Songoftheday 8/1/18 - Even through the darkest phase be it thick or thin, always someone marches brave here beneath my skin...
from the album Ingénue (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38
Weeks in the Top-40: 3
Today's song of the day comes from Canadian treasure k.d. lang, who was born in raised in the western province of Alberta, where farming and the country life reign supreme. A fan of the late great pop/country queen Patsy Cline, lang put together her backing band the Reclines, and released an independent single, "Friday Dance Promenade", in 1983. Cline's face appeared on the cover of their first full-length album, A Truly Western Experience, the following year. With the buzz from that release, the band was signed to Sire Records, where they released their next record, Angel With A Lariat, which came out in 1987. From it the song "Tune Into My Wave" became a minor country hit in Canada (#45), while k.d. gained a ton of exposure with her crowd-raising performance of the song "Turn Me Round" at the closing ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Edmonton (my first glimpse of her, and was I mesmerized). Both of those were written by Reclines guitarist Ben Mink, and produced by British post-punk legend Dave Edmunds. She also landed her first American hit around the same time, with a collaboration with pop icon Roy Orbison on a cover of his classic hit "Crying" for the movie Hiding Out. The song climbed to #28 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, and went to #42 on their Country Songs format list, and went on to win the pair a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration in 1989. By that time, she had released another album without the reclines, Shadowland, that must have been a dream fulfilled for lang, having been produced by Patsy Cline's own arranger, Owen Bradley. It was her first to reach the main albums chart in the U.S. (#73), and scored the singer her biggest country hit with "I'm Down To My Last Cigarette" (Country #21). She rejoined the Reclines for one more album, Absolute Torch & Twang, which would end up also being her final "true" traditional country album. The lead single from the set, "Full Moon Full Of Love", brought her back to the country top-40 in the U.S. at #22, while being her sole #1 country hit in her native Canada. The record earned her a second Grammy win for Best Female Country Vocal in 1990.
When lang returned in 1992 with her fifth album Ingénue, she was without the Recline on billing, but brought on from them Mink as the producer, as well as steel guitarist Greg Leisz, bass player David Piltch, and percussionist Graham Boyle. The sound left her country past behind for a smokey lounge feel, equally retro but in another direction. The first single from the record was the uptempo jangle-pop of "Constant Craving". Written by lang and Mink, who both produced the track with engineer Greg Penny, the lush "wall of sound" production not only didn't need country radio to succeed, but won over mainstream pop radio handily. This was a major triumph, as lang officially "came out" as a lesbian just as the single was being released in the summer of 1992...
"Constant Craving" became lang's first and only top-40 pop hit in October of 1992. The song climbed all the way to #2 for one week on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart as well. Internationally, the song went to #8 in her homeland of Canada. After the Grammy success of the song in 1993, when it won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, the track became a bigger hit overseas, landing at #15 in the UK and Ireland, and #38 in Australia. The song was also nominated for Grammys for Song of the Year and Record of the Year, losing both to Eric Clapton's sob-fest "Tears In Heaven", while Clapton's Unplugged set beat Ingenue for Album of the Year.
The second release from Ingenue was the orchestral wonder of "Miss Chatelaine", which also would go to be nominated for a Female Pop Vocal Grammy, this time losing to Whitney Houston's unstoppable "I Will Always Love You". "Miss Chatelaine" missed the pop chart in America, but hit #32 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart, and was a minor hit in Canada (#58) and the UK (#68). A third release from the set, "The Mind Of Love", climbed to #49 in Canada, and #72 in Britain.
After all the success of Ingenue, lang made yet another left turn the following year; instead of releasing another pop or country album, she recorded a soundtrack for the whacked out Gus Van Sant movie starring Uma Thurman, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Although the movie flopped, the companion album reached the top half of the albums chart in the U.S., where two songs from it made the top ten on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart in remixed form - "Just Keep Me Moving" went to #6 in 1993 while "Lifted By Love" topped that list the following year (the former hit #25 in Canada).
lang and Mink came back in 1995 with a more straight-on pop album, All You Can Eat, which brought her back to the top-40 on the Albums Chart (#37), while landing another pair of big club hits with "Sexuality" (#3 Dance) and "If I Were You", which topped the Dance chart and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #15, and reached #24 in Canada and #23 in Australia.
In 1997, lang released a tobacco-laced inspiration, drag, which also played on her androgynous fashion sense. A club remake of Dionne Warwick's "Theme From Valley Of The Dolls" got her to #14 on the Dance chart in America. She started the new millenium with the breezy Invincible Summer in 2000, which had a minor dance hit with "Summerfling" (Dance #25). Two years later, she teamed up with another music legend, Tony Bennett, for a collaborative album A Wonderful World, that won her another Grammy for Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
k.d. paid homage to her fellow countrywomen and men with her 2004 collection Hymns of the 49th Parallel, a play on the border latitude. In 2008, her most recent solo-billed record Watershed claimed the singer/songwriter her first top ten record on Billboard's Albums Top 200 chart in America. Two years later, she made an encore performance at the Olympics in Vancouver, and her performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" not only went to #2 in Canada, it brought her back on to the American pop chart at #61, while at the same time a greatest hits set Recollection reached #36 on the albums chart here.
In 2011, lang returned with a new band call the Siss Boom Bang for her Sing It Loud album. Her most recent work was a collab album with Neko Case and Laura Veirs, case/lang/veirs, which was critically hailed and reached #33 on the American albums chart.
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lang came on the Late Show with David Letterman in May of 1992 (a month before her coming out) to perform the song...
...and on the Arsenio Hall show...
Here's lang performing the song live in concert...
...and from her performance on MTV Unplugged...
Dance music artist Abigail transformed the song into a club banger in 1995...
In 2011, the cast of Glee, featuring Naya Rivera and Chris Colfer and with Broadway legend Idina Menzel, covered "Constant Craving", and went to #89 on the American pop Hot 100...
And lastly, back to lang on the Jools Holland Show that same year...
Up tomorrow: Made-up band inquire about heavenly communications.
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