Sarah McLachlan
Sarah Ann McLachlan is a Canadian singer-songwriter. As of 2015, she had sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards and four Juno Awards. She has won three Grammy and twelve Juno Awards in total, and is a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. McLachlan founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians.
Early and personal life
McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The daughter of Judy James, McLachlan was raised by her adoptive parents, Jack, an American-born marine biologist, and Dorice McLachlan. The family also included two older adopted brothers, Stewart and Ian. As a child, Sarah was a member of Girl Guides of Canada, participating in Guiding programs.McLachlan played music from a very young age, beginning with the ukulele when she was four. She studied classical guitar, classical piano, and voice at the Maritime Conservatory of Music through the curriculum of The Royal Conservatory of Music. At 17, while she was still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, in Halifax, she fronted a short-lived rock band called the October Game, whose members also included drummer Creighton Doane. One of the band's songs, "Grind", credited as a group composition, can be found on the independent Flamingo Records release Out of the Fog and the CD Out of the Fog Too.
Following the October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract with Vancouver-based independent record label Nettwerk by Moev's Mark Jowett. McLachlan's parents insisted that she finish high school and complete one year of studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and embarking on a new life as a recording artist. She finally signed to Nettwerk two years later before having written a single song.
In 1994, McLachlan was sued by Uwe Vandrei, an obsessed fan from Ottawa, who alleged that his letters to her had been the basis of the single "Possession". The lawsuit was challenging for the Canadian legal system since Vandrei was an admitted stalker whose acknowledged goal in filing the lawsuit was to be near McLachlan. Precautions were taken to ensure McLachlan's safety if she had to be in the same location as Vandrei. Before the trial began, Vandrei was found dead in an apparent suicide.
McLachlan married her drummer, Ashwin Sood, in Jamaica in 1997. In December 2001, while McLachlan was pregnant with her first child, her mother died from cancer. McLachlan has two daughters, born in 2002 and 2008. McLachlan announced her separation from Sood in September 2008, and they divorced the same year.
In 2014, when asked what religion she practices, she answered, "I don't adhere to any particular religion. I view the concept of God as an energy that we all are part of and share. If I had any spiritual leanings, it would be towards Buddhism. But again, I follow my own path most of my life."
Career and albums
1987–92: ''Touch'' and ''Solace''
The signing with Nettwerk prompted McLachlan to move to Vancouver, British Columbia. There she recorded her first album, Touch, in 1987. The album received both critical and commercial success; it also includes the song "Vox". During this period she also contributed to an album by Moev, provided vocals on Manufacture's "As the End Draws Near", and embarked on her first national concert tour as an opening act for the Grapes of Wrath.McLachlan's 1991 album, Solace, was her mainstream breakthrough in Canada, spawning the hit singles "The Path of Thorns " and "Into the Fire.” Solace also marked the beginning of her partnership with Pierre Marchand. Marchand and McLachlan have been collaborators ever since, with Marchand producing many of McLachlan's albums and occasionally co-writing songs.
1993–2002: ''Fumbling Towards Ecstasy'', ''Surfacing'', and ''Mirrorball''
1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was an immediate hit in Canada. From her Nettwerk connection, her piano version of the song "Possession" was included on the first Due South soundtrack in 1996. Over the next two years, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy became McLachlan's international breakthrough as well, scaling the charts in a number of countries.Following the success from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan returned in 1997 with Surfacing, her best-selling album to date. The album earned her two 1998 Grammy Awards, one for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and one for Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance ; the album also won four Juno Awards, including Album of the Year for Surfacing and Song of the Year and Songwriter of the Year for "Building a Mystery". Reaching number one on the Canadian Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200, the album has since sold over 16 million copies worldwide and brought her much international success.
Still in the spotlight from the album, McLachlan launched the highly popular Lilith Fair tour. Her song "Angel"—inspired by the fatal overdose of Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin—made sales skyrocket. Fellow adoptee Darryl McDaniels was so touched by "Angel" that it inspired him to reassess his life and career. He credits McLachlan and her album Surfacing with saving his life. McLachlan was featured in the track "Just Like Me" from McDaniels' 2006 album Checks Thugs and Rock n Roll.
In 1998, "Angel" featured in the motion picture City of Angels. Its soundtrack reached number one on the Billboard 200. More than five months after the film disappeared from the theatres, the soundtrack remained firmly entrenched among Billboards top 40 albums and earned quadruple-platinum status. Another song from Surfacing, "Full of Grace", featured in the Season 2 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Season 1 episode 4 of Dawson's Creek; and the film Moll Flanders.
McLachlan released the live album Mirrorball in June 1999. The album's singles included a new live version of her earlier song, "I Will Remember You", a studio recording of which had previously been released on The Brothers McMullen soundtrack as well as Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff. Originally released as a single in 1995, where it peaked No. 65 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 10 in Canada, the 1999 version peaked at No. 14 on the Hot 100, reached No. 10 again in Canada, and garnered McLachlan her third Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Later that year, McLachlan recorded the Randy Newman song "When She Loved Me" on the Toy Story 2 soundtrack as the off-screen singing voice of the character Jessie. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2000, and McLachlan performed it at the awards ceremony, but did not win.
Following the death of her mother in December 2001, and the birth of her first daughter India, McLachlan took a break from writing music; she shifted her focus to motherhood.
2003–2006: ''Afterglow'' and ''Wintersong''
McLachlan released her fifth studio album, Afterglow, in November 2003. The album was preceded by the single "Fallen" in September, while two of its tracks, "Stupid" and "World on Fire", were released as supporting singles the following year. McLachlan had contemplated the prospect of losing career momentum during the album's creation and has described its writing process as similar to "extracting blood from a stone". All songs for the album were written over a two and a half year period and recorded at either Marchand's home studio in Montreal or McLachlan's home studio in Vancouver. Afterglow topped the Canadian Albums Chart, and debuted at No. 2 in the US with over 300,000 copies sold in its opening week. It has since been certified 5× platinum in Canada, and 2× platinum in the US. "Fallen" was later nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, while Afterglow received a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards.Prior to embarking on the Afterglow Live tour in May 2004, McLachlan released the digital extended play Acoustic Live, which included renditions of two songs from Afterglow, and rerecorded "World on Fire" with Robbie Robertson for the TNT series Into the West. The tour took place through 2005. Afterglow Live, a CD+DVD recording package of one of the Canada stops was released in November 2004.
In October 2006, McLachlan released a Christmas album, Wintersong. The album included 11 new recordings, featuring covers of Joni Mitchell's "River", Gordon Lightfoot's "Song for a Winter's Night", and John Lennon's "Happy Xmas ", which she recorded with her outreach children and youth choir, and seasonal favourites: "Christmas Time Is Here", "O Little Town of Bethlehem", "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "Silent Night", "The First Noel", and "Greensleeves ", among others. The title track is an original work of McLachlan's. Wintersong debuted at No. 42 on the Billboard 200 for the week ending November 4, 2006, and peaked at No. 7. It was certified Platinum in the US in December 2007. According to Nielsen Music, the album has sold 1.1 million copies in the country as of November 2016. In Canada, it is certified 3× Platinum. Wintersong was nominated for both a Grammy Award, in the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category, as well as for a Juno Award, for Pop Album of the Year.
On October 3, 2006, the live album Mirrorball was re-released as Mirrorball: The Complete Concert. This release contains two discs that were compiled from two concerts performed on consecutive nights in April 1998 at the Rose Garden arena in Portland, Oregon.