When k.d. lang made her stage entrance in London last December, the audience broke into a hail of wolf whistles.
Katherine Dawn Lang, 43, is a legend. Even before coming out as a lesbian in 1992, she attracted hordes of female fans, drawn to her distinctive voice - pure, strong and seductive - and her chiseled good looks - more androgynous than butch.
But lang is much more than a lesbian performer.
Her music career spans over 20 years, 11 albums, and almost as many styles.
In her native Canada, lang started as a country music performer with a band she formed called The Reclines, later moving to Nashville where her ambiguous sexuality ruffled country feathers. The scene booted her out after she made an anti-meat ad hugging a cow.
The snub steered lang into jazzy pop with Ingenue (1992) and effectively made her a world star. When she told US gay magazine, The Advocate, she was a lesbian, the album went platinum in the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.
The lang anthem everyone remembers from that album, Constant Craving, is a bittersweet classic about unrequited love, which lang told The Advocate was inspired by her hopeless desire for a married woman.
Her coming out helped Ingenue sales, gave lesbians a woman they could look up to, and paved the way for fellow artists to leave the closet. US rocker Melissa Etheridge followed suit a year later, with comedic actress Ellen DeGeneres botching the job somewhat in 1997.
lang has a fresh country look, not exactly sexy, but attractive. Her voice is powerful, passionate with restraint, and yearningly sexy. When she sings, lang becomes the fantasy woman, a woman easily constantly cravable.
The nineties were wild years for lang. She was out and proud of it, posing in drag for the cover of Vanity Fair (picture at the top of page), with a busty Cindy Crawford lathering her up for a shave. Crawford looks like she's mid-orgasm. lang became the lesbian icon every celebrity wanted to court and take to parties. She once inspired Madonna to quip, "Elvis is alive... and she's beautiful," a quote lang's publicity machine is now using to promote her Singapore gig.
While lang has never been able to recreate the success she enjoyed with Ingenue, she kept her fans entertained playing with various genres during the nineties - instrumental movie soundtrack, Even Cowgirls get the Blues (1993); contemporary, All you can eat (1995); gender-bending lounge, Drag (1997) - an album of covers exploring the theme of smoking; and sunny romantic pop, Invincible Summer (2000) which she penned while dating Leisha Hailey (who now plays Alice in L Word).
lang has never hid her sexuality, from her uncompromising style to attending big pride functions such as the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Equality Rocks concert in 2000. That year, lang told The Advocate she felt it was her job to use her music to transcend gender. "As an artist, it's imperative that you go right past the genitals and right into the heart. That's my job, that's why I'm here, it's my assignment."
But since the millennium, the Canadian diva has matured, putting her passion for women backstage, and training the lights on her passion for music instead. "I don't want to be loved because I'm a lesbian... I just want people to dig my voice," lang told The Independent newspaper a few months ago.
Her latest album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel (2004) has reaped the best reviews since Ingenue. It's another collection of covers, but this time she pays tribute to Canadian songwriters, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young among others. The tracks pay homage to her country, its artists and its wide-open landscape. "It's true," the headlines ran, "lang has come out as a Canadian."
In concert, lang is known for playing the impish tomboy, making classy innuendos and dancing around bare foot. She relies on her music and sense of fun to give the audience a good time. Fans are rarely disappointed. She has won good reviews for her latest tour from the British press. It seemed they couldn't get enough of her, as their main gripe was the short length of the show - 70 minutes.
Four years ago, lang told US lesbian magazine Curve, she finds it hard to resist women who throw themselves at her when she's on tour. With her Asian dates imminent, there's only one way to find out if she's still as vulnerable...
k.d. lang performs at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre on February 2, Singapore's Esplanade on February 4, and at Tokyo International Forum Hall on February 25. She will also play several dates in New Zealand and Australia. See www.kdlang.com for tour information.
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