This Album Changed My Life: Tori Darke On Shania Twain's 'The Woman In Me'

Last week, Australian country singer Tori Darke released her heartfelt new single, Somewhere In Mexico, a summer love jam that’s essential for your margarita-based warm weather playlists.

To celebrate the new release from the country music mainstay, we caught up with Darke to find out about an album that changed her life.

Tori Darke - This Album That Changed My Life 

Shania Twain - The Woman In Me

Funnily enough, I first heard Shania Twain’s The Woman In Me when I was ten years old after being on holiday with my family in Bali. My mum took me into a convenience store and bought the Shania album there. This is the one album that I think my whole family knew word for word because I would not stop playing it. This album 100% made me beg my parents for a Walkman so I could listen to it anywhere; I was obsessed. 

Shania’s Any Man Of Mine was my first introduction to singing a country song in junior talent quests. I dressed up in my cowboy boots, cowboy hat and big frilly skirt, boot-scooting and singing at the top of my lungs in every talent quest I could enter.

Until this point, I had sung a few different genres, but country music was where it all started to make sense as a young aspiring singer. I will always think back to my younger days and know that my biggest influence was Shania and the Woman In Me album. It's when I decided I wanted to be just like Shania.

My favourite song off the whole album was Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under, but as a ten-year-old, it was a little too far from being age-appropriate to sing in competitions, so I just put it on repeat in my room for days on end. 

Songs like If It Don’t Take Two, Any Man Of Mine, If You're Not In It For Love, and You Win My Love will forever bring back some of my best childhood memories. 

Shania paved the way for me to become a country music artist in years to come, and I’ll forever be grateful to my mum for buying me my first Shania album in Bali, which turned out to be a burnt CD, haha. 

Somewhere In Mexico is out now.