From the backroom pool-hall honky tonks to the urban-cowboy dance palaces, country music fans have fallen in love the Cinderella story of the year - Shania Twain. And with good reason.
    Twain's second album, The Woman In Me, has spawned three hit singles and spent five weeks at No. 1. She has already earned 10 nominations for country music awards and had a No. 1 video.
    While these statistics are themselves astounding, Shania Twain has achieved all of this without ever hitting the concert trail (which she doesn't plan to do until 1996).
    "There are two main reasons why I haven't toured yet," she recently said. "First, I've spent the past year promoting my new album. That has meant traveling throughout North America and Europe to introduce my music to radio. It's meant producing videos for each of my singles, and doing a host of other promotional things. ...They all take time. I spend a great deal of time writing songs and preparing for an even better follow-up album.
    "That's my second reason...I'm preparing for my next album. I really believe that fans would like to have more than the music they have heard so far. I want to make sure that before I step on the stage, I can gives fans a terrific full-length show, and that's going to take time."
    Twain's road to fame thus far has included turns both interesting and tragic. The second of five children, Shania (pronounced Shu-Nye-uh) was born and raised in Canada, where her father (an Ojibway Indian) and mother were raised. Shania (an Ojibway name meaning, "I'm On My Way") would seek escape in her personal life through music.
    "I spent a lot of time in solitude with just my guitar," she says, "writing and singing away for hours. I would play 'til my fingers were bruised, and I loved it!"
    Her parents were quick to recognize the little girl's talent and began forcing her to perform.
    "I used to be dragged out of bed at 1 in the morning," Twain recalls, "and they'd bring me to the local club to play with the band. They couldn't allow me in a liquor premise before 1 a.m., when they stopped serving.
    "I'd get up and sing a few songs with the band, and before I knew it, I was actually doing clubs professionally. From the age of 8, I did everything my parents could get me on."
    If her parents seemed obsessed with the career of their child prodigy, it bears noting that the circumstances of the Twain family were less than encouraging. "We were extremely poor when I was a kid," Twain says, "and my mother was often depressed, with five children and no food to feed them. She knew I was talented, and she lived with the hope that my abilities were my chance to do something special."
    Fortunately for Twain, the encouragement of her parents became her saving grace after both parents were killed in an automobile crash when she was 21. Suddenly her music was no longer an option but a key to survival for her and her siblings.
    "When my parents died," Twain says, "my brothers and younger sister were still living at home. My brothers were only 13 and 14 years old, and I became sister/mom. I took a job singing at a resort. I bought a house, a family truck and settled down - I thought forever."
    In time, Twain's brood grew up and went their own ways.
    "When they left, I felt like a 45 year old woman whose kids had gone away to college!"
    For the first time, Twain was free, with her whole life ahead of her - and decision time looming about what she would make of herself.
    So she says "I decided to go for it!"
    A recording contract resulted in a self-titled debut album in 1993. That album sparked the singles "What Made You Say That" and "Dance With The One That Brought You," both of which peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard charts.
    Though her debut album failed to ignite the charts, it was the vehicle that brought her to the attention of British pop-rock producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange.
    Lange, who has produced records for Bryan Adams, Michael Bolton, Def Leppard and AC/DC, just to name a few, called Twain's manager, hoping for an introduction. Eventually the two met via telephone; soon, she was singing him the latest songs she had written. He would record her over the phone, rework the songs, then play them back to her. It wasn't until Fan Fair '93 that the two met face to face. By December, they were married.
    With Lange's producing wizardry, Twain's talent and the couple's combined songwriting mastery, The Woman In Me was born.
    The Woman In Me could stand on its own as one of the greatest albums of contemporary country music, but one element would be needed to catapult it and Twain into the stratosphere of superstardom - video.
    Without a doubt, Twain's success is validated solely by her talents and not her beauty. But with the vision of John and Bo Derek as director and producer, respectively, of the first two videos from The Woman In Me, the Canadian beauty is clearly not afraid to use what the good Lord blessed her with.
    When I first wrote about Shania Twain, I concluded that she would "one day be a measuring stick for future country stars." What I didn't realize was how soon she would become that standard.
    Consider this: She has been nominated for 10 country music awards so far this year (not including Europe), with three nods from the Country Music Association (including the prestigious Horizon Award) and seven nominations from the Canadian Country Music Awards (winning 5 awards from the Canadian Country Music Association Awards show on September 30).
    The Woman In Me has been a No. 1 album for more than five weeks on Billboard's Country CD chart, topping the record set by Wynonna Judd's Wynonna and Mary Chapin Carpenter's Stones In The Road; her album has spawned three Top 10 songs, a No. 1 song ("Any Man Of Mine") and a No. 1 video; and the album itself has reached double-platinum status.
    And Twain says once she has enough music for a full-length show, she'll begin touring. Until then, you can catch Twain on the tube in her videos and with special appearances on NBC's "Today Show," CBS's "Late Night With David Letterman" (Oct. 2) and "The Billboard Music Awards" (Dec. 6).