k.d. lang

Like Madonna, k.d. lang has earned more ink for her offstage antics and provocative, chameleonic image than for her music. A pity, because lang not only possesses one of the finest voices in pop music, she's also blessed with the sort of stylistic range most singers can only dream of attaining. She started out performing what could be called postmodern country, but over the course of her career she's proved her mettle in traditional country, flirted successfully with mainstream pop and dance rock, and has even laid convincing claim to various standards.

Born in a Canadian prairie town, lang initially made her name both through her stunning voice and her playful subversion of country & western swing conventions. A Truly Western Experience -- the title is a joke on her home province of Alberta's status as Canada's Wild West -- is a good effort for a bar band, but barely hints at her potential. By the time of Angel With a Lariat, lang had become a fully-formed musical personality, and she also found a valuable ally in multi-instrumentalist Ben Mink. A veteran of the prog-rock combo FM, Mink had chops to spare -- and a sense of humor every bit as sharp as lang's. Between them, they filled the album with such giddy treats as the Cajun two-step "Got the Bull by the Horns" and the off-balance dance tune "Watch Your Step Polka." Great stuff, but a bit edgy for American country audiences, which may be why lang felt inclined to prove her bona fides with Shadowland, a painstakingly pure tribute to Patsy Cline. Not content with merely singing her heroine's songs, lang recruited Cline's producer, Owen Bradley, and his presence lends an authority to the project no mere re-creation could match. Yet for all her enthusiasm, lang's performance is more impressive as devotion than interpretation, for she often loses her identity in an attempt to seem authentic.

Absolute Torch and Twang brings the focus back to lang herself. She has wondrous fun with the uptempo tunes, whether homegrown (the cool-rocking "Didn't I") or borrowed (her sly, swinging remake of "Full Moon Full of Love"). But the slow songs are where she really proves her mettle, for between the bluesy inflection of "Three Days" and the melancholy yodel tugging at "Trail of Broken Hearts," lang is revealed as one of the most gifted song stylists in country music. And with Ingenue, genre distinctions become irrelevant as lang fuses her influences into a unique and distinctive sound encompassing everything from the sophistication of "Miss Chatelaine" to the Patsy Cline-meets-Joni Mitchell angst of "Save Me."

Having thus established her pop credentials, lang and Mink take a bit of a detour with the semi-experimental cowboy songs of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a soundtrack that's far more likable than the movie to which it's attached. All You Can Eat pushes her pop evolution even further. Considering how heavily hunger and longing color the songs here, lang earns points for the deliciously ironic album title. But it's the funk-tinged grooves of "Maybe" and "Acquiesce" that help lang move beyond the torch song expectations of her previous work.

Drag is a bit more self-indulgent, a tobacco-stained collection of covers that ranges from the sublime (an incandescent reading of Albert Hammond's "The Air That I Breathe") to the ridiculous ("Theme From the Valley of the Dolls"). Invincible Summer puts her back on track, however, celebrating the wonder of love and glory of happenstance with undisguised delight -- "The Consequences of Falling" and "Summerfling" are especially gorgeous. Sadly, these originals would be her last for a while. Live by Request is a de facto greatest-hits collection, and it justifies the concert setting with some of lang's most lustrous singing. She also cut an album of standards with Tony Bennett, Wonderful World. Finally, she put her own imprint on the notion of standards with Hymns of the 49th Parallel, which answers the "American songbook" concept by including only songs by Canadian tunesmiths, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Jane Siberry among them. Typical is "A Case of You," in which lang takes a famously personal and specific pop song and makes it both universal and utterly her own. (J.D. CONSIDINE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide