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'I think to have a tradition and to have roots is necessary and always a good place to start your perspective from.' - k.d. lang.

They've long had their musical luminaries, but today Canadians are looming larger than ever on the pop landscape. And they're heading Down Under, writes Bernard Zuel.

The window overlooking Sydney Harbour is open, as fresh air in a hotel room is one of her few requirements, and the sun is casting the kind of glow that can dazzle the newly arrived. It recalls one of her lines from only a few years back, "sweet sweet burn of sun and summer wind".

But k.d. lang is neither new to the view nor dazzled at the moment. She's a bit sleepy, slow to speak and stretching her neck as she turns her back to the window and folds her long, sturdy legs under her. Sitting cross-legged on the lounge, her sandals immediately shucked, her white T-shirt stretches across her broad shoulders as she ruffles her hair into spikes and casts a wary, or maybe just weary, eye in my direction.

She may once have been a self-described "big-boned gal from southern Alberta" in Canada, but 43-year-old Lang has been to Australia often enough now not to need the stimulation of the view, and she's been living in Los Angeles long enough not to be awed by bright, unforgiving light.

After all, it's nearly 20 years since she left her native land for the sprawling, loud and utterly dominating country south of the 49th parallel that divides Canada and the United States. Still, lang remains, and in fact may be feeling more Canadian than ever.

"I'm inevitably Canadian. That's what I know," lang says. The sentiment is similar to that expressed once by another Canadian singer and songwriter who relocated to the US in his 20s, Neil Young: "My heart is still in Canada, but I don't have to physically be here to be a Canadian."

And it is to Young, whom lang turned for her recently released album of songs from, and sometimes about, Canada, called Hymns of the 49th Parallel. It's hardly a glib title, and not just because the Canadian writers are among the giants of the modern musical canon (Joni Mitchell, Young and Leonard Cohen) or those who may well join them one day (Ron Sexsmith, Jane Siberry and Bruce Cockburn). It's a statement of intent and maybe even defiance in an age where the American hegemony is rampant politically, financially and culturally.

Coincidentally or with synchronicity, lang's album has appeared at a time, at least in Australia, where Canada and Canadians loom larger than ever.

Politically and socially, there was Canada strongly refusing to be involved in the invasion of Iraq and, more recently, moving to recognise gay marriage, while both issues seem to divide Australia down the middle.

Musically, one of last year's biggest successes was new-age crooner Michael Buble; touring here soon are Canucks such as Bryan Adams and Sarah McLachlan; and the songs of Leonard Cohen were performed in one of the Sydney Festival's biggest-selling shows, mostly by fellow Canadians such as the McGarrigle and Wainwright families, who are about to play their own shows.

But is some innate nationality important in an artist? Does an artist need to feel a connection to her roots or is not music, as the cliche has it, an international language? "That's a double-sided answer, I think," lang says. "I think to have a tradition and to have roots is necessary and always a good place to start your perspective from. But in terms of reality, in terms of the expansive view of culture and of life, nationalism is only a tool, it's not a reality."

That "reality" manifests itself in odd ways, as lang knows. For example, Mitchell's A Case of You, which appears on Hymns of the 49th Parallel not just because it is a sublime piece of songcraft but because of its personal ties to the young Kathy Dawn Lang growing up in rural Canada, in love with her teacher's wife and beginning to fall in love with her own voice and its possibilities.

"A Case of You - 'In a blue TV screen light I drew a map of Canada'; I remember listening to that as a kid and thinking about [someone] thinking of Canada in a bar and drawing a map," lang says. "That is so sentimental but in a really earthy, cinematic way that developed a sense of possibility in using my surroundings. The point isn't the physical relationship with Canada alone but the emotional relationship, too."

The truth of that can be seen in lines Young wrote, and lang sings, in Helpless. "There is a town in north Ontario/ With dream comfort memory to spare/ And in my mind I still need a place to go/ All my changes were there."

There's more to Young and Mitchell for lang than their songwriting, though. Those giants had their moments of connecting with the zeitgeist, of being in the centre of popular culture and feeling the scorching breath of fame and then falling out of the limelight, out of the consciousness. But amid it all they kept producing both fiercely individualistic music and, in some ways, examples to lang of how to live your life as an artist.

For lang, who had had a decade of relatively low-key success as a country singer, fame came suddenly, excitingly and disorientatingly with her 1992 album Ingenue, the hit Constant Craving and the concurrent public recognition of her sexuality.

There were magazine covers, significantly enhanced sales and world tours. There were movie roles and movie soundtracks. There were demands to be the spokeswoman for everything from lesbianism and vegetarianism to performing shoeless.

And then there followed a gradual but seemingly inexorable slide from the centre of attention to the fringes. Her albums became less and less what the "market" demanded and sales began to dive. So much so that her impressive 2000 album, Invincible Summer, barely dented the bottom reaches of the charts and her record company quietly let her slip out the door.

But this wasn't entirely an accidental or even regrettable development. As lang admitted recently, she quite clearly "undercut" her fame while at its height. Was that a conscious act at the time or is it only in retrospect that she can see she was telling us "I'm not prepared to be the major mainstream pop star I could be"? "Yes and no. I don't think I could have been a mainstream pop star. Ever," lang says emphatically. "I think the only reason Constant Craving was a hit was because I came out. I don't think it's the only reason but it certainly had a lot to do with it. I don't think I fit the mainstream pop star mould in any way. Even the sound of my voice doesn't fit in.

"I decided to make [the album] Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was completely a 360 back to country after I'd just broken out of it, as a follow up to Ingenue, which really threw everyone for a loop. And then [1995 album] All You Can Eat was a real gesture of, well, I was kind of pissy when I made that record."

Why so pissy? "I just think the pressure of the expectation, both internally and externally, of follow-up," she sighs. "When you become a success, it doesn't matter if you're Ian Thorpe or a rock star - they're pretty similar now - the expectations of you producing and producing and becoming a lifestyle consultant for people was really disappointing. And I think I was mad at myself for not being fully prepared to handle success.

"I thought I was but I wasn't. And I caught myself being disabled a little by it, so I was pissy at that. I was pissy at myself probably. I wanted another hit but I didn't want to do another Ingenue. I didn't want to keep courting fashion designers and doing this and going to the Grammys parties and the stuff that really grated on me.

"I was caught in my own little web when I made All You Can Eat; the whole concept of this big buffet and you're sitting there and you're not really interested in what's there but you fill your plate anyway."

This reminds me of something Leonard Cohen said in an interview once: "I became a writer and, as my friend Irving Layton always said, a poet is deeply conflicted and it's in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. That place is the harbour, it doesn't set the world in order, you know, it doesn't really change anything. It just is a kind of harbour; it's the place of reconciliation ... the kiss of peace."

The conflict within has settled for lang in recent years. And with it has come a more measured level of fame, commensurate with a career more geared for the concert hall than the indoor arena. She puts some of that down to a certain Tony Bennett, with whom she collaborated and toured, including to Australia two years ago.

"You know, being gay and being kind of a bit threatening," lang says, "I think what's really, really helped people is my work with Tony.

"I have this great relationship with men that people don't assume I have, but actually I have a great thing with men that I love; buddies kind of relationship. When people saw me and Tony together, they kind of went, 'Oh, I guess it's OK to like her in a non-sexual way'."

That audience could see you as a singer and not a ... "lifestyle. Exactly."

With Bennett, lang sang some of the great standards of American popular music, and in those performances lay the seeds of what became Hymns of the 49th Parallel.

"I really believe that there is something extremely important and necessary about cultivating standards, and that is why I've never made a standards record, with the exception of working with Tony, because there was a legitimate reason: he is a lineage holder of that music, and being escorted into that world by a teacher like that is OK," lang says.

"One of the reasons I made this record is because it's a way to cultivate new standards. The difference being that the American songbook is from a culture of songwriting and this is from a culture of singer/songwriters, which is a different ballgame and harder because you're venturing into someone's indelible territory. I didn't try to make them mine because they're not mine. But they are mine in my emotional memory, in my recollective song library, in my life.

"To me, when you learn a hymn, you just learn the melody and sing it exactly the same way whenever you go to church, and that's the way I wanted to sing these songs. I wanted to sing them from an emotional memory point of view and just sing the song and let the song live again, just like it was a seed that had laid dormant for a few years and then sprouted up the same flower.

"It's obviously a different year, a different time, a different flower, but the same flower."

k.d. lang is at the Opera House on February 14, 15 and 22;
Rufus and Martha Wainwright and the McGarrigle sisters are at the Enmore Theatre on Sunday;
Rufus Wainwright is at the Basement on February 14 and 15; Bryan Adams is at the Entertainment Centre on March 2;
Sarah McLachlan is at the Opera House on March 20.