K.D. Lang Biography
Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter Kathryn Dawn Lang OC AOE, better known by her stage name k.d. lang, was born on November 2, 1961. She also works as an occasional actress. Grammy Awards and Juno Awards have been given to Lang for her musical performances. Songs like “Constant Craving” and “Miss Chatelaine” have achieved success.
Mezzo-soprano lang has worked with artists like Roy Orbison, Tony Bennett, Elton John, The Killers, Anne Murray, Ann Wilson, and Jane Siberry. She has also written songs for movie soundtracks. She gave performances at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the opening ceremony.
In addition, Lang has worked as an animal, homosexual, and Tibetan human rights activist. She practices tantra according to the traditional school of Tibetan Buddhism.
K.D. Lang Early life
Lang, the youngest child of Audrey Bebee and Adam Frederick Lang, was born in Edmonton, Alberta. Her ancestry includes Sioux, English, Irish, Scottish, German, Russian, and Jewish. Lang’s family relocated to Consort, Alberta when she was nine months old. There, she grew up in the Canadian prairies with two older sisters and one older brother. When she was twelve years old, her pharmacy owner father abandoned the family.
Lang attended Red Deer College after finishing high school, where she fell in love with Patsy Cline’s life and music and made the decision to become a professional singer. She relocated to Edmonton following her graduation in 1982, and in 1983 she started a Patsy Cline cover band called the Reclines. Sundown Recorders is where She and the Reclines recorded their first song, “Friday Dance Promenade”. Her personal manager was label owner Larry Wanagas. The first lineup included Farley Scott on bass, Gary Koligar on guitar, Dave Bjarnson on drums, and keyboardist Stu Macdougal.
The Reclines frequently performed at Edmonton’s well-liked Sidetrack Cafe, a neighborhood club that hosted live music six nights each week. Lang performed a performance-art piece in 1983 that was a seven-hour recreation of the transplanting of an artificial heart for retired American dentist Barney Clark. After its 1984 publication, A Truly Western Experience garnered positive reviews and gained widespread notice in Canada. Lang was one of the three Canadian performers chosen in August 1984 (along with other performing and recording contracts throughout Japan) to appear at the World Science Fair in Tsukuba, Japan.
Lang developed a “cowboy punk” look and sound while performing at country and western venues in Canada. In the Rolling Stone article from June 20, 1985, she was referred to as a “Canadian Cowpunk”. In a subsequent interview with The Canadian Press, she would describe how the idea for her signature style came to her: “I used to sew plastic cowboys and Indians on my outfits – just having fun with it on a budget. Because I couldn’t afford anything, I would shop at Value Village or ask my mother to sew me a skirt out of the drapes she was about to toss away. I enjoyed dressing up as much as I did listening to music.
K.D. Lang Net Worth
As a result of her successful careers as a singer-songwriter, actress, and record producer, K.D. Lang has acquired a net worth of close to $10 million.
Her impressive discography includes 14 studio albums, and four Grammy Awards have been handed to her in honor of her talent. K.D. Lang has also sold over 40 million records worldwide, indicating her success on a global scale.
K.D. Lang Career
A 1985 Juno Award for Most Promising Female Vocalist went to Lang for a number of recordings that got rave reviews. She borrowed a wedding dress from her male roommate at the time to accept the honor. She earned the title of “Most Promising” by making a number of ironic promises about what she would and would not do in the future. Eight Juno Awards in total have been won by her.
Lang entered into a deal with a US record producer in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1986. Her 1987 album, Angel with a Lariat, which Dave Edmunds produced, was well-received by critics.
As a nod to poet e. e. Cummings, Lang decided to use a lowercase name.
When Lang appeared as “The Alberta Rose” during the Winter Olympics’ closing ceremonies in 1988, she became widely known. Lang was chosen as the “Woman of the Year” in 1988 by the Canadian women’s publication Chatelaine.
As a result of Roy Orbison’s decision to record a duet of his classic song “Crying” with her, Lang’s career had a significant boost. Their effort earned them the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals in 1989. The 1987 movie Hiding Out starring Jon Cryer featured the song. Lang won the Entertainer of the Year honor from the Canadian Country Music Association as a result of the song’s popularity. In addition to two accolades for Female Vocalist of the Year in 1988 and 1989, Lang would receive the same honor for the following three years.
The torch country album Shadowland, which Owen Bradley produced, was released in 1988. The Canadian Country Music Association named Shadowland Album of the Year in the latter part of 1988. During that same year, she also delivered background vocals alongside Jennifer Warnes and Bonnie Raitt for Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night, Orbison’s critically praised television special, and she gave a performance of “Turn Me Round” during the XV Winter Olympics’ closing ceremonies in Calgary, Alberta.
The Red Hot Organization’s Cole Porter tribute album Red Hot + Blue included Lang’s song “So in Love” in 1990. She added “Fado Hilário” to the AIDS charity compilation album Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon in 1998, which was put together by the same company.
K.D. Lang Grammy Awards and mainstream success
Lang’s 1989 album Absolute Torch and Twang earned her the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. In the middle of 1989, the album’s first song “Full Moon Full of Love” had a minor amount of success in the United States and peaked at number one on Canada’s RPM Country chart. She and Dwight Yoakam collaborated on the song “Sin City” for his album Just Lookin’ for a Hit in 1989.
Her most well-known song, “Constant Craving,” was included on the 1992 album Ingénue, a collection of pop songs geared for adults with comparatively little country influence. She earned millions of dollars in sales and widespread praise for that song. She faced a picket line outside the 1993 Grammy Awards event where she would win the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance after coming out as a lesbian, which resulted in numerous US country stations banning her music in the same year.
“Miss Chatelaine” was another top ten single from the album. The song’s video featured lang in an overly feminine pose while surrounded by vibrant pastel colors and an abundance of bubbles, evoking memories of a performance on The Lawrence Welk Show. Chatelaine, a women’s magazine, once named lang its “Woman of the Year.”
She was given writing credit for the Rolling Stones song “Anybody Seen My Baby?” from 1997, which has a chorus that is similar to “Constant Craving”. Prior to the song’s debut, Jagger and Richards, who insisted they had never heard the song before, were perplexed as to how the songs could be so similar. When Jagger found his daughter listening to “Constant Craving” on her stereo, he realized he had heard the song many times before, although subconsciously. To prevent any potential legal issues, the two awarded lang credit along with her co-writer Ben Mink. Afterward, lang expressed her gratitude for the songwriting credit, calling it a “absolute honor and flattering.”
She provided a significant amount of music to Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues album and performed a cover of “Skylark” for the 1997 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil movie. She sang “Surrender” for the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies’ ending credits.
She received the title of Officer of the Order of Canada in 1996.
Drag, a collection of cover songs about “smoke” (more especially, cigarette smoking), was published in 1997. Lang is seen in a man’s suit on the album cover and in the booklet photos, which alludes to another alternative definition of the word “drag”: cross-dressing. Drag features eight songs with a smoke theme, including the 1940s classic “Smoke Dreams,” the Steve Miller Band song “The Joker,” the title from the cult movie Valley of the Dolls, and “Smoke Rings.”
She was included to the National Portrait Collection of The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives in 1998.
One of eight women to make both lists, lang was voted No. 33 on VH-1’s 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999 and No. 26 on CMT’s 40 Greatest Women in Country Music in 2002.
She received her fourth Grammy Award in 2003 for her work on A Wonderful World with Tony Bennett, which was nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
Few vocalists can control pitch with such precision, according to Stephen Holden of The New York Times in 2004. Her voice, which is both lovely and plain and softened by a cloud of smoke, always lands in the center of a note and stays there. She subtly displayed her technique, dragging notes out and blending them into softer, vibrato-heavy murmurs from continuous shouts. She projected a sparkly joy behind it all as she struck a balance between comedy and her passion to the subject.
Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Ron Sexsmith, Jane Siberry, and Neil Young are just a few of the famous English-speaking Canadian composers whose songs Lang covered on his album Hymns of the 49th Parallel, which was published the same year. The album reached platinum status in Canada in April 2006 after selling more than 100,000 copies, according to the Canadian Record Industry Association (CRIA). The album was certified double platinum in Australia in December 2007 after being purchased more than 140,000 times.
She performed the song “Little Patch of Heaven” for the Disney movie Home on the Range as well in 2004.
Lang sang her hit song “Constant Craving” at the Outgames opening ceremonies on July 29, 2006, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
She collaborated on a cover of the Joni Mitchell song “River” for Madeleine Peyroux’s album Half the Perfect World in 2006. Lang sang “We Had it Right” with Nellie McKay on her second album, Pretty Little Head, that same year. Lang also contributed a rendition of The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” to the soundtrack of the Happy Feet movie. She also performed a duet of “Jackson” by Lucinda Williams on Ann Wilson’s solo album Hope & Glory.
In 2007, she collaborated with Anne Murray, who was one of her childhood heroes, on a rendition of her famous song “A Love Song,” which appeared on Anne’s album Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends.
She released her latest album, named Watershed, on February 5th, 2008. It was her first album of original music since the release of Invincible Summer in 2000.
Recollection, Lang’s first comprehensive greatest-hits collection, was published on the Nonesuch label on February 2, 2010.
She was in Nashville in 2010 working on the album Sing it Loud. Lang and the Siss Boom Bang released the Nonesuch album in the spring of 2011. 2011 summer tour dates for the band in North America
She relocated from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon, in 2012.
During the 2013 Juno Awards on April 21, 2013, lang received an official induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In her victory speech, she made a point of complimenting Canadians and encouraging them to “let your freak flags fly. Balletlujah!, another production by the Alberta Ballet Company in 2013, was both inspired by and set to songs by Lang. Later, a film version of the ballet was produced and aired on CBC.
In 2016, Lang worked on the album project case/lang/veirs alongside Neko Case and Laura Veirs.
She performed “Hallelujah” during the Leonard Cohen tribute event “Tower Of Song” in Quebec in November 2017.
The Killers’ song “Lightning Fields” from their 2020 album Imploding the Mirage features her. She starts off the song’s verse with the words “Don’t beat yourself up, you laid good ground” and carries on for a number of further lines.
Released on May 28, 2021, Makeover is a collection of vintage dance remixes created between 1992 and 2000. Additionally, several of lang’s early vinyl releases were released in 2021.
K.D. Lang Film and television appearances
Beginning in 1987, Lang gave multiple performances on The Super Dave Osborne Show.
K.D. Lang and The Reclines made an appearance on Austin City Limits in 1988.
Lang co-starred opposite Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd in the 1999 drama Eye of the Beholder in addition to playing the lead in the drama Salmonberries from 1991. In 1997’s The Last Don miniseries, she played Dita Tommey. In the 2006 film The Black Dahlia, she performed the song “Love for Sale” in an uncredited appearance as a lounge singer. She has additionally made cameos on the comedies The Larry Sanders Show, Dharma & Greg, and Ellen’s well-known coming-out episode. She made an appearance on Pee Wee’s Playhouse’s Christmas special and sang “Jingle Bell Rock” there. She also made a cameo on The Jim Henson Hour’s “Garbage” episode, and in 2008, she appeared on Rove, Rove McManus’ live hourly show.
On February 3, 2008, Lang performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra in front of a small audience at the 18th-century church LSO St Luke’s in London. The concert, which was first broadcast as part of the BBC Four Sessions, was made available as a DVD in 2009 under the name Live in London.
She sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the Vancouver, British Columbia, Olympics Opening Ceremony on February 12, 2010. At the Australian TV Logie Awards in early May 2010, lang stepped in at the last minute for Susan Boyle to do a reprise of her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” from the Winter Olympics, to a lengthy standing ovation. She and Matthew Morrison sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” on Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album in 2010 as part of a holiday episode. She made an appearance as herself in Season 8 of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother in February 2013.
She made an appearance as an exaggerated version of herself in the Portlandia Season 4 finale in 2014.
Lang made her Broadway debut in the role of the “Special Guest Star” in After Midnight on Broadway, taking Fantasia Barrino’s place before Toni Braxton and Babyface took her place. From February 11 through March 9, 2014, she made an appearance.
She gave a performance at Fire Fight Australia on February 16, 2020, at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia. The goal of this performance was to raise money for Australians who had been impacted by the 2019 bushfires. In one of her appearances, she sang Leonard Cohen’s timeless song “Hallelujah”
K.D. Lang Semi-retirement
In an interview in 2019, Lang stated that she considers herself to be semi-retired and that she might not continue to write and record new songs in the future. “At the moment, I don’t have any particular inclination to compose music. I’m struggling to find my muse. I’m entirely at peace with the possibility that I’m finished.
K.D. Lang Activism
Lang has fought for homosexual rights issues since coming out as a lesbian in a June 1992 piece of the LGBT weekly publication The Advocate.
Over the years, she has backed a variety of causes, including research and care for HIV/AIDS. The Red Hot + Blue compilation CD and film, released in 1990 as a tribute to Cole Porter and to raise money for AIDS research and relief, features her interpretation of the Cole Porter song “So in Love” (from the Broadway musical Kiss Me, Kate). This rendition of “So in Love” may be found on Recollection, her greatest hits CD from 2010. For the 1999 Red Hot AIDS benefit CD Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon, Lang also sang the Portuguese traditional fado “Fado Hilário” in Portuguese.
She eats just plants. She was barred from more than 30 Alberta radio stations as a result of the uproar her “Meat Stinks” campaign in the 1990s generated, notably in her hometown, which is surrounded by the cattle ranching sector in Alberta. Consort, Alberta’s “Home of K.D. Lang” sign was destroyed by fire. At the time, Alberta’s agricultural minister remarked that it was “extremely unfortunate” that she had chosen to support animal rights activists. Given how successfully we have supported K.D. in Alberta, there is a sense of betrayal. Due to her “Meat Stinks” campaign, more than a dozen American radio stations in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska also stopped playing her music.
Herb Ritts’ shot of Lang graced the cover of Vanity Fair’s August 1993 issue. The cover depicted lang on a barber chair while Cindy Crawford appeared to shave her face with a straight razor; lang later said that the French movie Le mari de la coiffeuse served as inspiration for the image. The issue had a thorough piece about lang in which it was noted that when she came out as a lesbian, lang had anticipated rejection from the country music industry. Although they were understanding and her recordings kept selling, they were less impressed when she featured in a PETA advertisement because of the connection between country music and cattle ranching.
Lang worked as a guest editor for The Age in Melbourne, Australia, in April 2008. This had to do with her advocacy for Tibet’s human rights issues. She joined pro-Tibet demonstrators on April 24, 2008, as the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay passed through Canberra, Australia.
Lang was admitted to the Q Hall of Fame Canada in 2011 in honor of her contributions to advancing equality for all peoples worldwide.
In a 2016 interview with The Canadian Press, Lang discussed coming out, noting that at the time it “felt like it was the most responsible thing for society and myself.” She also mentioned how difficult it was for her to deal with the ramifications in the years that followed. “It’s a very hard thing to unravel for me and decipher” , she stated. You can’t, in a manner. Everything about me, my place in popular culture, and my place in popular culture is just a giant ball of wax.
Lang participates in the Canadian organization Artists Against Racism.
K.D. Lang Personal life
According to an article from 2008 that featured an interview with lang, “when she isn’t working, [lang] is mostly a homebody, living quietly with a girlfriend she refers to as’my wife’ — they are not legally married — and her two dogs.”
She and Jamie Price, whom she had first met in 2003, entered into a domestic partnership on November 11, 2009. Lang filed for the dissolution of the partnership in Los Angeles County Superior Court on December 30, 2011, following their separation on September 6, 2011.
K.D. Lang Recognition
Lang won the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards’ companion prize, the National Arts Centre Award, in November 2005. She would be given a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, it was announced on June 3, 2008.[44] Lang was given a position in the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2018.
K.D. Lang Awards & Nominations
4 Grammy Awards
- Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (1990) for “Crying” with Roy Orbison
- Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (1995) for “Moonglow” with Tony Bennett
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album (2004) for “A Wonderful World” with Tony Bennett
- Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical (2022) for “Constant Craving (Fashionably Late Remix)”
8 Juno Awards
- Most Promising Female Vocalist (1985)
- Female Vocalist of the Year (1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996)
- Album of the Year (1993) for Ingénue
- Single of the Year (1993) for “Constant Craving”
- Music DVD of the Year (2004) for Hymns of the 49th Parallel
BRIT Award
- International Female Solo Artist (1993)
American Music Award
- Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist (1993)
MTV Video Music Award
- Best Cinematography (1993) for “Constant Craving”
GLAAD Media Award
- Outstanding Music Artist (1993, 2004)
- Order of Canada:
- Member (1996)
- Alberta Order of Excellence:
- Member (2022)
K.D. Lang Social Media
- Twitter: @kdlang
- Instagram: @kdlang
- Facebook: @kdlang
K.D. Lang Filmography
- 1991 Salmonberries
- 1994 Teresa’s Tattoo
- 1999: Eye of the Beholder
- 2006, The Black Dahlia
Who is KD lang married to?
private sphere. According to an article from 2008 that featured an interview with lang, “when she isn’t working, [lang] is mostly a homebody, living quietly with a girlfriend she refers to as’my wife’ — they are not legally married — and her two dogs.”
Does kd lang have dual citizenship?
Lang, who has dual citizenship, had another reason to go back to her country: ‘s mother
What is KD lang known for?
k.d. lang, whose real name is Katherine Dawn Lang, was born on November 2, 1961, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is a singer-songwriter best known for her award-winning country-pop music and androgynous “cowpunk” fashion.
What country is KD Lang from?
In 1961, Kathryn Dawn Lang was born in Edmonton. She was raised in the community of Consort, which is 220 kilometers east of Red Deer. But as an adult, she traveled the globe as one of the most prominent performing artists from North America, which brought her as far away from home as one could possibly conceive.
