Shania Twain’s new songs were made to suit her more gravelly vocals after suffering vocal cord damage.
The ‘You’re Still The One’ hitmaker – who returned with the lead single ‘Waking Up Dream’ from her new album last week – suffered with her balance on stage and completely lost her voice, and previously revealed it was linked to her Lyme Disease, an infection caused by a bacteria spread through ticks.
And when asked if her voice has changed as a result, the pop idol told the ‘Table Manners’ podcast: “Yes, it has changed. I just had to embrace it. I like that you can hear the gravel. I have a lot more gravel. My chest voice is in a different place now than it was before. My falsettos are very, very … I can almost not do a quiet falsetto.”
While the 57-year-old singer had to adjust some of her notes, the ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ singer hasn’t lost any of her range, and has in fact “gained a lot of power”.
She explained: “I have a falsetto but it’s a powerful one. So I gained a lot of power. I gained a lot of output and projection, but I lost control of certain areas in my voice but I just sang the songs differently. Now, I’ve learned to write songs differently for my new voice too, you know, so I can get way up there, I didn’t lose any range, which is interesting. I think I have gained the bottom range. But it was a journey.”
Sharing how she tried to power on with her Las Vegas residency in 2012, but ultimately had to retreat to vocal cord surgery, she recalled: “And this was before the operation. Before the operation, the surgeon was saying, Listen, I know that it takes a lot of patients, but I want you to take a year, and just try therapy. Before we do any cutting. I’m like, Okay. And to put pressure on myself, this is when I decided that I would do the first residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, I gave myself a target date. So I go into therapy, I get myself this year. And I was able to get up there and do this live 90-minute show in Las Vegas, I was very proud of myself. But I needed an hour and a half to warm up. Literally had to do like gymnastic kind of aerobic exercises to get the larynx to drop and sit and drop and sit and, and to get the musculature supporting the whole apparatus. And then I had to do an hour and a half show, I was exhausted, I couldn’t sustain that. So I was able to sustain it. For a while, you know, I was able to do a tour after that. But then I’m like, Guys, this will be the end of me physically, I can’t sustain it, I don’t have the physical capacity to basically do a physical workout cardio for three, four hours, every show day when you include the warm-up in the show. So I went back to the surgeon and said this is the only way I can do it. It’s not manageable. So I think I’ve got it, try the operation. And it did help. So I’ve got two gore tex crushes, implants on either side of my larynx that stabilise the musculature and allow the vocal notes.”
Shania’s forthcoming LP will be her first since 2017’s ‘Now’
Listen to the full interview via play.acast.com/s/tablemanners.