Remember Those Who Have Fallen
In November 1998 the murder of transgender woman Rita Hesler sparked the creation...
The Musical Awakening Of KD Lang
You live and you learn. And if anyone can attest to this, it’s multiple Grammy Award-winner, KD Lang.
As a gay icon, she’s pushed the gender boundaries time and time again. As an activist for animal rights, she sparked debate and has been embroiled in controversy. And as a singer, she’s touched the hearts of millions worldwide with breathtaking performances such as her cover of Hallelujah. But only in recent years has this Canadian superstar really gained a full understanding of who she is and what she can truly offer as both recording artist and human being.
Overlooking Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge, 47-year-old Lang sits with legs comfortably propped up on the sofa, and is casually bare-footed. She’s grateful to be back in Australia and is humbled by the “magical” connection that she has with her Australian fans.
And with this visit, comes a notably more self-assured woman. Just as her singing captivates mass audiences, I quickly realise that so too do her words deeply resonate. Particular emphasis is placed on the one priority that now takes precedence in her life – Buddhism – which has urged her to build a monastery in Los Angeles.
“[Buddhism] permeates every ounce of my being,” she asserts, followed by an extended pause while contemplating its impact on her latest album. “Especially on Watershed. It’s a very introspective record and practicing Buddhism is very much about getting to know yourself… I think that I was able to really look at my contributions to the universe as a human being and reassess them.”
Perhaps with age, but certainly with her dedication to Buddhism over the past six years, Lang reflects on a career spanning over two decades with a new sense of appreciation. She insists that Buddhism has taught her to view herself with more compassion and has enabled her to enjoy this new chapter of her life with clarity.
“I would have the tendency to be rebellious or cynical about the business but I think now Buddhism makes me less cynical, less reactive, less radical, and more accepting of what it is,” she ponders.
Although her introspective ways have developed, Lang has always been a teacher of compassion in one way or another; especially when considering her desire to diminish stereotypes and encourage positive social change – even if at times, it was to the detriment of her career.
With a start in country music, her androgynous demeanour conflicted with the traditional ways of Nashville, where her debut album, A Truly Western Experience, met resistance to sales and airplay. Despite this, the album was a mainstream hit in Canada and an underground sensation in the US.
By 1989, lang released her third album, Absolute Torch And Twang, which featured a progressive country style. The album garnered a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, as well as a top 25 country hit with Full Moon Full Of Love. Lang was finally commanding both attention and respect from the public and industry alike. But just as things were looking up, her outspoken ways resulted in an unpredictable backlash.
During these formative years as a country singer, Lang decided to appear in an ad campaign for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Her part in the campaign prompted her to say: “Meat stinks and not just for the animals but for human health and the environment.” These words among others, instigated more controversy than when Lang officially came out in 1992.
“I was really young. The text that I was handed to read for the advertisement, wasn’t something I actually believed,” she admits today. “Just as they want compassion for animals I think they have to practice compassion for human beings. I think if you really want to open people’s minds you have to do it through example and through gentle existence. It’s like trying to create democracy through war – it doesn’t work. I didn’t agree with their tactics.”
Dressing slight battle wounds from the onslaught that followed the PETA campaign, Lang soldiered on to discover her love for pop. She enjoyed a whirlwind of enormous success with the 1992 worldwide hit, Ingénue, which spawned her signature song, Constant Craving, and earned her another Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Yet again, she used the platform of success to boldly highlight issues of particular relevance to her life. This time in relation to sexuality and gender.
At the pinnacle of her career, Lang raised a few eyebrows with a daring gender-bending display: posing in drag for the cover of Vanity Fair, she sat on a barber’s chair being shaved by a swimsuit wearing Cindy Crawford.
“It certainly marked the high point in my public image, my public life. It was the height of my notoriety,” Lang recalls. “What’s interesting is that for rock male musicians it’s been very much more accepted to be feminine and be in rock ‘n’ roll than it is for women to be masculine and be in music.”
Never shying away from making a point, Lang strived to showcase a talent that transcends gender, while challenging the public’s perception of what is considered the ‘norm’. With a less confronting approach, she continues to do so until this very day.
“It’s definitely a part of who I am and what my art is about. I am actually quite fascinated and find humour in the fact that my voice comes out of this body. It’s kind of incongruent – my voice is very feminine and very sensual, yet my body and my physical appearance is kind of masculine and not so sensual,” she laughs. “I think that it’s very purposeful. It seems it’s my fate to have to deal with this.”
As a part of her fate, Lang also acknowledges the difficulties that arise as a consequence of being such a public gay figure – that at times, although proud of her sexuality, she has been a reluctant gay icon.
“I’ve experienced reluctance. At a certain point in my career, around Ingénue and around the Vanity Fair cover and for a few years later, [being gay] was really the only thing people were interested in talking to me about. Although, I knew the focus would come back to my music.
“My sexuality, my orientation is only a part of who I am. My music is again, only a part of who I am – but it’s a bigger part in a way. I’m certainly proud I came out… I’m proud of any inroads to social equality. But I’m glad that in the long run, I’ll be known as a singer. That’s the most important thing to me,” she says.
While yet to equal the commercial success of Ingénue Lang still went on to win another Grammy in 2003 for Best Traditional Pop Vocal, for her collaboration with Tony Bennett on A Wonderful World. A year later came her last major album, Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, which featured a series of covers of iconic Canadian singers. Although experiencing various levels of success over the years, Lang reveals that as an artist, she didn‘t always get it quite right.
“I’ve caught myself faking it a few times – not knowing I was doing it at the time, but then in retrospect sort of looking at myself going ‘well, what was that about?’… I was trying to fit into my idea of what pop music was,” she says of her 1995 release, All You Can Eat and her 2000 release of Invincible Summer – even though, incidentally, both albums did well in Australia.
“With Watershed and Ingénue, I had no commercial intention whatsoever. I really wrote them because I needed to write them,” she says, earnestly.
If you’ve heard Watershed, you’ll agree that this was indeed a labour of love, rather than a fulfilled commercial promise to music executives. Assuming the role of producer, singer/songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist it marks a milestone in Lang’s career with what is possibly her most heartfelt and confident body of work to date. Many of the tracks, including Shadow And The Frame and Jealous Dog, were recorded just once to encapsulate what Lang describes as “vulnerability” and “rawness”; and all tracks focus on meaningful narratives that vary in genre.
Currently touring Australia with a brand new band, audiences will again witness Lang in her full glory – a little older, a lot wiser, and just as enormously talented as ever.
“I’m proud I’m alive, I’m proud I’m in Sydney today and I’m just really, really, really grateful that I have this life… I’m not hounded by the press and I’m not hounded by photographers – I’m famous but I’m not a celebrity. It’s a really great place to be.”
It would seem that KD Lang’s constant craving is officially pacified.
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