PHOTO ESSAY

Most Valuable Players

Hockey card summaries of this year’s GG Performing Arts Awards winners

By Alec Scott

November 4, 2005

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k.d. lang
Singer, songwriter
Born: Edmonton, 1961
Claims to fame: A potent performer much given to cowgirl kicks, k.d. took her act from coffeehouses to clubs to medium and then large concert halls in the 1980s and early ’90s. Her three best albums — Shadowland (1988), Absolute Torch and Twang (1989) and Ingenue (1992) — straddled the country-pop divide; with her Top-40 hit Constant Craving, k.d. became one of the exemplars of the “new country” movement. Her sweet-sounding voice resembles that of her idol, Patsy Cline; it helped her win four Grammy awards (one of which she accepted in a wedding dress) and hold her own in duets with the likes of Roy Orbison, Elton John and Tony Bennett. Off-stage, k.d.’s anti-meat activism troubled some of her cattle-ranching compatriots in Alberta. One of the first celebrities to come out publicly, k.d. became the face of lesbian chic; for a 1993 Vanity Fair cover, k.d. sits in a barber’s chair, submitting to a shave from a scantily clad Cindy Crawford. k.d. is being honoured this year for her album Hymns of the 49th Parallel, in which she covers several Canadian standards — most memorably, Neil Young’s Helpless.
Trivia: Feist will perform lang’s song Save Me at the Saturday night gala at the National Arts Centre.
Quotable quote: “If you knew how meat was made, you’d probably lose your lunch.”