On subsequent releases, lang continued to both fine-tune and expand the parameters of her songwriting and her repertoire. That yielded her biggest hit, “Constant Craving,” as well as another Grammy, this time for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Her 1989 Grammy Award-winning Absolute Torch and Twang (Best Female Country Vocal Performance) combined her love of country with increasingly sophisticated, emotive torch singing typified by “Pullin’ Back the Reins.” With the 1992, platinum-selling Ingenue she had fashioned a sound-if not a genre-all her own: an elegant and impassioned adult contemporary approach.
(In fact, Lee, Loretta Lynn, and Kitty Wells make a guest vocal appearance on the album’s “Honky Tonk Angels’ Medley.”) Though the Nashville establishment may have remained skeptical about lang, Shadowland reached #8 on the Billboard Country album chart.īut lang wasn’t looking to be pigeonholed. 1988 follow-up Shadowland brought lang-rather daringly-right to the heart of Nashville for a countrypolitan-themed collaboration helmed by legendary producer Owen Bradley, mentor to lang’s idol, Patsy Cline, as well as to Brenda Lee. debut, Angel With A Lariat, produced by one-time Rockpile guitarist Dave Edmunds and cut with her then-band the Reclines. at the behest of Seymour Stein for her 1987 U.S. But from the very beginning, her bravura singing belied her kitschy cowgirl outfits and spiky hair anyone lucky enough to attend very first appearance in the United States, on a triple bill of unsigned artists at New York City’s Bottom Line, could hear that she was marked for greatness.Īfter independently releasing A Truly Western Experience on a Canadian label in 1984, which generated serious major-label interest in the States, lang joined Sire/Warner Bros. The Western Canada native launched her career with a blend of country-rock stylings and playfully punk-like attitude, by turns whimsical and subversive back then, she practically put the alternative in alt-country.
lang is that rare performer who, over 25 years as a major-label artist, has matured before our very ears.
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