I watched and extraordinary documentary on Shania Twain on Netflix called Not Just a Girl.

Shania’s story is fascinating and I highly recommend you check it out. By the end, it highlighted some interesting observations.

1) Great people and great artists are almost always generationally taught.

What I mean by that is greatness is often the result of generational surroundings. Rarely does someone pick up a subject/art form for the first time and become great. Usually, greatness is a result of a person absorbing familial knowledge and elevating it to the highest level.

Shania’s family was musical. So was Eddie Van Halen’s. Mark Cuban’s father was a hard worker and his mother had an entrepreneurial spirit.

To name just a few.

2) Shania had a very clear goal of what she wanted and how to get there… yet she accepted the need to learn along the way.

You often can’t break from the norm without understanding why it works, where are its weaknesses and identifying opportunity. Shania’s parents wanted her to sing country. She wanted to sing rock-n-roll. The easiest path was through country and she accepted a temporary loss of creative control in order to master country music before tackling rock-n-roll.

3) Shania was insanely driven and focused.

Her vision was clear and her work ethic beyond most everyone around her.

4) She was naturally gifted.

Great people also benefit from good genetics, whether that be looks, intelligence, creativity or all of the above. She had all of them, but never abused them or used them to abuse others.

5) She was lucky.

The 1990s is one of the most diverse and accepting times in music in modern music history. Any good song was popular, whether that be rock, alternative rock, latin, country, dance or any of the others. This is because of where we were as a society. We were at the bottom of a pendulum swing, which I’ll discuss later.

Also, music videos were in their heyday in the 1990s and Shania was beautiful. MTV provided an easy on ramp to cross over from country to pop and her videos owned the network for years at a time.

6) She surrounded herself with great people.

Shania knew what she didn’t know and found those who were experts to fill the gaps, whether that was a country music manager or collaborating, and eventually marrying, a music producer who loved country but produced rock albums (AC/DC, Def Leppard, etc.) On her tours, she hired the best of the best to play with her.

7) She was crazy talented.

She not only wrote her own songs, but designed her own costumes and edited her own videos. She controlled her destiny.

8 ) She was fearless.

Fighting against a male-dominated industry, Shania broke glass ceilings and set records that remain unbroken because she was fearless in taking on the establishment, following her vision and celebrating her strengths.

Which brings me to one other observation. It was interesting to watch 1990s interviews with Shania about her celebration of womanhood and femininity compared to modern takes on her approach.

This goes back to the Pendulum idea. I posted a video about this years ago. After you’ve read this post,

PLEASE WATCH IT BELOW. It explains so much of what is going on in the world today. In the 90’s we weren’t at the height of the pendulum swing, where teams (us vs. them) was the most important defining factor. She was in the base of the pendulum swing, where society is the most cohesive.

Where she didn’t take on the male domination by belittling masculinity. She celebrated femininity with such power and strength that it elevated womanhood without affecting masculinity.

When modern thinkers talk about her effect on society, they immediately talk about how she was attacking the patriarchy. And attach on patriarchy is, by effect, and attack on masculinity. Because, today, where we are in the Pendulum, if someone wins, someone else must lose.

Where, in the 1990s, everyone could win. That’s why the music scene was so diverse, with Van Halen, Ricky Martin, Shania Twain, Ice-T, Nirvana, The Spice Girls, etc.

Not Just a Girl is a fascinating and powerful story of a woman who changed country music and the music industry as a whole forever.

Check it out when you can.

PENDULUM VIDEO