Shania Twain reveals the best advice she was ever given - and why she lives by it

At the age of 60 but possessed by the fierce energy of a woman half her age, Shania Twain flies into conversation with an elusive sense of spirit and serenity. We need to worry less, she says. The numbers mean nothing when reminded she’s the best-selling female artist in country music history.

And the best advice she was ever given? “Honesty is everything,” Twain says, without hesitation. “Without that, there is nothing. That means with yourself, that means to others. It’s a check, and you just can’t go wrong with honesty.”

In a film sound stage tucked into the outskirts of Toronto, Canada, Twain’s 162-centimetre frame seems too slight for the crackling bundle of energy who fires up when the cameraman calls action. She’s genuinely charming. Polite, in that Southern way, almost to a fault. And unmoved by the suggestion that she blazed the trail that transformed music and sent country to the pop mainstream.

“There may be something about the nostalgic nature of country music, of the language in a lot of the lyrics and things that makes people in this time for some reason gravitate to that music,” Twain says. “When I was a kid, it was my grandmother’s music.”

So how do we explain the dramatic narrowing of the once-vast gulf between country and mainstream pop? The cultural shift led by women such as Twain and 79-year-old legend Dolly Parton has cut open a path to the mainstream of music for artists such as Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Garth Brooks and, more recently, Orville Peck, Beyoncé, Post Malone and Taylor Swift.

“Young people, maybe, are gravitating to something ... the nostalgia of it, the need for more tangible things, a tactile existence, and things that they could use with their hands because virtual reality has become such a part of their daily lives that they crave things that are more tangible,” Twain says. “When you talk about a cornfield, they dream about that. [These songs] make us dream.

“By the time I was making my own records, it was a cross-breed of a rock and country, and that, I guess, was its own thing,” Twain says. “That liberated a lot of people coming up in the next generation to go, oh, country is so much broader than I ever imagined it could be. But that wasn’t me doing that on purpose or anything. It was just me saying, this is the way I like to hear country.”

Twain is on set filming a new television advertisement for the Australian arm of the global transport and delivery app Uber. The spot is intended to follow in the footsteps of many media-sticky campaigns Uber has run, notably those featuring Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Cher and others. In this campaign, Twain has collaborated with Australian singer/songwriter Tom Cardy on a new song, Can’t Do That If You’re Driving.

To some extent, these campaigns require enormous capacity for self-parody. Hilton and Cher, for example, let themselves be gently mocked to mine the moment for great humour. Twain says she did not hesitate when the pitch was sent to her.

“It’s not that the vocabulary is the same because, of course, we speak differently, but it’s the tongue-in-cheek and not taking yourself too seriously, and the self-deprecating elements to our humour that we relate to,” Twain says. “I related to the script and thought it was very funny.”

With more than 100 million record sales to her name, Twain is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time and the best-selling female artist in country music history.

“I always thought that the numbers were a limitless possibility, and I didn’t even really know what that meant,” she says. “I always did believe that there was no end in sight as far as how big something could get, only from watching everything that I’d ever watched and observed from other artists.”

She has also worked hard not to lose sight of her family. She and former husband Robert Lange have one son, Eja, now 24. Twain has recently married for a second time, to Swiss Nestle executive Frederic Thiebaud. (In a footnote worthy of a Grammy-winning country ballad, it was Lange’s affaire with Thiebaud’s now ex-wife Marie-Anne that ended Twain’s first marriage.)

“It’s so important to always think of what’s possible,” Twain says. “We are reminded all the time about what’s not possible, and some things we just can’t change. You know? So you can’t get blocked at what you cannot change and what’s not possible. Let’s find what is possible and go for that. Let’s build on what’s possible.

“Realistically, can you be a successful career person, woman, parent, and artist all at the same time? Absolutely,” Twain adds. “Where are you happiest? Are you happy? Is personal happiness possible? Not if you don’t find the balance. That’s the trick. And I think that changes through every phase of any adult’s life. As a parent, a professional, and an artist.”

And at the age of 60, she has no plans to slow down. Her wish for herself? “To persevere as a free thinker,” Twain says. “I feel like as we get older, sometimes we can get more worried about where the world is going, we worry about our kids, we worry because we’re running out of time to do something about it.

“When you’re younger, you’re like, oh, I’ve got all the time in the world. We’ll get to that at some point. I still believe that it’s important to think young and maintain that for always. And then that will be reflected in everything that you do. Because if you can think young with maturity, that’s everything.”

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