy she has in what's called the Swiss Riviera. <<

But, when it came time to complete the album (even before Eja was born) Shania and Mutt would take working vacations to other European capitals where they were tourists half the time, and the rest of the time they were in a rented studio to continue work on the new album. "A lot of it was for creative inspiration," Twain explains.

Once the album was completed, and throughout this summer, Shania was in full pre-album release, re-entry to the business mode. "Nobody was working harder than Shania doing photo shoots, interviews, selecting wardrobe, approving artwork, planning appearances in Europe and America," says a Mercury Records insider who was in Switzerland helping Twain prepare the marketing and promotion push for the album. "It's hard to keep up with her as her schedule changed from day to day and sometimes minute to minute," they added.

These days, thanks to the success of her first album, The Woman In Me, and the monster success of Come On Over, Shania Twain exists and competes at the highest levels of the entertainment industry, a lofty position for a girl who grew up poor in rural Timmins, Ontario, Canada. Question is, how does this album compare to Come On Over?

"The whole record has been made differently. We traveled around a lot and used musicians from all over the world," Shania explains. "We've got musicians from India on this record, we've got some American musicians, we went to Vienna for some of it, to Ireland for some of it, Italy, Paris, we went to the Caribbean, did a lot of work there…we just did it differently and put it together in smaller pieces over a longer period of time."

What an amazing thing to do. To be able to take all the time you want to record an album anyplace on earth you wish, to live any place on earth you wish and still be in demand by country radio and country fans was unimaginable for any country artist just a few years ago. But, the Canadian country girl has done it with a kind of down-to-earth toughness that has helped change the rules for what's possible in country music.
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TENDERLY TOUGH THE KEY

To succeed at a high level in any business demands a certain toughness, and Shania obviously has that. But, hers is a kind of tender toughness. Most people who have met Shania Twain since she came onto the country music scene 9 years ago will tell you that, with all her enormous success and power, she remains remarkably down-to-earth and unpretentious. A couple of years ago, she even made a point of flying from Europe back to Timmins to attend her high school reunion. "I'm so glad I did," Twain says. "I definitely felt like the center of attention, and it was a little awkward, but the people there, they're just normal people."

Shania's feet were permanently planted on the ground by growing up in a loving family with encouraging parents. But, there were times when work in the reforestation business wasn't great, so bad there were a few times when the family went hungry.

"My father refused to go on welfare," Shania recalls. "To me that's a true hero because it meant we didn't eat sometimes and maybe it was pride but there is nothing wrong with pride. I think that can be a good thing to a degree. He taught us to stick it out and put your hand out to give instead of receiving…to make begging an absolute last resort, total last resort. It was the best lesson in life that I've ever learned from my parents. We got through it right? We survived it. Look where I am now. It worked. It's okay. It's okay to struggle. It's okay to look at others who have more, know that you have less and accept it. It's a good thing to accept that. Then if you want (something), it just means if you start off with less you have to work that much harder to get it. That's all. There's nothing wrong with those lessons in life. Nothing at all."

A few years later, Shania received her greatest test as a person when her parents died suddenly in a collision with a logging truck. Shania was in her early twenties and was working hard at establishing herself as a singer. But, she immediately put her career on hold, and for a few years she took care of her siblings and settled the family's estate. That done, she headed South to Nashville.
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By 1993 Shania Twain was in Nashville and had released her self-titled first album. It was an okay, typical chick singer album that reflected Nashville's lingering doubt about the viability of female artists. Shania was not happy with it, but she did what the label wanted to promote it including the "Triple Play Tour." Mercury Records decided to launch their three baby acts simultaneously. They devised a tour that featured Shania, Toby Keith and John Brannen and put them on the road. By the end of the tour, Toby was the only artist whose career had taken off thanks to hitting Number One with his debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy." Toby says he was ready to cash in and tour on his own. Shania, he says, had different ideas.

"Shania said, 'I'm not going to do anything, I'm not going to do any touring or moneymaking until I have enough hits to headline in a coliseum, that's what I do,'" Toby remembers. "And I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard and I thought she was nuts, you know. Why miss out on the chance to be financially successful? That may never come? Of course, now she selling right up there with Garth, so more power to her."

By the end of 1993, Shania had met and married pop producing superstar, Robert John (Mutt) Lange. He had the money and the clout to work with Shania to write and produce her unique and sensational second album, The Woman in Me, that began spitting out red hot singles like a musical volcano, and the rest as they say is history. With combined sales from her second album, The Woman in Me, and her third CD, Come On Over, Shania has sold over 54 million albums world-wide.
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Unlike her third album, Shania is not predicting that she can top herself with Up! Five years ago, when she was about to release Come On Over, we asked Shania if she thought she could top The Woman in Me which was approaching 7 million in sales at the time, a huge country record. Back then she didn't hesitate to say, "We think this new album (Come On Over) will top it." Top it, it did, yielding a record 11 singles in the process.This time around she's not willing to predict because topping herself is no longer the point.

"Whether the payoff will be as big or not, who knows? But that's really not the point for us. We wanted to put something together that was bigger and better, in our opinion, coming from us," Twain explains."The whole thing is just so much more than we had experienced through the course of the last album, again, the baby being part of this whole new segment of my life and the new music, that I've put more into it than ever before," she adds. "We really have gone totally all out on this record creatively and just lack of sleep and we've labored over this record, we really have, and I'm totally thrilled with the results."

With that kind of commitment from this team, how could Shania Twain and Mutt Lange not top themselves?
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Shania is no different than any other artist, the calling-card first single can sometimes make, or break, a new album. She says that "I'm Gonna Getcha Good" was the obvious first single.

"'Gonna Getcha Good' was a pretty obvious single, it's kind of a Shania attitude. "There's a confidence to it and a bit of role reversal again, because, as a girl anyway, there's a lot of confident guys out there, they always come on with such confidence, they are so sure they're going to get you, they're just so sure of themselves," Shania reasons. "And it's not always the case, but I'm not so sure, I think it's just a newer thing for women to be as confident as some men can be, for a woman to actually say 'Yeah, I know where I stand and I'm going to get that guy.' I think it's quite fun, quite typical of me to think that way. Also, I wanted a song that wasn't so far removed from the Shania of a few years ago that they wouldn't be able to relate. At the same time, there's an edge to the song, a way the song sounds and the way I'm singing it and everything, that's new and fresh," Shania concludes about her leadoff single.

Of course, that is a perfect description of the song that has gotten Shania Twain back on the country charts in a big way and launched her fourth album, Up! (in stores November 19th). Ultimately, Shania thinks there won't be so many surprises on the album that her current fans will feel uncomfortable.

"There's a lot on this album that people will be surprised by and that is new, but there's so much, enough of what they're already familiar with, that it's not abandoning in any way the Shania they like, or prefer," she assures. >>

As knock-out gorgeous and energetic as Shania is on a live concert stage, the big question for fans is, will she tour again?

"I definitely plan to tour with this CD, and it'll take a little time to get it together because I'd really like just to concentrate on the music for a little while. I want people to get familiar with the music. And come early next year I will start on the production of the tour," she says. "I don't know when the tour will come out. But, I'm looking forward to it and definitely wouldn't want to miss out on that because I have a lot of fun with the touring," she affirms about the most personally rewarding part of her job.

"It's the big payoff because it's the first chance I have to get together with the fans, the listeners, the people that bought the record. I can see on their faces what songs mean to them. I'll get their response then, each night they'll tell me how much they like it. Not by the record sales. I know it's the fans that are buying the records, I know that's what's making the numbers. But, somehow there's just not a connection until you're there with them in person, and then you see them singing your lyrics and they're so affected by it, the way I'm affected by music. I relate to why they're affected. When I sit and listen to music I'm affected, I'm high by it, my emotions are stirred by music, and when I see that I'm affecting them the same way, then I really feel like I've done what I came to do. It's the big reward."

Shania Twain is back and things are looking Up!…for her and all of her fans.