SHANIA Twain has recalled being “kicked around” by her parents as she shared harrowing details of her abusive childhood.
Thanks to her catchy songs, the legendary singer has paved the way to huge female stars, including Taylor Swift – but behind the glittery cowboy boots lies a tragic past with childhood poverty and abuse.
The star, 60, explained her parents loved each other but they fought a lot, and they got violent often.
She said she witnessed brutal fights between her mother, Sharon, and stepfather, Jerry Twain, and that their violence often included her and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann, who were “smacked” and “kicked around a lot.”
Shania said on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast: “If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely. I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically.”
She added: “‘It was very violent. So my mom, you know, she would lose clumps of hair.
“She was bruised often in the face and… it was pretty bad sometimes.
“I mean, our house would shake. Those walls would shake.
“It’s very traumatic. It gets loud and scary, like a really bad thunderstorm.”
It’s not the first time Shania has spoken about the violence within her childhood.
Shania was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1965, one of three girls to parents Sharon and Clarence Edwards.
However her parents divorced when Shania was two and her mother’s second husband, Jerry Twain, adopted the sisters.
Their home life was wrecked by poverty, with Shania and her sisters often going to school hungry.
So when Sharon spotted her daughter had a talent for music, she knew she had found a way to make money to help the family.
“Really, my mother was the one that made me get on stage,” Shania recently told The Independent. “I did not want to be in the spotlight. I was petrified of it.”
From just eight, Shania would be woken up to perform in bars after midnight.
“I would go to do the after-hours set and everyone was already intoxicated,” the five-time Grammy winner revealed.
“It was not fun,” Shania continued of those early shows. “I had school the next day, and my parents would often fight.”
Shania quickly learned that if she came back home with no money from her gigs it meant trouble.
“If I didn’t earn anything from it, it was going to be a domestic problem,” Shania explained.
“We were living hand to mouth.”
Tragically, Jerry wasn’t just violent towards wife Sharon, once beating her unconscious.
Shania recalled how her cruel stepfather would also make her walk around the house topless and touch her inappropriately.
“He just had issues… It was like he was two people,” she told 60 Minutes.
“I would get physically involved sometimes with my parents’ fights… I just thought that he would kill her. One of these times – he was gonna kill her.”
“I hid myself and I would flatten my boobs,” she told The Sunday Times in an emotional interview.
“I would wear bras that were too small for me, and I’d wear two, play it down until there was nothing girl about me. Make it easier to go unnoticed.”
“It was terrible – you didn’t want to be a girl in my house.”
Aged 22, Shania was about to get her big break when her parents were both tragically killed in a car crash.
She had to return home to care for her younger siblings and Shania became ”a single mum overnight,” she recalled.
She added: “It was a very touch and go period in my life.
“It was a lot of pressure. I barely slept.”
But despite the setbacks, Shania didn’t give up on her dream.
Once her sisters were old enough, she compiled a demo tape to present to Nashville music execs and within a few months they had snatched her up.
It was the first step to Shania finally becoming the international country pop superstar the world knows today.