Remembering K.T. Oslin
K.T. Oslin’s life was singular and sophisticated. She never married. She never had kids. She had a full life in service of her art and her friendships and her point of view. She, along with Oprah, showed me that birthing your creativity can be your great contribution to the world.
K.T. spent years in New York City performing in Broadway choruses before she came to Nashville and became a country singer in her 40s. So, doing fundraisers for Planned Parenthood and Nashville Cares’ efforts for AIDS patients wasn’t a question for her even if it meant pissing off fans. K.T. came out of the gate on her own terms. This level of artistry is rarely, if ever, achieved with a closed, prejudiced mind.
Because of that Broadway training, K.T. brought theatricality to her performances, right down to the speaking parts in the song that allowed for dramatic vignettes in the middle of her songs. This spilled over into her videos, which vividly captured the complex and bittersweet aspects of the stories she told in her songs. Just watch the ongoing story she told in the videos for “80’s Ladies” and “I’ll Always Come Back.”
“Hold Me” is the theatrical opus I remember hearing on the radio when I was seven years old. It would be another 30 years before I found myself in this situation myself — middle-aged, in a long-term relationship and feeling restless as my youth slipped away. Like K.T. sings about in the song, I’d ultimately find solace in the life I’d built for myself. But to have a preview of this life at such a tender age was a gift. Hearing “Hold Me” was the musical equivalent of putting on my mom’s high heels shoes and lipstick — playing dress up and imagining what my life could be like someday.
In many ways, K.T.’s life has provided a template for me. Along with Tina Turner, she made me supremely aware that I can have new breakthroughs and reach new heights later in life. In a world obsessed with youth, K.T. broke the mold. Yes, she got a facelift after the success of “80s Ladies,” but K.T. is the one taught me about skincare in the first place. One of the most memorable lines in “Hold Me” is “I was running from some wrinkles no cream will stop.” Lord, don’t I sing that line every night as I cover my face in age-defying serums before bed. And K.T.’s skin looked fabulous to the end.
When I was listening to her music as a kid, K.T. reminded me of our interior decorator, who was a slightly aloof, divorced woman with impeccable taste and a sleek Cadillac Seville, which is still my ultimate dream car. The class and sophistication they tapped into is best represented on television by Julia Sugarbaker of Designing Women. These are the southern women I, as a young, gay boy, idolized and still consider the picture of elegance and independence. This may have been an independence borne of necessity, but these women were beholden to no man and called the shots in their own lives. They made no bones about desiring companionship. It was just going to be a companionship divorced from the ownership placed on women in heterosexual relationships up to that time.
I’m so grateful to have lived in the same time as K.T. Oslin. I’m grateful for her left-of -center point of view now enshrined in the country music history books, and I will continue pointing to her as someone who changed country music for the better. I will rejoice when the ones who have walked in her footsteps — Mary Chapin Carpenter, Brandy Clark, Jennifer Nettles, Cam, Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert — continue to define their music and message on their own terms.