K. D. Lang: All You Get Is Me ANNOTATION
This first full-length biography on the international pop diva is filled with intimate and fascinating revelations from the star's closest friends and family, as well as movers and shakers of the music world. It is a detailed portrait of both the public and private k.d.--a woman of talent, unwavering vision, and the courage to challenge conventions. Martin's Press.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Few would have believed that Kathy Dawn Lang, a geeky-looking tomboy from the Albertan prairies who once claimed to be the reincarnation of Patsy Cline, would grow up to become an international superstar... until she opened her mouth to sing. Today, the Grammy Award-winning k.d. lang has become one of North America's most important pop icons. Regarded by many as having the finest female voice of her generation, k.d. lang is far more than a great entertainer. She's an iconoclast, a rebel, and an inspiration for millions - a self-proclaimed feminist and "out" lesbian whose look, and mere existence, challenges long-standing conventions regarding music and image, fashion and sexuality, and what it means to be a woman in the nineties. In k.d. lang: all you get is me, Victoria Starr explores the life of the artist who has broken all the rules of pop culture while becoming one of the world's most beloved singers. From the rolling wheat fields of Southern Alberta to the glitz and glam of Hollywood, from the days when she was destined to become an Olympic athlete to the moment she became the first openly lesbian artist to win an American Music Award, k.d. lang: all you get is me traces k.d.'s path from college dropout to pop superstar. Along the way, family, friends, and colleagues share memories of the times that mattered most in her life: how her seemingly perfect childhood was shattered when her father walked out on her family; how she stumbled accidentally into country music; her work with Roy Orbison, Owen Bradley, Anne Murray, and filmmaker Percy Adlon; and the night the most important man in her life, her friend, mentor, and soul mate, Drifter, was brutally murdered in a drunken brawl. k.d. lang: all you get is me combines the personal and the professional as it uncovers k.d.'s deepest emotions, from a commitment to animal rights that threatened to ruin her career, to her coming to terms with a sexuality that made her an unwitting poster girl for the lesbian and
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This first full-length bio of country/pop chanteuse k. d. lang suggests that its subject is noteworthy both for her courage as a self-proclaimed lesbian and for her refusal to submit to industry control of her image or her music. The first claim is undoubtedly true; Starr, a freeelance journalist and radio-program producer, convincingly asserts that lang's status as the ``first openly lesbian pop icon'' paved the way for other celebrities to ``out'' themselves without stigma. But the latter assertion is arguable. If lang has successfully resisted record-label attempts to market her music according to notions of commercial viability, Starr's portrait reveals that lang has always carefully packaged herself. Attracted to the spotlight, she would appear to have embarked on her career less because of a true passion for music than out of a desire for fame. She does emerge, however, as an inspiring example of a performer who has retained control of her career despite pressures to conform. Starr's detailed bio is frustratingly impersonal, providing little sense of lang as an individual. But her account of the politics of sexual orientation, especially in the spotlight, is absorbing. Photos not seen by PW . (June)
Library Journal
Journalist Starr presents a laudatory, in-depth biography of Grammy Award-winning country/pop singer k.d. lang. With material culled from numerous interviews, the author begins with lang's childhood in Canada, which was punctuated by the sudden disappearance of her father. Starr continues with the singer's affection for Patsy Cline-style country music, her rise to prominence as a progressive country artist, and her subsequent redirection to pop balladry. Throughout, the journalist analyzes the impact of lang's gender, lesbianism, and animal rights activism on her career. Though sometimes exaggerating the stature of her subject, Starr offers a well-written, thoroughly researched look at lang and the social climate in which she has become popular. Recommended for enthusiasts of music and popular culture.-David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
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