Recently I unearthed my old CD Shadowland, which I had not played in a few years, and was re-blown away by just how much ass kd lang kicks in the singing department. God, that’s one gorgeously-voiced woman.
So I thought that by now such a world-class diva would have recorded a set of standards by the likes of Cole Porter, Gershwin, and Duke Ellington. However, a search on Amazon turns up no such thing, except for duets with Tony Bennett. I was hoping to find a well-arranged, sparely orchestrated assortment of solo recordings. Actually, she has recorded relatively few CDs for a singer of her calibre.
Why hasn’t she gone the standards route? Is not not her style? Or am I just not researching the subject well enough?
Really? I guess I don’t think of it that way right from the start. I consider it to be an artist’s tribute to classic songwriting, trying to add something new or at least showcase a good voice. If the interpretation or the voice doesn’t hold up then yes, I would agree that it was a throwaway.
For those who haven’t seen it: kd lang has an (all too brief) appearance in the movie The Black Dahlia.
It may well be an artist’s tribute to classic songwriting, but it seems to usually coincide with the decline of said artist’s own songwriting. However, I’m thinking along the lines of stuff like Rod Stewart’s…for someone from Jazz or Country or Blues, it might be a more natural thing to do, but for a rocker, it’s pretty much just a cop out. Unless, of course, the rocker was a phony in the first place, then…ohhh, nevermind…
Willie Nelson’s “Stardust” is a great example of a country singer paying homage to the Great American Songbook in his own style. I recommend it.
I’ll agree that kd lang has a tremendous voice and I’ve enjoyed following her from her start as sort of a cowpunk. I think she’d do justice to Gershwin et al.
I don’t think kd lang falls within the definition of “pop” singer, or “rocker” or even a country cowpunk, although she has done brilliant, brilliant work in the latter category. I think she’s no more or less than a tremendous one-in-a-billion voice and ought to consider joining the ranks of the great standards divas like Ella Fitzgerald or Jury Garland. That is to say, not some mediocre squeaker taking a stab at it because her career is declining.
teela brown, word. The album she did with Tony Bennett has a couple of standards, and her website says she has songs on tribute albums for Ella Fitzgerald and Joni Mitchell. That’s not nearly enough though.
Beg to diff. *Ingenue *was just about her least standaresque; those songs were all originals, IIRC. It’s really her second-most top-40-pop album, after the dreadful Invincible Summer.
k.d. lang is one of the great voices of the recording era; up there with Ella and Doris Day. I think it’s absolutely astonishingly brilliant that she carved her style almost entirely eschewing rock influences. Not that I have any problem with rock music; far from it. But I find it fascinating that she’s created a style that’s kind of an alternate universe style: she’s what music would be like if it had evolved straight through from 40s and 50s jazz to today, if rock had somehow never happened. It’s, like, science fiction.
I think her taste in songs has faltered from time to time, but when she hits, there is no other living singer like her, and less than a handful in history are her peers.
That said, as regards the OP: since her break with country music, all of her albums outside of *Ingenue *and Invincible Bummer have been, by and large, standards albums.