Before Taylor Swift, there was Shania Twain. She’s the best-selling female artist in the history of country music, with more than 100 million records sold and five Grammy awards to her name. And her hits "You're Still the One", "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" and "That Don't Impress Me Much", brought her a fortune estimated at more than $400 million.But her life has been touched by heartbreak - tragedy that has shaped her career and nearly ended it before it had even begun. Shania grew up in Timmins, Ontario, in a home marked by poverty and violence, and blocked out the pain of her upbringing with music.On 1 November 1987, when she was 22, her mother Sharon and her stepfather Jerry Twain were killed when a logging truck hit their car head-on near Wawa. She heard the news by phone while studying in Toronto."I collapsed hearing that news over the phone,” Shania tells The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service. My sister called me and I could hear my little brother howling in the background. We were all just reeling together. The kids could not be separated after that accident. They needed to stay together."‌Shania moved back to the family home and became responsible for her younger siblings and for winding up her parents' affairs. She says: "I wasn't allowed to grieve because I was thrown into this state of guardianship.""I had to do a lot of things I knew nothing about, like take out a second mortgage for the house, to sustain what was going to happen next. There were so many complexities to the accident itself. I had to understand the accident reports - loads of things nobody would ever want to have to go through - step by step. It was just terrible."Music had to wait, until her mother's friend Mary Bailey, who became her first manager, found her a job at the Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario.‌Shania says: "I was singing in a cast of four other singers. The band had a horn section. I was very thrilled with that, because I played the trumpet in high school. So, I'm in this variety show in a golf resort, six hours from our home town, so we're quite far south now.`"So I had to move the kids to Huntsville, as I had an income that was steady and I could still sing. I couldn't travel around and leave the family, so I was very lucky to have this and at least be in a steady job and all us kids could stay together."‌The resort paid the bills for three years, while the dream stayed alive in the songs she kept writing. Shania says: "For the 3 years that I'm singing at the resort, I continue to write music, of course. Songwriting is at my core, that's my joy."The stage paid the bill and the songwriting was my love and the dream. I kept sharing my demo tapes with Mary. She became like a second mother and she would give me feedback."One of those demos reached a music lawyer in Nashville, who came north to hear her sing. Shania says: "She [Mary] sends the demo to someone she knows in Nashville. He's a Nashville music lawyer and he's blown away to the point that he comes all the way to the resort to hear me sing live. And when I sing the song Wind Beneath my Wings he just couldn't believe it.‌"Now, at this point, I've been at the resort for a while. I can sing in stilettos, I can wear a sequinned gown, I can present more like a world class performer."I learned so much at this resort. I thought I would be there forever - paying bills, which I was grateful to be able to do. I knew, eventually, the kids would go away and it would be too late for me to have a career. I was only 30 when I had my first top 10 song."She says: "So the stall was there in my efforts to become a recording artist, but the heavens opened, because I was finally discovered. It was a proper discovery. A proper bigwig from Nashville, Tennessee."That moment around a table in Nashville gives her new album its name. Shania says: "And I go to Nashville, Tennessee, and I sit around that big, round table and they say 'little Miss Twain, please sign your name.'"‌The signature launched a career that reshaped country music, though the success would bring its own trials. She married the producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange in 1993, and together they made Come On Over.Their son Eja was born in 2001. In 2003, a tick bite on her Up! tour left her with Lyme disease and the voice disorder dysphonia, and she went through open-throat surgery.For years no one could tell her why her voice kept cutting out. Shania said in her Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl: "My voice was never the same again. I thought I'd lost my voice forever. I thought that was it; I would never, ever sing again."‌Her marriage ended in 2010, after Mutt had an affair with her best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. In 2011 Shania married Frederic Thiebaud, that same friend's former husband, and the couple now live mainly in Switzerland. She has acted, too, making her film debut opposite John Travolta in the 2018 drama Trading Paint and playing a grieving mother in the 2020 film I Still Believe.Now 60, she is back with her seventh studio album, Little Miss Twain, released on 24 July, a record that returns to the country roots of her Canadian childhood. Shania said of the voice she rebuilt: "I'm never going to have my old voice again. I'm OK with that. I've found a new voice. And I like it."She has inspired a new generation of artists. The country singer, Orville Peck, said in her film Not Just a Girl: "She reached through the stereo and made me feel safe when I was a young kid."‌Harry Styles is another fan, and the two have been friends for years. She said Harry to wish his mother a happy birthday down the phone, because his mum had raised him on Shania's music. Shania said: "I called her up and wished her happy birthday. Harry and I have been friends ever since."She was in London, opening for Harry, across his 12-night run at Wembley Stadium, when her friend Taylor Swift married in New York. But she’ll be forgiven for missing the big day - as Taylor is one of her biggest fans, with an admiration that goes back a long way.In a 2008 blog post, written after the two first met, Taylor revealed she was starstruck when meeting her hero, saying: "Shania Twain, as in the reason I wanted to do this in the first place. Shania Twain, as in the most impressive and independent and confident and successful female artist to ever hit country music.‌“She walked up to me and said she wanted to meet me and tell me I was doing a great job. She was so beautiful, guys. She really IS that beautiful. All the while, I was completely star struck. After she walked away, I realised I didn't have my camera. Then I cried."