The ultimate girl power song.
Shania Twain released her hit song “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” in 1997, and it was part of her iconic third studio album, Come On Over. She wrote it with her longtime collaborator and then-husband Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who also produced the track.
It was the eighth single from the album, sent to country radio in 1999, and due to the success in North America, the song eventually went worldwide, and became one of the biggest and recognizable hits of her career. The song peaked at #4 on the US Hot Country Songs chart, and became a minor crossover hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking just outside the Top 20 at #23.
It’s one many of us know and love, but you might be surprised to learn the inspiration behind it…
In an interview with People following the release of her recent album Little Miss Twain, Shania spoke about how she came up with the idea of that song, and it’s actually really interesting. She explained that she was a tomboy growing up, and she enjoyed playing football with the boys. Well, at a certain age, her body started to change, and she became ashamed of it and did everything she could to hide it:
“When I was younger, as my body started to develop, I started young. When I was eight, I remember my breasts started to get really tender and sore, and I was always playing football.
I remember catching the football and just dropping it, and going ‘Ahh,’ and just being devastated that, how am I gonna carry on playing football with the guys if I can’t catch the ball? And as my breasts started developing, I started wearing in really tight bands, and as I got big enough, double bra’d it, so I could run and not bounce.
And also not be a distraction, because you’re playing with all guys, and all they wanna do is watch your boobs bouncing as you’re running down the field. So it’s like, okay, you know, let me just be one of the football players on the team and I’m gonna just eliminate this distraction.”
I mean, I don’t think that’s a crazy unique experience, I think a lot of young girls deal with similar situations, but to eventually, years later, turn that into a song like “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” is just pure talent on display.
Shania said she spent her entirety of developing into a woman, and even beyond that, wanting to stay in her “boyish body,” and she finally got to a place in writing this song where she wanted to celebrate everything about womanhood and put an “exclamation point” on letting go of any insecurities that come with that:
“So I spent all of this developing time developing into a woman, like a physical woman, but wishing I was staying in my boyish body, my boyish figure.
And I really resented developing these curves, and I pushed back on it. And by the time I wrote the song ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’, which is why I wrote that song and that lyric was, I’m like, okay, it’s time to celebrate being a woman.
It was an exclamation, it was a really a point I was making to myself. and I came out from behind that insecurity of saying, listen, if you wanna look at me with that stare, that’s up to you, but I’m not gonna hide you know for the sake of that.”
There’s just something she put in that song that activates something inside whenever you hear that first line, “Let’s go, girls!”… it makes me wanna run through a brick wall, honestly.
Shania didn’t have her first top “Any Man of Mine” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart on July 22, 1995, just one month before she turned 30, and the majority of her massive success in her career came in her 30s and 40s, which she’s spoken about some recently and how she was a bit of a late bloomer, so to speak, in many aspects.
It’s honestly hard to think of such a bad*** lady like Shania ever being insecure, she’s just stunning inside and out and so incredibly talented, but if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have the absolute anthem that is “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”… and that would be the real shame:
@people It took #ShaniaTwain some time to discover the best part about being a woman. The star is opening up about the moment from her childhood that inspired her hit song. Watch the full interview at the link in bio.
Turn it up…
“Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”
