k.d. lang was born on November 2, 1961. lang is a singer-songwriter whose music crosses genre lines from country to dance-pop, and an activist on behalf of LGBT and animal rights issues.
lang was born in Edmonton, Alberta, but her family moved when she was nine months old to Consort, a village of about 700 people located 250 miles from Edmonton. She became interested in music during college and was particularly drawn to the music of Patsy Cline.
In 1982, after graduating from college, lang moved to Edmonton and formed the Reclines, a Patsy Cline cover band that gradually began performing its own material. The band developed a loyal following in Edmonton and released its first album, A Truly Western Experience, in 1984. The album was modestly successful in Canada, and lang won the 1985 Juno Award—the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy Award—as Most Promising Newcomer. She jokingly proved how much she deserved the award in her acceptance speech, in which she made a series of promises about what she would do with the rest of her career.
A Truly Western Experience wasn’t released in the United States, but American producers noticed, and lang signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. in 1986. She released her first American album, Angel With a Lariat, in 1987, but got more attention that year for a side project. lang recorded a song for a movie soundtrack, duetting with Roy Orbison on a new version of his 1962 hit “Crying.” The single made it into the top thirty of the adult contemporary chart, and Orbison and lang won a Grammy Award for it. (It was later included on Orbison’s 1992 album King of Hearts.)
In 1988, lang performed at the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Calgary, and was named “Woman of the Year” by the Canadian women’s magazine Chatelaine, roughly equivalent to Woman’s Day or Good Housekeeping.
She recorded her first album without the Reclines, a collection of country standards called Shadowland. It was a bid to place herself firmly in the country mainstream. The album was produced by Nashville legend Owen Bradley; it featured backing vocals by the Jordanaires, who had been Elvis Presley’s backup singers; and one song was a quartet for lang with three of country’s greatest female singers—Kitty Wells, Brenda Lee, and Loretta Lynn. The shift to pure country was a critical success, and lang won another Grammy for the 1989 album Absolute Torch and Twang.
Given that success, it was a surprise when lang abruptly shifted styles on 1992’s Ingenue. This wasn’t a country record at all; it was pop with hints of jazz and cabaret. And it gave lang her biggest hit ever. “Constant Craving” reached #2 on the adult contemporary chart, and got into the top 40 on the pop chart. For the album’s second single, “Miss Chatelaine” – a reference to that “Woman of the Year” award – lang poked fun at her androgynous image, filming a video in which she wore a series of frilly gowns while walking through a pastel landscape as bubbles floated through the air.
1992 was also the year that lang came out as a lesbian. There were some protests, and a picket line at the Grammy Awards (where “Constant Craving” won lang her third Grammy), but lang would later say that she had expected the backlash to be worse than it was, especially in Nashville. She seemed to get more backlash for her advocacy of vegetarianism, especially after doing a “Meat Stinks” ad. A “Home of k.d. lang” sign in Consort, Alberta was burned down, and several radio stations in Alberta (which has a large cattle ranching industry) and the US Midwest boycotted her music.
lang tackled a new field in 1993, composing a soundtrack—all songs, no instrumental scoring—for Gus Van Sant’s movie Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The single from the soundtrack, “Lifted by Love,” took lang’s music to a new audience, becoming a #1 hit on the dance charts.
That was lang’s only complete film score, but she’s been a frequent contributor of songs for use in movie soundtracks. She can be heard in films from Wim Wenders (“Calling All Angels,” a duet with Jane Siberry) and Clint Eastwood (“Skylark”), a James Bond movie (“Surrender”), and a Disney barnyard cartoon (“Little Patch of Heaven”).
The Rolling Stones entered lang’s life unexpectedly in 1997 when people noticed a striking resemblance between the chorus of their “Anybody Seen My Baby?” and lang’s “Constant Craving.” Mick Jagger and Keith Richards initially denied any familiarity with lang’s song, but Jagger eventually realized that his daughter had been playing it at home, and he’d absorbed the melody without realizing it. lang and her co-writer, Ben Mink, were given writing credit on the Stones’ song.
lang won her fourth Grammy in 2002 for another collaborative project. A Wonderful World paired her with Tony Bennett for an album of pop standards. (Bennett would record a similar album with another unlikely partner in 2014, when he and Lady Gaga released Cheek to Cheek.)
On her own, lang recorded two more albums of cover songs. Drag collected fifty years of songs about cigarettes and smoking; Hymns of the 49th Parallel was an album of songs by lang’s favorite Canadian songwriters. In 2010, she became one of the few singers to record a soundtrack song for, without actually appearing in, the TV series Glee, when she sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” for the show’s Christmas episode.
In 2013, lang was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. She also began working that year with singer/songwriters Neko Case and Laura Viers; they recorded the 2016 album case/lang/viers.
lang spoke about that album as reflecting her love of collaboration, and she has frequently paired up with a wide range of musical partners. We’ve mentioned her work with Roy Orbison, Jane Siberry, and Tony Bennett; she’s also recorded songs with (among many others) Dion (“Drive All Night”), Elton John (“Teardrops”), Erasure’s Andy Bell (a cover of the Donna Summer/Barbra Streisand disco classic “No More Tears”), Carole King (“An Uncommon Love”), and fellow Canadian Anne Murray (“A Love Song”).