If Shania Twain could send a message to her younger self, she would tell her to “strap in.”

“You have no idea what is coming in life,” she says matter-of-factly, looking me dead in the eye. “And you’re all the better for it.”

We’re in a sprawling hotel suite in west London on a humid Monday afternoon, where team Twain—stylists, glam, half a dozen publicists, and many, many ring lights—has taken up residence for the day. The 60-year-old is fresh from Switzerland, where she has lived for much of the past three decades, and in town for what is shaping up to be a very Shania summer.

Five days after we meet, she will perform in the Shacklewell Arms, a beloved and somewhat sticky east London pub—unusual for her, but also the kind of venue she wishes she played in more often. (“Even if I’m just with friends and I’m at a bar and I’m not performing, I will grab a guitar and ask if I can get up and do a song,” she says with a grin.) After that, she will transfer to an altogether larger stage for the first of 12 nights at Wembley Stadium as a special guest of Harry Styles, dressed in a suite of custom dazzling Dolce & Gabbana looks. (Her opening night outfit? A jet-black corset, hot pants, and thigh-high boots.) Yet when I ask what she’s most looking forward to being in London—her “favorite city in the world”—she is most excited to ride a horse around Hyde Park.

Then there’s the matter of Little Miss Twain, her seventh studio album, arriving this July; the title an homage to her childhood stage name and its 20 tracks a paean to her youth. The album, in all of its soulful glory, revisits the years before Nashville, before Shania Twain became one of the most recognizable names in country music. The bluesy “Faded Blue Jeans” recounts the early loves of her life, while the Motown-inspired “Scary Thing” pays tribute to her love of the genre. “A lot of it was influenced by R&B music,” she says. “It was influenced by ’70s rock and folk and there’s a bit of Chicago in there and there’s a bit of Motown in there…”

Suffice it to say, Shania is in a reflective mood. Long before the Grammys, the Vegas residencies, and the estimated 100 million records sold worldwide, she was a little girl in Canada being coaxed onto small stages by her mother to sing Dolly Parton songs, original tunes, and Top 40 hits. “Well,” she says of her career taking off, “it wasn’t all-of-a-sudden.” Born Eileen Edwards and raised in Timmins, Ontario, Twain was singing professionally before she was a teenager. Her late mother, Sharon, was her de facto manager, promoter, A&R, and chauffeur. “According to my mother, I was the next Tanya Tucker,” Twain laughs. “She had a target for me. She had a goal.”

Looking at Twain today—perched sideways on a velvet seat, elegant in a floaty black Dolce & Gabbana jumpsuit, gold monogrammed bangles stacked on both wrists—it is tempting to believe superstardom was inevitable, though she herself is keen to correct that assumption. “You just know that you love something when you’re little and you know that you’re obsessed with it,” she says. “I probably had my 10,000 hours by the age of 10.”

By the time she signed her first record deal in Nashville at 27, however, she had “already lived three lives.” In 1987, both of her parents were killed in a car accident, after which Twain moved home to raise her younger siblings. Nearly a decade later came the dizzying success of The Woman in Me and Come On Over—still the bestselling studio album by a female solo artist in history, spawning hits like “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”, “You’re Still the One,” and “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”

“‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’ is definitely the headline statement of my recording career,” she says. The 1999 song, which earned the artist her second Grammy and remains a cross-generational anthem of female empowerment almost 30 years on, was born out of Twain’s hard-won comfort in her body. “I was literally coming into my own skin, finally feeling comfortable as a woman,” she says. “I was always very intimidated by my own body.” A turning point came on the set of a music video, when she was asked to wear two bras. “I was like, ‘I’m not wearing two bras. I’m taking both bras off,’” she says, laughing. “Because, what am I doing? What have I been waiting for? And hence ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’ was like, alright, this is what you’ve been waiting for. The moment to celebrate that as women, you can have as much masculinity and femininity as you want in your vibe.”

Even as her career skyrocketed, Twain was navigating turmoil behind the scenes. Lyme disease damaged her vocal cords and forced her into a years-long hiatus from music. (It’s only in the last six years that Twain has regained her ability to sing, following experimental vocal surgeries.) Her marriage to producer Mutt Lange ended after his affair with Twain’s former assistant—one of her closest friends—made headlines. She ultimately found love again with her now-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud (the former spouse of that same friend), rebuilding her life while continuing to raise her son, Eja.

Does everything she went through stick with her? “I think your character is assigned to you before your life really gets rolling,” she says. “All you can decide is, do I listen to my defeated voice or do I listen to my voice of perseverance? It’s not simple, but it is basic if you break it down, and I have always done that. I’ve always just said: ‘Alright, well, you can either quit or you can get on with it.’”

Following years spent wondering whether she would ever sing properly again, Twain ultimately returned to the stage with enough new material to fill a stack of diaries, and has introduced herself to an entirely new generation of fans. Meanwhile, the likes of Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Sabrina Carpenter have all cited her influence. “They grew up listening to my music,” she says of her gaggle of celebrity fans. “All of them are adults that are now big and famous that I admire in return.” Chief among them: Harry Styles, her dear friend and Wembley stage mate. “The idea of this invitation to come and do [Wembley] with him was very special. I thought it was very sweet. I’m a fan in a respectful way.”