Shania Twain is revealing insights into her challenging childhood experiences.

During a discussion on the “How to Fail” podcast on Monday, January 25, Twain, now 60, shared, “Performing in bars as a child was certainly the most difficult part. Back then, the rooms were filled with smoke. Children could only enter bars after they had stopped serving alcohol.”

Typically, bars ceased alcohol service at midnight, which is when Twain was permitted to perform.

“I would perform during the ‘after hours’ sets, and by that time, the patrons were already inebriated,” she explained. “It was a challenging environment for a child, yet I approached it with professionalism and seriousness.”

From her debut in 1993, Shania Twain has consistently captivated audiences. Born Eilleen Regina Edwards in 1965, she began her musical journey singing in a cover band shortly after finishing high school in Ontario, Canada. The “Any Man of Mine” singer has continued to dominate the music scene ever since.

Keep scrolling for more of Twain’s biggest confessions about her childhood and life in the limelight:

Singing in Bars

“[It was] very difficult, just dark, smelly, smoky places with a lot of … and people fight,” Twain said, adding that she has no regrets about her experience. “I wouldn’t want to ever live it again. Once is enough — all the way through [and] all the way around, and I don’t regret any of it.”

Twain’s earliest gigs took place at those local bars.

“If there was an opportunity for me to go singing at the local bar, my mother would find every opportunity possible, so I could get out and get exposure and get experience as a professional performer,” she recalled. “Those were my classrooms, the bar stages. If I didn’t earn anything from it, [that] was going to be a domestic problem.”

Twain revealed that she needed to earn at least $50 to help cover both gas costs to-and-from the venue and groceries for the week.

“The cupboards were often empty, the gas tank was often empty,” she said. “We were living hand to mouth, week to week — or sometimes day to day. The heat would get turned off in the middle of winter, so any $5 went a long way.”

‘A Very Jam-Packed, Intense Young Life’

While speaking on the “How to Fail” podcast, Twain acknowledged how she began her career after enduring several family hardships. (Twain’s mother and stepfather were killed in a 1987 car accident, leaving the singer to become the guardian of her younger siblings.)

“I felt old already by the time I was 20, by the time my parents died,” Twain said. “I already felt like a grown woman … but I was more experienced than I probably should have been with a lot of things.”

Understanding Her Past

“There’s no other kid in class that’s up till 2 in the morning in the local bar, maybe singing to somebody’s parents or whatever,” she said. “You don’t really absorb. I don’t think I didn’t until I started getting further away from it.”

The Double Standards in Her Career

Twain moved to Nashville in the early 1990s upon signing her first record deal.

“It was a process, so the insecurities — not about being female — but about expressing being female was the issue,” she said, referring to the hyper-sexualization of her songs. “I could do it with the lyrics, and I was playing already with the visual silhouettes and everything. I was doing what I thought was comfortable.”

Once Twain released “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” she realized how much of a “statement” she was actually making.

“This is not just me being a woman, saying, ‘I can think for myself.’ This was beyond that,” she said. “[There were] only men in my industry when I was a kid. There was the odd female singer, but when there was a female singer in bars, I wasn’t normally going to the bar to sing because they already had a female singer.”

With her 1997 hit, Twain wanted to push back at any man who previously made her feel “uncomfortable.”

“I [was like], ‘I’m gonna put a short skirt on.’ I was kind of pushing myself through fears,” she said. “I wasn’t looking at them anymore. I was actually pushing myself through them and it felt great.”