Shania Twain has addressed the criticism she received while married to ex-husband Robert 'Mutt' Lange in the new Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl.
The 56-year-old singer reflected on the media attention around her professional and personal relationship with Robert, now 73.
The five-time Grammy Award winner met the South African music producer and songwriter in 1993 when he reached out to her after hearing songs from her self-titled debut album.
The issue arises in the documentary around the making of Shania’s third album and the sensational hit You’re Still The One.
In a clip from an interview at the time the single was released in 1998, Shania is seen saying: “You're Still The One applies very much to my life, in a sense that I think my marriage, my relationship with my husband was something I think most people thought was unlikely or unlikely to succeed.”
Speaking from her home, Shania is then seen adding that she wrote the song with the “age gap, world gap and culture gap” between herself and her husband in mind.
She said: “I really did feel that a lot of people didn't believe in it. I sensed that in interviews, journalists would refer to him as a Svengali and ask how could all of this phenomenal stuff come out of this girl from nowhere. I guess they just didn't believe it.”
The Netflix documentary then played a number of clips from interviews at the time, with one interviewer putting to Shania: “There have been a lot of questions about how much you owe your success to how he packaged you.”
Over the years, Robert co-wrote and produced many of the songstress's biggest hits including Any Man of Mine, You're Still the One, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! and That Don't Impress Me Much.
Speaking to the Netflix cameras, Shania then describes the sentiment behind such questions as “sexist”.
She said: “Of course, if I had been a guy, it would not have been seen the same way. It's a sexist point of view. There's no question about it.”
The pair initially met after Robert offered to produce and write songs for Shania, but their relationship quickly turned romantic and they went on to tie the knot in December 1993.
Shania's career skyrocketed after she began working with Robert, who wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on her wildly successful second album The Woman In Me.
In the documentary, Shania then added that collaborating on her third album Come On Over was “proof in the pudding” in their relationship.
She said: “Creating another great work to me was proof in the pudding that this was a really genuine and authentic relationship that had nothing fake or strained about it.”
In later scenes in the documentary, Shania opened up about her painful divorce from her adulterous ex-husband, after learning he was having an affair with her longtime secretary and close friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud.
“It was similarly intense to losing my parents,” Shania admitted, having opened up about the death of her parents Jerry and Sharon Twain in a tragic car accident in November 1987 earlier in the documentary.
