As Shania Twain prepares to host the People’s Choice Country Awards on Thursday, the 59-year-old legend joked that she might have to be yanked “off the stage” due to her stage fright.
“I’m not the greatest reader,” the “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” singer told Taste of Country this week. “I’m a very spontaneous speaker and thinker, so if I get rambling, they might have to take the hook out and get me off the stage.”
Twain, who has been performing since she was about 8 years old, said she’s dealt with stage fright her entire career.
“I’ve always had terrible stage fright,” the “You’re Still the One” singer told CTV in Canada in 2019, “So, I think the only way to deal with it would be for me to just forget about what I was doing and jump right into ‘We’re all in this together’ to not feel isolated.”
She added, “I’m still the 8-year-old who is afraid to go on stage and as soon as I’m embraced by the audience, then I don’t feel like I’m standing alone.”
She said at the time that getting herself onto a stage is “not a step, it’s a leap. It’s a jump. You know, Pavaratti said every night before going on stage, just before going on stage, ‘OK, everybody, it’s time to die,’ because it feels like you’re crossing a threshold, this petrifying threshold and it literally is a leap. It’s the unknown every night. That’s the thing about live. It’s so unknown. I don’t even want to say it, but things happen that are unexpected.”
“Sometimes you forget the words. I mean, how embarrassing is that? So, if you think about everything that could go wrong, which is normally what somebody with stage fright does, you go through this panic for a bit, and then once you’ve crossed that threshold, you’ve taken the leap, now I feel once I’m there that I’m embraced by the audience, and it’s over.”
Last summer, Twain laughed off a funny mistake during one of her Las Vegas residency shows when she seemingly forgot what hand she was holding her microphone in and started to sing into a drumstick prop.
“Oh my God, that was hilarious,” she said into the mic after the blunder.
Brian Bowen Smith/NBC via Getty Images
“I’m really glad somebody captured this moment, it’s made me laugh all over again,” Twain captioned an Instagram post after sharing a fan video of it.
She also fell on stage last year while performing “Don’t be Stupid” in Chicago in knee-high boots. “Don’t be stupid Chicago. You know I love you,” she joked with the audience as she got up.
“Stage fright can be very crippling,” she said on Live with Kelly and Ryan in 2019. “I’ve had times where I really just felt like I couldn’t go out, you know, just froze, or I’d get sweaty palms and shaking.”
She added that she had to learn how to deal with her stage fright “or the stress was going to ruin me.”
“Once I’m with the people, I’m fine,” she noted.
Twain told Taste of Country she plans on having “a lot of fun” at the People’s Choice Country Awards.
“My responsibility is to host hard-working artists, to take my hat off to their talents and to join the fans in celebrating the music they love the most. I’m there as a fan.”
She admitted that she’ll be filled with “adrenaline” more than “nerves, you know, just feeling excited, building up to meeting artists that I haven’t met yet.”
Stars like Miranda Lambert, Kane Brown, Keith Urban, Kelsea Ballerini, Lady A, Little Big Town, Carly Pearce, Scotty McCreery, Dan + Shay, Brady Paisley and Machine Gun Kelly are expected to appear at the show.
Lambert, 40, will receive the Country Icon Award at the show.
Twain’s breakthrough second album, “The Woman in Me,” helped launch the Canadian-born singer’s career.
The album was released in 1995 and won Twain her first Grammy Award. Twain also won best country song and best female country vocal performance for “You’re Still The One.” In total, Twain has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and taken home five.