Shania Twain has her "confidence back" following her battle with Lyme disease.
The ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ hitmaker underwent open-throat surgery after her voice was damaged by the effects of dysphonia – which was caused by her battle with tick-borne illness Lyme disease, which she contracted in 2003 – and after taking some time out of the spotlight, she’s now said she couldn’t be happier to be back on stage.
She said: "So many things have opened up for me in the last couple of years. Just by being proactive and getting my confidence back, obviously my voice was a huge part of that. Now I feel like the possibilities are endless."
Shania opened her ‘Shania Twain Let’s Go! The Residency’ concert series at the Zappos Theater inside Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Friday (06.12.19), and has said she feels "more prepared" than ever for her latest string of residency shows.
She added to ET Canada: "I’m more prepared than I’ve ever been for any other show just because I was involved the whole way. You know every element. You know everything that’s going on around you. There’s no mystery there."
Meanwhile, the 54-year-old singer recently spoke about needing to "rediscover" her voice following her series of invasive surgeries.
She explained: "I had to have an operation that was very intense and it’s an open-throat operation, very different from a vocal cord operation. I had to have two of them, so that was really, really, really tough and I survived that – meaning emotionally I survived – and am just ready to keep going.
"When you’re a singer and it’s your voice, it is just a terrible, terrible feeling. It was a great, great loss, so I had to come to terms with losing the voice that I had and rediscovering my new one."
Some of the vocal damage the ‘From This Moment On’ singer sustained is sadly permanent, but Shania insisted she isn’t letting the uncertain future of her voice hold her back.
She said: "It’s been a long, a really rewarding, journey. What I’ve learned in the interim through therapy is how to manipulate my voice to get it to do what I want it to do or at least close enough.
"I don’t want to give up, so I’m willing, you know, you just gotta be willing and give in to change and you have to accept that you don’t always have to be the same, and that’s what I have to do, and I’m embracing that."