August 16, 2021 15:04
The great summer songs, those that become memorable and coagulate in the collective imagination, all have a secret characteristic. Under their cheerfulness, their apparent light-heartedness, they always hide a barely perceptible veil of sadness. A real summer success celebrates the summer but also contains the awareness of its end: the return to the city, the umbrellas closing, the certainty that that August flirt will have no future. Nothing like a well-thought-out summer catchphrase manages to convey the idea of the passing of time, of the passing years, of the seasons of life that follow one another.
In 2000, Canadian singer kd lang is 38 years old and has a long, turbulent career behind her. He made his debut in 1983 in a tribute band dedicated to country diva Patsy Cline. From an early age kd lang was noted for her unmistakable voice, very similar to that of Cline in style and softness and close to that of Roy Orbison in extension, virtuosity and androgynous timbre. Over the years, Lang subverts all the canons of country music by inserting pop, rock and punk elements in her performances, so much so that Rolling Stone magazine in 1985 defined her as a “Canadian cowpunk”. In 1992 he broke the last taboo of the conservative North American country scene: in an interview with the lgbt magazine The Advocate he came out. Without her and her proudly lesbian performances from the 90s country artists like Orville Peck might not exist and Shania Twain would not be the gay icon she is today.
The music of kd lang, when he sings country classics, American standards or great hits of his own composition (such as the memorable Constant craving), he always has something painful: his voice seems to draw from an inexhaustible reservoir of sentimental tribulations. Only in 2000 kd lang seems to discover that even the joy of a day on the beach, a summer amorazzo, making the sunrise with friends around a fire can be a matter for his music. To help her in this awareness are a new love (the then 28-year-old singer Leisha Hailey) and a providential move from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
Invincible summer, which came out in the spring of 2000, is kd lang’s Californian diary and is a pop album full of sunshine and will to live. “I’ve always been wary of pop,” lang said in an interview with the Guardian in 2000 “Then one day I woke up and said to myself: who am I going to cheat? I really like pop: I’ve always liked it as a listener, why can’t I like it as a singer? And then it happened that I fell in love with people and life again ”.
Invincible summerIndeed, it exudes a love of pop and is the most accessible and enjoyable album in his discography. kd lang abandons both the role of the tormented country singer and those of the mourner torch singer to transform into a contemporary version of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick: luxurious and detailed arrangements for songs that are simple and light only in appearance. Among the musicians who accompany her in this raid in sophisticated pop, the names of trumpeter Jon Hassell and guitarist Wendy Melvoin, former collaborator of Prince, stand out. However, a British musician, Damian LeGassick, the keyboardist of electronic artist William Orbit, highly recommended by Madonna, wants to produce for her Californian album kd lang. “There is something about British pop sensibility,” kd lang told The Guardian justifying his choice, “something that flows through Radiohead, the Beatles and David Gray: a consciousness of the classic melody that exists only in English pop.” In fact, listening to the first song on the album, The consequences of falling, you can’t help but think of Dusty Springfield.
The whole album is a hymn to summer and a reflection on its fleetingness: in Summerfling lang sings: “A perfect moment just slipped out of our hands.” And in the delicate Only love, the ballad that closes the album, sings: “Let love carry you because only love can bring you down”. And his voice flies like a kite in the California sun, with the sweet awareness, ever present in this memorable summer album, that good things are beautiful because they end.
kd lang
Invincible summer
Warner Bros., 2000
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