Sarah McLachlan
Sarah Ann McLachlan OC OBC (born January 28, 1968) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. As of 2015, she had sold over 40 million albums worldwide.[2] McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards (out of four nominations) and four Juno Awards. In addition to her personal artistic efforts, she founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians.
For the British musician born Sarah McLaughlin, see Bishop Briggs.
Sarah McLachlan
Early and personal life[edit]
McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.[3] She was placed with the McLachlan family, which later legally adopted her.
As a child, she was a member of Girl Guides of Canada, participating in Guiding programs.[4]
She played music from a very young age, beginning with the ukulele when she was four. She studied classical guitar, classical piano, and voice[5] at the Maritime Conservatory of Music[6] through the curriculum of The Royal Conservatory of Music.[7][8] 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.[9] 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. It has yet to be released elsewhere.
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. When she was 19, a mutual acquaintance introduced her to her birth mother. McLachlan did not seek her out and was ambivalent about meeting her.[6]
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 also challenging for the Canadian legal system since Vandrei was an admitted stalker whose acknowledged goal in filing the lawsuit was to be near McLachlan. Consequently, precautions were taken to ensure McLachlan's safety if she had to be in the same location as Vandrei. Before the trial began, however, Vandrei was found dead in an apparent suicide. Vandrei's preoccupation with McLachlan was explored at length in Canadian author Judith Fitzgerald's book, Building a Mystery: The Story of Sarah McLachlan & Lilith Fair.
In 1997, McLachlan married her drummer, Ashwin Sood, in Jamaica. While she was pregnant with her first child, her mother died from cancer in December 2001. While working on her next album, Afterglow, she gave birth to daughter India in Vancouver on April 6, 2002. On June 22, 2007, she gave birth to her second daughter, Taja, also in Vancouver. McLachlan announced her separation from Sood in September 2008[10] and they divorced the same year.[11]
Career and albums[edit]
1987–92: Touch and Solace[edit]
The signing with Nettwerk prompted McLachlan to move to Vancouver, British Columbia. There she recorded her first album, Touch, in 1987, which received both critical and commercial success and included 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.[12][13]
Her 1991 album, Solace, was her mainstream breakthrough in Canada, spawning the hit singles "The Path of Thorns (Terms)" 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.[14]
Philanthropy[edit]
Sarah McLachlan School of Music[edit]
McLachlan also funds an outreach program in Vancouver that provides music education for inner city children. In 2007, the provincial government announced $500,000 in funding for the outreach program.[52] Originating at the "Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach", this program evolved into the Sarah McLachlan School of Music. This program provided children with high quality music instruction in guitar, piano, percussion and choir.[53]
In 2011 McLachlan opened the Sarah McLachlan School of Music in Vancouver, a free music school for at-risk youth. The School of Music provides group and private lessons to hundreds of young people every year. It is their goal that through music education, students will develop a love of the arts and have greater self-esteem.[54]
On May 25, 2016, the Sarah McLachlan School of Music expanded to Edmonton, Alberta, opening in Rundle Elementary School and Eastglen High School. The music school contains the same initiative as the Vancouver school.[55]
ASPCA[edit]
McLachlan supported the ASPCA by appearing in advertisements. She filmed a two-minute advertisement for the organization which featured her song "Angel".[56] The advertisement's imagery of shelter animals mixed with the soundtrack and McLachlan's simple appeal for donations has raised $30 million for the ASPCA since it began to air in 2006, which allowed the organization to air appeals in higher profile prime-time cable ad slots; subsequently the organization produced a new ad for the 2008 holiday season featuring McLachlan appealing for the ASPCA over her Wintersong performance of "Silent Night", and a new ad with her was released in January 2009 featuring the song "Answer".[56] In 2012, McLachlan wrote a letter on behalf of PETA to then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, protesting that country's annual seal hunt.[57] During Super Bowl XLVIII on February 3, 2014, McLachlan parodied her ASPCA appeals in an Audi commercial featuring a "Doberhuahua" dog gnawing on the neck of her guitar.[58] She would also do another parody of these appeals on Super Bowl LVII on February 12, 2023, this time for a commercial for Busch Light.[59]
Other charitable contributions[edit]
McLachlan contributed the track "Hold On" to the 1993 AIDS-benefit album No Alternative, produced by the Red Hot Organization. She also performed at the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund Benefit Concert on February 12, 1997, and went on to release a cover version of "Unchained Melody" created as part of her support for Peltier. It was later included on the album Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff Volume 2.[60]
In early 2005, McLachlan took part in a star-studded tsunami disaster relief telethon on NBC. On January 29 McLachlan was a headliner for a benefit concert in Vancouver along with other Canadian superstars such as Avril Lavigne and Bryan Adams. The show also featured a performance by the Sarah McLachlan Musical Outreach Choir & Percussion Ensemble, a children's choir and percussion band from the aforementioned Vancouver outreach program. Entitled One World: The Concert for Tsunami Relief, the concert raised approximately $3.6 million for several Canadian aid agencies working in south and southeast Asia.
On July 2, 2005, McLachlan participated in the Philadelphia installment of the Live 8 concerts, where she performed her hit "Angel" with Josh Groban.[61] These concerts were intended to coincide with the G8 summit to put pressure on the leaders of the world's richest nations to fight poverty in Africa by cancelling debt.
In 2008, she donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the 2004 tsunami.[62]
On November 30, 2012, McLachlan lent her support to Kate Winslet's Golden Hat Foundation together with Tim Janis, Loreena McKennitt, Andrea Corr, Hayley Westenra, Sleepy Man Banjo Boys, Dawn Kenney, Jana Mashonee, Amy Petty and a choir etc. performing on "The American Christmas Carol" concert in Carnegie Hall.[63][64]
McLachlan is a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.[65]
