k.d. lang messes with fans’ minds with stunning cover photo for her dance diva Makeover album

k.d lang’s soaring ballads are huge. But in the 1990s, she was also a dance club diva — and she has injected some of that into her new album.

Exclusive: “WHO is on the cover of k.d. lang’s Makeover?”

That question has been the most asked on the interwebs since the Canadian chanteuse released the cover of her new dance remix compilation.

The stunning portrait of the artist in a neckline-plunging blue evening gown sitting at a drum kit was taken by celebrity photographer David LaChapelle in 1995 when lang was one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

K.D.Lang on the cover of Makeover. Picture: Supplied.

She was at the height of her musical and pop culture fame, when she was as renowned for her subversion of image as she was for her soaring, yearning ballads Constant Craving, If I Were You and Hush Sweet Lover.

From the canary yellow tulle ballgown she wore in the Miss Chatelaine video to the gender-bending Vanity Fair cover of a suited lang being “shaved” by supermodel Cindy Crawford, the then newly outed singer delighted in tearing down pop star conventions.

Lang laughs heartily when informed fans weren’t entirely sure it was her in Makeover’s cover image.

k.d Lang stunned Australia with her heartstrings-wrenching performance at Fire Fight last year. Picture: AAP.

“Oh, that’s funny. You know I am a woman of many, many turns,” she says.

“I think it was important to me to play with the ideals of gender at that time and still is. I was sitting right there, I had the opportunity to play with gender and I took it.

“And, you know, I think it’s obviously an important issue in the now.”

It cannot be understated how shocking and controversial lang’s visual statements were at the time, just 25 years ago.

When she crossed over from country music to the pop world in the early 1990s and courageously came out after her cover of Roy Orbison’s Crying and then Constant Craving ushered a new era of adult contemporary music to the global pop charts, she rattled a lot of cages.

American country music stations banned her music after she declared her sexuality and she faced a picket line outside the 1993 Grammy Awards where she won Best Female Pop Performance for Constant Craving.

But image wasn’t the only cultural totem she challenged. She conducted a secret musical life in plain sight for most of the 90s and that alter ego informs the make-up of the Makeover record.

“I’ve had this project in the back of my mind for years, but sort of forgot about it and then one day in Covid fog, I decided that it would be a good idea to rerelease these remixes because they were just sitting there in the vaults of Warner Brothers and Nonesuch.

Lang continues to subvert pop culture conventions with her visuals. Picture: Rocky Schenck/ Supplied

“The dance music phenomenon is such an intriguing thing now, urban music has just completely taken over and I felt like, well, I have dance music, you know.

“I had some amazing people work on my music, Junior Vasquez, DJ Krush and Tony Maserati, and I didn’t want them to just sit there and go to waste. And then I remembered that David LaChapelle photo, which really just was the icing on the cake.”

While dance remixes were a device in the 90s to give a song a new life in the clubs and also on the pop charts, lang had been immersed in the dance world long before she became a household name.

But the remixes gave her dance diva status – the kind enjoyed by Cher and Kylie Minogue – in gay club culture.

Lang did however forbid Constant Craving being given the remix treatment; the song was too precious to her to be reimagined from its original form.

“That happened kind of in parallel. Obviously I knew that I had I resonated with the LGBTQ+ community. Obviously that’s a given,” she says.

“You have to understand I grew up in the clubs. As a young lezzie (lesbian), I was going to the clubs on my days off, but I was performing in country bars when I was working.

“And it was a hilarious duality that I never even questioned. I mean, it just was what it was. Disco and Grace Jones and the Commodores, oh, man, that music. I still listen to that music.”

“Unearthing this treasure trove of my dance music, I’m actually exhilarated by it because it it’s taking me back to this youthful self and to a very true, authentic part of who I am.”

Lang was been a regular tourist to Australia over the past three decades. Picture: Estelle Massry

But lang never considered steering her career entirely into the dance world even as she continued to flirt with it on subsequent albums All You Can Eat and Drag.

Her 2002 Grammy winning album A Wonderful World with Tony Bennett and then her signature version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah cemented her reputation as a masterful interpreter of songs.

“I had never thought of (a dance music career) because my focus had been on being a vocalist. That’s why I shed the whole country thing and the whole catchiness of country and I really just wanted to hone in on the capacity to communicate with the listener and narrate the emotion of a song as a singer,” she says.

“So that’s what I’ve been doing.”

The controversial Vanity Fair cover from 1993. Picture: Supplied.

She did it beautifully and emotionally, provoking a flood of tears among the 70,000 strong crowd, when she came to Australia in February last year to perform at the Fire Fight bushfire benefit concert.

Having enjoyed almost three decades of touring here, she was compelled to make the flying visit to add her voice to the efforts to support the communities devastated by that summer of hell.

“It was emotional for me, too. Hearing about all of those animals, people and all the suffering, I felt like I had to do my part. You know I love me some Australia. I can’t wait to get back down there.”

Makeover is out now.

Originally published as k.d. lang messes with fans’ minds with stunning cover photo for her dance diva Makeover album