When I told my girlfriend I was going to do a telephone interview with k.d. lang, she shrieked with excitement and then giggled, “I’ll give you my knickers to hold while you chat to her”. 

This is the effect the lesbian singer-songwriter has had on women for the past 25 years. Whether it’s being shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford on the cover of Vanity Fair, belting out her most popular hit ‘Constant Craving’ at the Outgames opening ceremony, or crooning with the legendary Tony Bennett, lang has a knack of bringing chicks – straight and queer – to their knees (sometimes literally!).

Born in Alberta, Canada the 47-year-old started out in the country world before rising to fame in the late ’80s, winning a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her 1989 album, Absolute Torch and Twang. In 1992 she released Ingenue, containing ‘Constant Craving’, which garnered her multi-million dollar sales and another Grammy, this time for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Things went a bit quiet for her until 2003 when she won yet another Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for her collaboration with Bennett on A Wonderful World. Her last major album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, featuring covers of well-known Canadian singers, came out a year later.

I refrain from telling her my girlfriend’s panties are taking pride of place on the table next to the phone, but do let her know that she loved lang’s latest offering, Watershed – an album of original songs whose subject matter includes creativity and jealousy, on which lang is writer, singer and producer.

She’s obviously chuffed at this, and pleased with her new project.

“I guess it’s a piece of me,” she says. “I wouldn’t say it reflects my whole personality, but it’s the music I wrote, and I produced it, so it’s the way I hear and play music. It’s a peaceful record.”

Peace is something lang enjoys and has gained through Buddhism, spending her spare time building a monastery, as well as gardening and painting.

“I’ve always felt the association to Buddhist philosophy,” she says. “Seven years ago I met my Buddhist Tibetan lama who’s become my teacher, so it’s shifted from liking Buddhism to being a Buddhist practitioner, which is a big difference.”

When lang came out in 1992 she expected a hostile reaction from the country music community, but having pissed them off already by doing an anti-meat ad for PETA two years earlier, her coming out barely moved them.  

“By the time I came out as a lesbian people were tired of the controversy of k.d. lang, so it was good fortune, the chronological order,” she laughs.

As far as activism and campaigning goes, lang believes she does this by “living my life”, and although she uses descriptors such as ‘butch’, ‘femme’ and ‘lesbian’, she’s not a big fan of labels.

“I use them from time to time myself, but as with music, I feel that labels can be very destructive if used the wrong way,” she says. “In the long run they’re confining and stereotyping so I think probably they’re not a healthy thing to have. When you start defining people by gay, straight, freaky or conservative you start polarising people, and I think that’s something not to get into the habit of, but we should look for commonality.”

Now, let’s get back to knickers. In what was arguably lang’s heyday in the early to mid 1990s, there was no shortage of lingerie finding its way on stage during her shows. But anyone planning to chuck their undies at the singer during her Australian tour in April/May will likely receive a less-than-enthusiastic response.

“That one’s kind of a thing of the past,” she says. “You know it’s kind of funny, but the 80s and 90s era of sexual overdrive is kind of boring for me now. I tend to lean more towards the spiritual aspect to make people happy.”

Dammit – how to tell that to the girlfriend?

Our chat is coming to an end but before we sign off I quickly poke my nose into her private life. lang lives with her partner of six years – also a Buddhist – and two dogs in a wood and stone cabin off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles where Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter used to engage in secret homosexual trysts – and no, she didn’t know that before she bought the place. She doesn’t hang out in the ‘power lesbian’ cliques of Hollywood and has never seen a single episode of The L Word (starring her former flame Leisha Hailey, the inspiration behind lang’s 2000 album Invincible Summer). Why?

“I don’t have that channel,” she says.

Watershed is out now through Warner Music.
k.d. lang: The Watershed Tour, April 24 at The Arts Centre, Hamer Hall, Melbourne. Bookings: www.ticketmaster.com.au