Canadian singer-songwriter k.d. lang topped the Out100 list at the end of 1995. She had released her third solo studio album, All You Can Eat, earlier that year, continuing the road to success she had embarked upon in the previous decade.
The first half of the '90s had its bumps for lang, who came out as a lesbian in an interview with The Advocate in 1992—before even Melissa Etheridge or Ellen DeGeneres had opened up about their sexualities to the world.
"I don't want to say the wrong things to the gay culture. Because there are so many different opinions on how to gain acceptance," lang said at the time. "And I don't want to hurt my mother by coming out in the press. But at the same time I don't want to hurt my culture, and it's like — what do you do?"
LGBTQ+ rights were gaining ground in lang's home country of Canada in 1995, with a landmark court case determining that their Constitution implicitly protected against discrimination based on orientation. That same year in the United States, discrimination was prohibited against LGBTQ+ employees of the federal government. But a Supreme Court ruling also allowed private organizations to exclude queer people, after the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston fought to be allowed to march in the city's St. Patrick's Day parade.
Lang herself was deeply entrenched in activism at the time. She had received serious backlash for partnering on a campaign with PETA, and had contributed to the Cole Porter tribute album Red Hot + Blue to benefit AIDS research efforts.
In the years since, she's continued to lend her voice to causes ranging from LGBTQ+ equality to fighting for human rights in Tibet, even being honored for her work in 2011 by the Q Hall of Fame Canada.
Lang's career also continued to thrive. She released seven more studio albums—four solo and three collaborative—and won her fourth Grammy in 2004 for the album she released with Tony Bennett. And during the Juno Awards in 2013, she was officially inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
She now considers herself "semi-retired," a decision she admitted to being "completely at peace with" in 2019, 11 years after she released her last solo album. But the overall impact lang has had on the visibility of LGBTQ+ people in music was solidified the day she boldly came out to the world, long before most musicians would have even considered such a thing an option.
"I try not to take huge credit for that because it's not a competition," she humbly told The Guardian when reflecting on that momentous occasion nearly three decades later. "It's something bigger than all of us. I am certainly proud, but at the same time, I'm just one of many. Gay culture isn't just one sliver of humanity — it's a huge cross-section of people."
