By Rollo Ross
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After a life-threatening bout of COVID-19, five-time Grammy winner Shania Twain hopes to bring joy to the world with her new album “Queen of Me”.
Like everyone else, the Canadian singer and songwriter was cooped up during the pandemic. But instead of navel gazing, Twain, 57, said she put herself in a playful frame of mind.
Now, she wants everyone to rejoice with her as the pandemic subsides.
“There’s so many things to celebrate right now and we are still in celebration mode. That’s the mode I’m in and I sense it with the fans as well,” she said.
As an asthmatic, Twain’s battle with COVID was bad and developed into pneumonia, she said in an interview with Apple Music 1. “Every day my lungs were filling up with inflammation. Within 12 days, I was pretty much dying.”
After recovering, she drew inspiration by recording her new album. Released on Feb. 3, it already has two singles – the line-dancing upbeat country number “Giddy Up!” and the aspirational and catchy “Waking Up Dreaming.”
“When I’m getting into the songwriting mode, I’m just dreaming. I’m playing with my imagination, I’m letting it go, I’m in dream mode,” she said. “It’s my dreams that set my goals.”
Twain, who has sold more than 85 million albums, began singing when she was 3 years old, and by 8 played at bars to help her family pay the bills.
The country music phenomenon is ready to tour the world with her new album, starting out in Spokane, Washington, in April and finishing in Vancouver, British Columbia, in mid-November.
(Reporting by Rollo Ross; Writing by Diane Craft; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
