Exhibit at Nasvhille’s County Music Hall of Fame honors Shania Twain — even though she has never been inducted
Country superstar Shania Twain’s life, part fairy tale, part personal nightmare, is chronicled in a new exhibit at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, even though she is not a member of that elite group.
“Shania Twain: Rock This Country” opens Friday at the museum.
“It walked me through not just my career, but my life,” Twain said in a speech Tuesday evening after she toured the display. “I’m a little overwhelmed and very moved.”
The exhibit explains how Twain, 51, overcame adversity to become a five-time Grammy winner. She has sold more albums than any other female country artist and was the first singer to have three consecutive albums that went diamond (at least 10 million copies sold).
Those record-breaking CDs and the Grammy awards are among the memorabilia on display. Also included are several of her stage costumes — from the one worn in the 1999 music video, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” to her ensemble for the April Stagecoach country music festival in Indio.
The exhibit follows Twain from her teenage years in her native Ontario, Canada, through her early years in Nashville that, eventually, sent her career skyrocketing.
“My beginnings were humble and very difficult, but they prepared me for standing alone,” she told the museum audience on Tuesday.
Twain’s mother and stepfather struggled financially, and their relationship was volatile. She often sang in bars to help supplement the family’s income. In 1987, as her career was starting to take form, her mother and stepfather were killed in an automobile accident, and she returned home to take care of her younger siblings for a time.
“Once I came to Nashville with a record deal, which was a miracle, I had no parents to call to say, ‘It’s not working out’ or ‘Can you send a bit of money?’ I had no one to fall back on.”
In 1993, she released her first album.
Among other gigs, she began a two-year engagement in 2012 at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas
You won’t find Twain featured in the museum’s Hall of Fame. Despite being one of country music’s biggest success stories, she is not yet an inductee.
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