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Another great live performance of Till The Heart Caves In, this one from Letterman in 1997.
All of the Drag-era performances make me want to run out and buy a pantsuit (though I'm a little distracted trying to figure out the pattern on her shiny shirt!).
(I adore this song and my fav live version if probably still this one from Jools Holland. There's something sublime about just k.d. and a piano.)
Till The Heart Caves In is one of my favorite songs from Drag. This is a performance of it I hadn't seen before. The video quality isn't the greatest, but the singing is still gorgeous. If you like the song, make sure you check out this sublime performance of it too.
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Scan of k.d. from Fi magazine. This quote from the New York Times review of Drag sums up what I love about the album:
Filled with seriously beautiful singing, ''Drag'' sharpens Ms. Lang's image as pop music's smartest post-modern torch singer. In her case, post-modern means a whimsical eclecticism in choosing material from different genres and eras -- some of which has obvious camp appeal -- and a delight in playing games of emotional dress-up.
k.d. performing "The Joker" from Drag on The Rosie O'Donnell Show in 1997 (uploaded by MrDuckyGreen). I love what she does with this song. There's another great live version here that's a little more sultry than sassy. I love both. And she clearly has a lot of fun singing, "I really like your peaches / I wanna shake your tree." One of my favorite instances of recontextualizing in Drag.
"I really liked the sexiness of The Joker but I took out the macho essence. I cut the choruses in half and cut the wolf whistle and the solo out, and gave it a feline seductive thing."
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Does it concern you to romanticise something that kills people?
To me, this record is not about smoking as such. It's just using that imagery metaphorically to study human need and addiction. The cigarette is not literal, it's a theatrical presence. After all, I'm a non-smoker myself. Glamourising it was absolutely not my intention but you can't deny that there is a glamour.
How easy is it to establish an identity through other people's songs?
With interpretation, you retain as much as you can of what sparked your interest in the first place, but still superimpose your take on it to end up with something more. Drag also means to hide your identity in some other guise, and I love singing other people's songs as much as writing my own. Songwriting never prepares you for the objectivity it takes to sing a song.
Stunning live performance of "Till the Heart Caves In." This was one of my favorite songs that k.d. included on Drag. Like "Crying," this is another Roy Orbison song that shows how brilliantly k.d. uses dynamics to build a song to an emotional peak.
This video was uploaded by the wonderful livingston.
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This image was used for the back of the Drag CD. I like the effect: it's how you would see k.d. if you'd been drinking gin with her all night.
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There's nothing like a lady who can rock a pinstripe.
