Shania Twain‘s childhood definitely wasn’t easy. Growing up in extreme poverty, and watching her mother and step-father fighting a lot, the Canadian found a way to alleviate her pain by listening to music, especially country music, which ultimately inspired her own career path.
“Music was always a great escape for me and I very often would run away, close to home, just in the neighboring bush or in the backyard, somewhere in a corner with my guitar and escape what was going on at home,” Shania revealed on Apple Music Country‘s podcast, Home Now Radio. “Which was, either there wasn’t enough food for dinner, so I figured I might as well go occupy myself doing something else so I’m not thinking about not eating. Or I was just escaping the fight between my parents and the violence that that always, most often erupted into.
“So music was a great escape and a place for me to lose myself and imagine and dream of being anywhere else,” she added. “I could make up stories and escape into those stories and it was wonderful therapy.”
There was one specific song, “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” by Tammy Wynette, which became especially significant to her during the troubled season of her life.
“It’s really quite a sad song, and I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if my parents think of the lyrics of this song and wonder if it is affecting us, all of this violence and dysfunction in the home? Do they realize that we are not okay with it?’ But they’re not being a good example, or our home life wasn’t a good example of the way a happy family lives. Of course, Tammy Wynette, with that legendary cry in her voice really makes you hurt with this song. But I took notice of the lyrics and it always stayed with me.”
Shania also found inspiration from listening to Johnny Cash, even though much of his music was before her time.
“First of all, the sound of the way these records were made back then, take me just back to my own childhood,” Shania reflected. “This is what I would consider my parents’ music. And growing up in Canada, I was listening to a song like ‘In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home.’ I was imagining, I was visualizing what it must be like in those times, and this song depicts it so perfectly, just so cinematic, it seemed. It made me dream about the South and the South Western lifestyle and culture in America.
“And Johnny Cash, he sang so low in this one,” the 55-year-old added. “I love it. And he really reaches down there and shows off his vocal depth down there. It’s gorgeous. So The Sound of Johnny Cash album included ‘In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home,’ [in] 1962, so that’s why I say it was my parents’ music, I wasn’t even born yet.”
