August 28: Shania Twain is 45 today.

Country music legend Twain - born Eileen Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, Canada - was raised in the small mining town of Timmins, Ontario, by her mother, Sharon, and stepfather, an Ojibway Indian named Gerald Twain. (“Shania” means “I’m on my way” in Ojibway.)


By the age of 10, she was singing and writing songs by age 10. In 1987- when Shania was 22- her parents died in a car accident, leaving her to care for three younger siblings.

After several years spent earning money by singing at a local resort, Twain went to Nashville in 1993. She immediately signed with Mercury Records and released her self-titled debut album. That same year, Twain married South African music producer Robert “Mutt” Lange, who was known for his work with the heavy metal bands AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Foreigner.


In 1995, Twain released "The Woman in Me" album, which sold 12 million copies, becoming the bestselling country album by a female artist in history. The hit songs “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” “Any Man of Mine,” and “(If You’re Not in It for Love) I’m Outta Here!” earned Twain a Grammy Award for Best Country Album.

Her album, "Come on Over," sold 17 million copies, thus becoming the bestselling country album of all time. It contained eight more hit singles, including “You’re Still the One,” “Love Gets Me Everytime,” “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” “Honey, I’m Home,” “From this Moment On,” and “You’ve Got a Way.”


Shania was named the 1999 Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. She was the first non-US citizen to win the CMA award.

That same year a study by researchers at the University of Toronto, and appearing in the medical journal Vision Research, calculated that Twain's face has the "perfect" dimensions for a woman, based on measurements of facial features.

 

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