Shania Twain Opens Up About Her ‘Bad Battle’ With COVID-19

Shania Twain is looking back at the scary bout with COVID-19 that almost claimed her life, and how that experience inspired a new song.

In a new interview with InStyle, Twain discusses details about a new song called “Inhale/Exhale Air,” which will be included on the track list for her upcoming Queen of Me album.

The song, she says, was written shortly after her COVID-19 illness, during which she struggled to breathe.

“I wrote that song right after I had a very bad battle with COVID, and my lungs were filling up with COVID pneumonia and I was losing my air,” the singer reveals. “I survived, but it was iffy.”

Afterwards, she was scrolling social media on her phone and stumbled across a motivational video clip that spoke to her recent illness.

“This minister, he just starts breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. And I’m like, ‘I still identify with this,'” Twain recounts.

“He says, ‘Air. What are you going to do with it?'” she continues. “What are you going to do with it? It’s free, it’s there, don’t take it for granted. I celebrated it by writing a song about it.”

In true Twain songwriting fashion, that song takes inspiration from a tough real-life situation but leads with themes of play, whimsy and joy.

“Air is in everything. Air is in the bubbles in our champagne. What would we do without air?” she notes. “If we didn’t have air, we wouldn’t have champagne. I know it’s simplifying it. This is having fun with wordplay. We wouldn’t have balloons if we didn’t have air. Obviously, we wouldn’t be alive without air. But I take a playful perspective on it and it becomes celebratory.”

Queen of Me is due out on Feb. 3. Twain has already released a few songs off the project, such as lead single “Waking Up Dreaming” and, most recently, “Giddy Up!”