Shania Twain Describes Her Tough Battle With COVID

Shania Twain revealed that she had a bad bout with COVID during the pandemic that had her a bit concerned. She told InStyle in a new interview, "I had a very bad battle with COVID, and my lungs were filling up with COVID pneumonia, and I was losing my air. I survived it, but it was iffy."

Shania said that when she had COVID, she was writing the new song "Inhale/Exhale Air" and that a simple video clip and a breathing exercise evolved into that song. She explained, "This minister, he just starts breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. And I'm like, 'I still identify with this.' He says, 'Air. What are you going to do with it?' What are you going to do with it? It's free; it's there, don't take it for granted. I celebrated it by writing a song about it." She added, "Air is in everything. Air is in the bubbles in our champagne. What would we do without air? If we didn't have air, we wouldn't have champagne. I know it's simplifying it. This is having fun with wordplay. We wouldn't have balloons if we didn't have air. Obviously, we wouldn't be alive without air. But I take a playful perspective on it, and it becomes celebratory."

Twain says that it was while the world was locked down and she was recovering from COVID that she wrote the songs for her new album Queen Of Me. "I was writing all these songs in my pajamas."

After the bout with COVID and her vocal surgery, she says she was writing so much because she may be on borrowed time. (She also dealt with lime disease in 2003.) She said, "It's a reminder, don't take time for granted. Don't take the opportunity for granted. It's possible I might lose it, that it may not last. I guess any prosthetic or support that you get that is synthetic, your body still may give out around it. It could happen."

Shania changed the face of country music in the late 1990s and her influence is still felt today as many country superstars like Kelsea Ballerini, Carly Pearce, Taylor Swift, and more cite her as a major influence.

To celebrate all things, Shania, we're counting down her 13 finest songs that we just can't get out of our heads.