Alberta superstar k.d. lang honoured for her 2024 induction into Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame
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Stein, who was the golden-earred co-founder of Sire Records and credited with discovering Madonna and the Talking Heads, had travelled to Calgary to see lang play and potentially sign her to his renowned label.
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'He did a lot of cocaine and so forth,' lang said Wednesday morning at a private ceremony honouring her induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame at the National Music Centre. 'He fell asleep during my show. It worked out fine.'
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Stein, who died in 2023, did sign lang to his label and helped shape the early years of her remarkable 40-plus-year career as an internationally renowned singer-songwriter. It was a suitably strange and Calgary-centric anecdote for lang to reveal on Wednesday as the Canadian Country Music Association and the National Music Centre paid tribute to the artist with a ceremony that found her placing her name on the wall alongside fellow 2024 inductee Gilles Godard, who is president of Anthem Music Publishing Nashville.
lang has won 10 CCMA awards, eight Junos and four Grammys, received the Order of Canada and became an international star selling millions of albums — but her career in the conservative country music industry has also had a rebellious nature to it. She expanded the boundaries of country music with a post-modern take on the genre that included nods to traditional country-and-western sounds and sophisticated modern influences such as pop and jazz. lang, who was born in Edmonton and grew up in the small town of Consort, has also been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and an activist for animal rights during her career.
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On Wednesday, lang was surrounded by some memorabilia from her career that included the yellow tulle ballgown she wore in the video for her hit Miss Chatelaine from her 1992 breakthrough album Ingenue and a framed image of her famous 1993 magazine cover for Vanity Fair. Shot by renowned photographer Herb Ritts, it featured lang wearing a suit and tie and sitting in a barber chair having her face shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford. It is considered an iconic image in queer culture.
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'I never felt like I belonged in the room, I still don't,' lang joked on Wednesday in a brief speech before putting her plaque on the wall.
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'I'm just so honoured to be here and to be amongst you and amongst the people on the wall and all the people in this building and all the youngsters that are making Canadian music and continuing to make Canadian music world-class and cutting edge,' she said. 'We are very, very blessed with our musical aptitude in Canada.'
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