The Pop Corporation

You may not know this – you might – but recently, the mighty Shania Twain took her clothes off for a song. It was called ‘Waking Up Dreaming’ and it’s the lead single from her upcoming LP, ‘Queen Of Me’. About all that, she said a bunch of incredibly likeable stuff, because that’s what Shania Twain does when she’s not smashing out stadium sized bangers.

So why did she disrobe? Fear.

“I did a whole shoot as part of the album artwork where I’m completely nude. And it was very — it was really scary,” she told the wonderfully named Hoda Kotb. “I don’t really love my body, I don’t love looking at myself in the mirror with the lights on or looking in the mirror at all at my body. So I said, listen, I’m going to face that fear.”

“I’m so glad I did it. I was petrified, but once I flicked that switch, and dove into it, I’m like ‘I’m all in.’ I committed 100 percent. And I wasn’t thinking about what anybody thought. I didn’t think about who was in the room. This is about me, this is my moment to really embrace myself in a vulnerable moment. It had to be vulnerable where I felt that I was facing a fear of being judged or maybe even laughed at — being embarrassed. But it was only empowering. It was really fabulous,” she added.

She wasn’t finished being incredibly likeable either.

“I’m going to put fashion aside – fashion we use to flatter our shapes, to maybe hide the things we don’t like to make us look more like what we wish we really did look like without the clothes – putting fashion aside, this is me.”

And the album title? Well, it’s not that deep – but it’s nice to hear Shania Twain continue to be a person who is very, very likeable and saying likeable things: “I’m my own royalty. I’m the boss of me.”

“As we age, and you know, our skin starts to melt and all kinds of things happen to us… I’ve realised that, wow, I was shy about wearing a bikini at the beach when I was younger, and I’m thinking, ‘That was ridiculous! I gotta stop this nonsense, and start wearing a bikini to the beach now, even though I’m not my 20-year-old self.’ You know, I just got to get over that stuff,” she said.

God, she’s lovely isn’t she? Let’s all be a bit more Shania in 2023. Just say ‘let’s go girls’ to yourself every time you need to take a deep breath and plunge into something, before our skin starts to melt.