With the release of ‘Now,’ country superstar Shania Twain is back. She talks about her reborn career and her exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. (June 28)
AP
Shania Twain hits the road for her Now tour this spring.(Photo: CHARLES SYKES/INVISION/AP)
Seeing how she’s a Canadian citizen, Shania Twain couldn’t vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But the country crossover star says she would have cast her ballot for President Trump.
“I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest,” Twain says in a new interview published Sunday by The Guardian. “Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want (BS). I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?”
By Sunday evening, Twain had backpedaled from her remarks, apologizing for her “awkward” answer and saying the question caught her off guard.
“I am passionately against discrimination of any kind and hope it’s clear from the choices I have made, and the people I stand with, that I do not hold any common moral beliefs with the current President,” she tweeted. “My limited understanding was that the President talked to a portion of America like an accessible person they could relate to, as he was NOT a politician.
“My answer was awkward, but certainly should not be taken as representative of my values nor does it mean I endorse him. I make music to bring people together. My path will always be one of inclusivity, as my history shows.”
I would like to apologise to anybody I have offended in a recent interview with the Guardian relating to the American President. The question caught me off guard. As a Canadian, I regret answering this unexpected question without giving my response more context (1/4)
— Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018
I am passionately against discrimination of any kind and hope it’s clear from the choices I have made, and the people I stand with, that I do not hold any common moral beliefs with the current President (2/4)
— Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018
I was trying to explain, in response to a question about the election, that my limited understanding was that the President talked to a portion of America like an accessible person they could relate to, as he was NOT a politician (3/4)
— Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018
My answer was awkward, but certainly should not be taken as representative of my values nor does it mean I endorse him. I make music to bring people together. My path will always be one of inclusivity, as my history shows. (4/4)
— Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018
Other revelations from the 52-year-old singer’s interview:
• She alleges that her stepfather abused her sexually, physically and psychologically, starting when she was about 10.
“Sexual abuse goes hand in hand with the physical and psychological abuse when it’s somebody you know,” Twain says of her childhood in Ontario. “I learned to block it out. Abusers need to manipulate you, whether it’s before or after, and what I said to myself is: ‘OK, there’s something wrong with this person and that person is not well.'”
Twain opted to stick the abuse out rather than report it and be separated from her siblings in foster homes, she says: “There is something in me that says a family should stay together.”
• She still has bad blood with Marie-Anne Thiébaud, her former best friend who split up her marriage to producer Mutt Lange a decade ago. (The singer went on to marry Thiebaud’s husband, Frederic, in 2011.) “There was one song I wrote about my cheating friend and there was a lot of (f-words) in there. I hated her, so that’s the best word to use when you hate somebody.”
And she’s not over it, either. “I do really nasty things in my dreams to her,” Twain says. “I’m always cutting her hair or shaving it off.”
• When Lyme disease left Twain with vocal paresis in the 2000s, “I never thought I’d sing again,” she says. (She recently underwent laryngoplasty, a surgery to reconstruct her vocal box, that left her with a two-inch scar across her neck.) “I was too embarrassed to tell anybody that I couldn’t sing. For a long time, I didn’t even know why I couldn’t sing.”
Twain released her comeback album Now last fall, her first new studio album in 15 years. Her summer tour of North America kicks off May 3 in Tacoma, Wash.
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