I think I would take the retirement route, honestly…
Shania Twain is a 90s icon, a country legend, and she got started performing in bars in her native Canada at a very young age, in an effort to help support her family. She’s spoken at-length about some of the trauma she experienced as a result of the poverty and abuse she went through as a child, but she certainly turned herself into a success and has done everything she could’ve ever imagined in terms of her career.
But it almost all came to a total stop with her music career when she contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite while horseback riding in 2003, and as a result, she eventually lost the ability to project or sing properly, which she dealt with for years before doctors pinpointed the root cause and she underwent open-throat surgery in 2018 to repair nerve damage in her larynx.
Without getting too much into detail if you’re squeamish like me, The procedures involved placing permanent Gore-Tex stabilizing implants to help her vocal cords close symmetrically so she could sing again
And one other music legend knows all too well what it’s like to lose your singing ability, and he had the same throat issue Shania did, though not because of Lyme disease. In fact, he leaned on her a lot in terms of getting information for how he should go about dealing with all of it, after the first met my chance on an international flight to Europe years back. They had an immediate connection because of their well-known work ethic, and the rest, as they say, is history:
“The first time I met Jon Bon Jovi, we were on an international flight going to Europe somewhere, and we just bumped into each other in the aisle, and he said, ‘Shania, it’s really cool to meet you. You know, I’ve heard that you have the reputation of being the hardest working artist in the industry. I have the same reputation, nice to meet you.’
So I think he felt already early on that we already had something in common. And then he was going through laryngeal nerve problems, I had already been through that due to Lyme’s disease. And he just called me up and said, ‘Share everything you know about how you got back singing live after nerve atrophy in the voice'”
She told him everything she had gone through to get her voice back, though it was never the same as before, and easily the most jarring information has to be that not only is it an open-throat surgery… but you have to be awake for it.
You have to REALLY want to sing again to go through that… it sounds like some sort of mid-evil torture to me, but I digress…
Shania says she had to learn how to sing with a different, much raspier voice with a new range, but it was worth it because had she not done the surgery, she would have never been able to really sing again:
“And I shared my surgeon’s information with him, and I shared my experience with him, and I encouraged him to weigh up all the scenarios. I told him it worked for me, and I was honest, I was transparent, I think he really appreciated that and was able to take it all on board. My voice was never been the same, I’m way more gravelly, I have this rasp, I have more character, I do sing in different placements, but I can sing.
And I told him the surgery was scary, it’s an open throat surgery, and you have to be awake for the surgery. I said, I just have to be honest with you, because if you’re going into this you’re gonna hear it from surgeon anyway, but you might as well hear it from somebody who has been through it. I’m not sure if any other singers have been through this surgery other than the two of us. Is the voice ever going to recover properly? You don’t know, you’re jumping into it.
You have to be brave, and you have to make a choice. I either never sing again, I’ll never be able to cope with any hour and a half, two hours of singing live, or I get the operation and I just take the chance. What do I have to lose? And I decided to go for it. Like I said, it’s different, I embrace it, I’m grateful I can sing, I can hold a note, and I can do it loud and I can be loud and proud.”
She was unable to speak for three weeks following the operation, that had to have been the second hardest part, but it paid off because she still tours and even just released a new album, Little Miss Twain.
I saw her in concert several years ago, and while I’ve heard people complain about her voice, I thought she sounded incredible live and I absolutely loved it, for whatever that’s worth.
@people #ShaniaTwain is recalling bumping into #JonBonJovi ♬ original sound – People Magazine
They never recorded an official song together or anything, but Shania did sing his song “Bed of Roses” at the 2024 the MusiCares Person of the Year Gala in February, where they all celebrated his successful vocal cord medialization surgery which he underwent in 2022:
