Shania Twain performing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Photo / Getty
Shania Twain performing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Photo / Getty
It's been 15 long years since Canadian country-pop superstar Shania Twain has released an album - and she's been through a hell of a lot in that time.
The 51-year-old singer, whose 1997 album Come On Over remains one of the best-selling records ever, has just announced her long-awaited return to music - a new single, Life's About To Get Good, will premiere in June, with an album to follow later in the year.
Shania Twain performing. Photo / Getty
It will mark the end of a very long wait for Shania fans, as her last full-length album Up! was released way back in 2002.
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to Twain releasing new music was her painful, public divorce - from the man who had co-written and produced all of her music.
Robert John Mutt Lange, ex husband and producer of the Canadian singer Shania Twain, attends an event in 2000. Photo / Getty Images
Twain and producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange married in 1993, and their romantic partnership also produced some of the biggest hits of the 90s - Lange's fingerprints were all over Twain's glossy, radio-friendly country pop singles.
But their marriage dissolved amid scandal in 2008, when it emerged that Lange had an affair with Twain's best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud.
Confronted with the fact her husband and best friend were having an affair, Twain fell into a deep depression. She even emailed her (now former) friend to beg for her husband back:
Shania Twain (L) and her husband, Frederic Nicolas in 2011. Photo / Getty
"I am dying, and I can't take it any more. This is killing me. Have mercy," she wrote.
In her 2011 memoir From This Moment On, she wrote that she barely ate or slept and felt "ready to die".
The person who broke the news of the affair to Twain was her best friend's husband, Frederic, who'd stumbled across evidence that his wife was cheating with Lange.
Shattered by their spouses' betrayal, Twain and Frederic found solace with each other - and soon embarked upon a relationship of their own.
Singer Shania Twain and triathlete and husband Frederic Thiebaud. Photo / Getty
On January 1, 2011, three years after she and Frederic discovered they were both being cheated on by their respective partners, Shania Twain married her ex-best friend's ex-husband.
Mutt and Marie-Anne were not invited to the wedding.
The other big obstacle stopping Twain from resuming her singing career: the stress of the divorce made her quite literally lose her voice.
Following the split she was diagnosed with dysphonia, a vocal cord disorder that made it difficult for her to speak, let alone sing.
In time, her voice came back - and Twain put it to good use, performing 105 shows at a Las Vegas residency from 2012, then embarking on a sellout US arena tour in 2015.
But still, no new music - save for one low-key stand-alone single in 2011.
Now Twain's opening up about the "dark inspiration" for her new long-awaited album - her first without Lange's involvement since her little-heard 1993 debut.
"I told anyone getting involved musically to forget about my other records," she told Rolling Stone. "I didn't want it to be related to Mutt's productions at all. I wanted a more organic approach."
Twain warned that the new material is less poppy and relentlessly upbeat as earlier hits like That Don't Impress Me Much and Man I Feel Like A Woman.
One song, Who's Gonna Be Your Girl, is directly inspired by her marriage breakdown - new lyrical territory for a woman famed for loved-up ballads like You're Still The One.
"It's about feeling unappreciated and knowing that you are secondary," she said.
