From This Moment On

by Shania Twain

  I missed having family around during my pregnancy, as it was something I wanted to share not only with my husband but also with the women in my life. Female companionship helps you feel like you have a sisterhood of other mothers’ support. My own mother was gone; my sisters were on another continent, along with Mary, Helene, Kim, and Stacy. I felt quite alone during this time.

  As Marie-Anne and I were both pregnant, we began sharing a more personal friendship. We went to Lamaze classes together, shared the same obstetrician, had the same delivery room, and basically walked each other through the incredible experience of becoming mothers for the first time. I respected Mutt’s wishes to keep our lives very private even during my pregnancy, so I saw my family very rarely during that time and into the first weeks after my delivery. I regret that neither of my sisters was there for Eja’s birth. Marie-Anne was my only companion through this very special period of my life.

  Right after midnight on Sunday, August 12, 2001, almost two weeks before my actual due date, my water broke. Mutt and I were at home in the château.

  “What happens now?” he asked nervously. Eja was his first child, so he was as new at this as I was.

  I assured him there was no need to rush to the hospital, which was just three minutes away; I told him we had about twenty-four hours before the baby would arrive, or that’s at least what I understood from the Lamaze instructor. “Let’s shower and take our time getting there,” I said. “No problem.” I was genuinely not panicked or concerned.

  Not even fifteen minutes later, my contractions were only two minutes apart, then one minute apart and so intense that I was doubled over in pain within the first hour after my water broke. We called my obstetrician, Dr. Stoll, and I could barely get out the words as I tried to explain what was happening. He instructed us to meet him at the hospital right away.

  When he got our call, Dr. Stoll had been stargazing at the Perseid meteor shower lighting up the sky. As he would tell me afterward, he didn’t mind being interrupted. “I was delighted,” he explained, “because I felt that it was a special sign to have a birth occurring as the universe displayed its magic.”

  My husband and I could have used some supernatural intervention right about then, because halfway to the hospital, we came upon flashing yellow lights and orange detour signs. Construction? At this hour? You’ve got to be joking.

  “Is there a way to go through here?” asked Mutt. “My wife is having a baby, and we need to get to the hospital straightaway.” The fellow manning the intersection site either couldn’t understand Mutt’s broken French or just didn’t care what was coming—baby, bomb, or the end of the world. He just pointed in the direction of the longer route. By this point, I felt like a medieval torture victim on the rack, my pelvic joints being pulled apart.

  We met Dr. Stoll in the parking lot of the hospital and I couldn’t stand up straight. I was embarrassed to be so crippled by this common pain, but it was clutching me and forcing me into this involuntary bent shape. As much as I wanted to control my body and maintain some dignity, I had to walk into the hospital hunched over. Where was my strength, my ability to tolerate pain and suck up my desire to break under the pressure? I learned an important lesson: a body about to give birth doesn’t care. With body buckled in half, strained smile, and clenched fists, I managed to make my way to the maternity floor in this half-squat position but nevertheless on my own two feet after stubbornly declining the wheelchair offered by the doctor.

  We entered a pitch-black, extremely quiet hallway of the maternity wing. All lights off, we couldn’t see in front of us as the elevator door opened. Dr. Stoll jumped ahead to the light switch and literally flicked on the lights as we made our way down the corridor. I was the only one delivering that night and there was no one else on the floor, it seemed. It was surreal to be opening up the floor especially for me to have my baby. I doubted momentarily that I was somewhere capable of delivering my firstborn, but the immediacy and sharpness of my pelvic pain took over and reeled me into accepting where I was and what was happening. No questions asked, I was having this baby here and now, no matter what! Of course, I was in good hands being in a Swiss hospital with a doctor who’d been delivering babies for as many years as I was old.

  Sure enough, after a quick inspection of my baby’s position, the doctor announced that I was already eight centimeters dilated. Intravenous went in abruptly, and I was prepped for the delivery table. I felt a bit like a turkey being prodded, poked all round, and exposed, ready for the pan. Everything was new and mysterious; even though I’d taken the tour and done the Lamaze classes, I still didn’t really know what was happening and what would happen next. Everything explained in French or broken English made it that much more mysterious and scary. I trusted my doctor, though, and felt confident that he knew what he was doing.

  Before being transferred, however, I argued with the nurse that surely there must be time for me to try delivering in the large, round bathtub I intended trying as my first option, but no one was taking me seriously and I was ushered along. There was no time to experiment with less conventional delivery methods other than lying flat on my back. My pain increased while my ability to talk diminished, so off to the delivery table it was. I wanted to flash my hands up in the air in a “stop” position to say, “Can we just hold on a minute here and slow down? This is going way too fast and I feel like I’m missing this amazing experience.” But there was no time for any of the fancy stuff like putting my favorite atmospheric music on the stereo system.

  Nothing else mattered once my little son was born and all was good in the world. I had a healthy baby boy, and who cared on what table or by which method I had delivered him? He was here, finally. His dad cut the umbilical cord and bathed him in a basin beside me, then the doctor put my baby to my breast to nurse. Eja, our little angel. The Hebrew meaning is “the Lord is my God,” and to me it was the saying of an angel. We also just liked the ring to “Eja,” pronounced Asia. It was original, and we’d chosen it even before knowing if we were having a boy or a girl.

  Over my five days in the hospital, I had Marie-Anne drop by periodically to help translate with the hospital staff—none of whom spoke English—but otherwise, there was no female companionship. But I was thrilled when my sister Carrie came to visit me shortly after I came home. My nephew Dylan was also with her, and it was beautiful for me to see the kids together. It made me sad knowing it would only be brief, that this was only a visit and that I would soon be without family again. Making the most of their time with us, we took long strolls along the lake and enjoyed the summer weather. One afternoon while wheeling Eja in his stroller along the lake walk, I had to stop to nurse, and Carrie said, “I’ll watch out for photographers.” She was used to the way I had to be cautious in public back in America and Canada and figured (correctly) that the last thing I wanted was for my exposed boob to turn up in some tabloid.

  “No need to be so paranoid,” I insisted. “They barely pay any attention to me here.”

  My anonymity went only so far, apparently, because a week later a picture of me burping Eja pressed up against my shoulder—immediately after having finished nursing him—appeared in the gossip rags. I’ll never know if the person who snapped the photo had also taken shots of me actually nursing and had the decency not to sell them, or if he just happened to miss the moment. It was a disturbing reminder that you never know when you’re being watched through a camera lens and photographed, even in private, intimate moments.

  26

  Up! Up! and Away

  Eja was still nursing the whole time we were recording Up!, as he was only a few months old when we started in the studio. I would take him into the vocal room with me at night, and he’d sleep peacefully in his carriage next to me while I sang. Occasionally he’d chirp or squeak or sigh in his sleep, and it would leak into the mic, so I’d have to do another take. But how cool it was to be a new mom and recording artist at the same time. I felt like a modern-day version of a woman
from a time in the distant past, who gives birth and then goes right back to work in the fields, with the baby strapped to her back, working away like nothing ever happened. I’d stop and feed when necessary, then get right back to it. Bouncing back and doing it all made me feel strong and capable.

  We traveled a lot during the whole writing and recording of Up!, keeping the three of us hopping between various places in Europe and the Caribbean. We enjoyed the travel, soaking in the creative inspiration it gave and the variety of musicians Mutt tapped into along the way.

  I had been frustrated by being boxed into the country genre with The Woman in Me CD, as I felt the title track and “If You’re Not in It for Love” were both pop-sounding records. I’d hoped they would have had more international and crossover success and believed I was held back from that by being labeled “country,” and therefore relegated to the one genre, no matter what the music actually sounded like. I did not want to be limited by this music prejudice, the same way Dolly had not been when she crossed over from country to pop, Elvis from rock to country then gospel, Olivia Newton-John from pop to country, George Michael from pop to R&B, Elton John from pop rock to soft rock, R&B, and even to country, and more.

  Most well-written songs are genreless, I believe, and are instead appealing works of music and lyrics combined to tell a short story. Anyone who wants to hear them is interested in their appeal, not in what genre they’re in. What is done with a song once it’s written isn’t always obvious. The production and arrangement of any given song can take it in a multitude of directions, and it’s usually the style of the performer’s influence that determines the direction. A good example of this is the song “I Will Always Love You,” written by Dolly Parton. Dolly’s original recording hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1974 but was limited there. Its more epic, commercial success came with Whitney Houston’s version released in 1992, which topped the pop, R&B, and soul charts all over the world.

  For the Up! CD, Mutt and I were motivated to create three different musical arrangement styles for all the songs, to avoid getting boxed in to one genre. I’d thought often about how most artists, including myself, had remixes of the singles off our original CDs. For example, it was common to do dance remixes for clubs and shortened versions with solos removed, reworked intros and endings for some radio programming, or bonus tracks for promotional releases, which circulated internally for promotional use. Then there were mixes specifically for movie soundtracks or television campaigns. I thought, why not just create the whole album in three distinct versions to begin with and let the public and industry decide which version of what song they preferred? So Mutt produced and arranged a more traditionally country-feeling version with the classic fiddles and steel guitar sounds; a more progressively pop-rocky version with more electric guitar, bigger-sounding drums, and no country instruments; and a dance version that had an East Indian flavor with authentic, traditional instruments, in place of what he had recorded from the American musicians for the other two pop and country versions. In the discussions with the label on how to market this unusual package of three CDs and how to identify the difference between them, I thought it was appropriate to code them according to colors that represented the feel of each style best. Green, I figured, for “country” (thinking of pasture, the green, green grass of home). Red felt sexier and progressive for the pop version, and blue suited the international version, as I saw blue representing open sky, a space without boundaries.

  Released in November 2002, Up! became my first number one on both the country chart and the Billboard Top 200. (In fact, it debuted at number one on both charts.) It yielded five Top 20 country hits and sold twenty million copies around the world, going to number one in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany, and number two in my new homeland of Switzerland! This was the red version, well at work in pop and in the international markets.

  The green version was doing its job in the country arena, and in the end, the album as a whole made me the only woman performer (also, the only Canadian performer) to ever have three consecutive CDs exceed ten million in sales. In 2003, Up! was named the Country Album of the Year by Billboard, and won me the Billboard Music Award for Country Artist of the Year.

  The blue version was more of an artistic interpretation, and as with dance mixes, it wasn’t made for radio airplay and circulated on a smaller scale. My favorite version of any of the songs from all three CDs is the blue version of “When You Kiss Me.” The video for this song was one of my favorites as well. I was on a beach in New Zealand, wearing men’s jeans and an oversized wool sweater, which was soooooo me.

  The fact that the album was categorized in pop, pop rock, and country pop was my dream: to be an international recording artist, recognized as an artist not of any specific genre, but just appreciated as an artist by all lovers of music. To not be confined meant more to me than the chart numbers, sales figures, and awards. To me success was achieving what you set out to do. I never had numbers in my head, but I had a vision of being heard by people of all walks of life, from all over the world.

  Just as the Come On Over tour marked an improvement over my first time out on the road, my 2003–04 jaunt around the world for Up! was even more enjoyable for me, mainly because this time Eja, Mutt, and Tim came along. Carrie accompanied us as well off and on, bringing her son, Dylan, and husband, Jeff.

  Once again, we had a great band, all the same members as from the Come On Over tour. The crew was a mix from the last tour and some new members, and the stage was completely different, being positioned in the center of the venues. The Up! shows were “in the round,” as we called it, on a 360-degree revolving stage. There were ramps, stairs, and platforms suspended through the stage surface so I could get from one side to the other by either crossing over the middle or by going around the perimeter. The technical crew, sound, lights, instrument technicians, quick changes, were all in the bottom center of the stage, where normally they would be in side wings, not visible. I wanted them right among us, like the pilots of a space shuttle, part of the experience for the audience. Once we all got on board and took off, we were there to stay until the show was over. Fans were eye level with the crew, and I walked between, in, up, and around them throughout the entire show. It was a great design, and I enjoyed the all-directions access to the fans instead of the usual side-to-side, band-in-back, audience-in-front setup. The audience was within arm’s reach, and I could actually touch them. This made for a lot of interaction, both between myself and the crew and the fans and the crew. The stage design concept resembled some contemporary restaurant setups you see fairly often now, with kitchens completely open to the tables, where the patrons can see everything going on behind the scenes. My stage was planned with much the same purpose.

  The schedule during this tour wasn’t quite so rigorous as the tour before because I insisted on time with my son: three legs consisting of a few months each and several weeks in between to recharge. September through Christmas was spent in the United States and Canada. February and March took us on my first extended excursion through Europe—which was now much closer to home than North America. We played thirty shows in twenty-five cities, including Paris, Berlin, Oslo, and Glasgow. I was received by pumped-up crowds and felt welcome and at home, even though I was far from home itself. I did my best to learn a few words in the various languages of each country, but got by best in France, where at the time I at least knew a few basics.

  We played more international-sounding versions with fewer fiddles, and more electric guitars and synthesized loops and effects to the arrangements of the crossover hits that had gone international, including “Man,” “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!,” and “Ka-Ching!” Ireland had by far the loudest and most enthusiastic audiences during the European leg.

  Then we returned to North America in April for another three months. Although the tour was shorter, I was a mom now, and—typical me—trying to do everything perfectly. Having to juggle too many balls
at once caught up with me: I was constantly run down and sick with colds and the flu. Being a singer, you do everything in your power to protect your instrument, because there is nothing more frustrating than losing your voice. If you’re a guitar player and you pop a string onstage, you just turn around, a member of the road crew straps on a replacement, and you carry on as if nothing happened. Vocalists, of course, don’t have that luxury. Some mornings during the North American swing, I would wake up and try to talk, never mind sing, but could produce nothing more than a wheeze.

  I probably should have taken time off to get well and let my throat recover, but I was adamant about not canceling any shows, and the schedule was tight, with one date right on top of the next. I opted for steroid injections to reduce the swelling in my throat. Within a couple of hours, my voice would be better than ever: all the high notes present and accounted for, and I had energy to spare. However, you eventually max out on steroids, which was the point I had reached. I was told by doctors that repeated injections can cause muscle atrophy around the larynx. At any rate, my voice just wasn’t working properly.

  This became a chronic problem in the last few months of the tour, and I managed to get through, but it was stressful, and I felt I was walking a high wire every show day. The band had to start lowering keys for me, and I adjusted melodies and used tracked vocals in some places on really bad nights. My voice was unpredictable, so I had to wing it before every show, making last-minute decisions on song lists, the order of songs, keys, and the use of any tracked vocals. It kept everyone on edge, and I wasn’t enjoying the strain and pressure.