by Karen Bliss | October 16, 2024
“I have the most ridiculous job in the world,” says Sarah McLachlan, laughing, while reflecting on the career she’s had writing songs and performing them for a living. The 56-year-old Vancouver-based singer-pianist, known for such hits as like “Angel,” “Building A Mystery,” “Into The Fire,” Possession,” “Sweet Surrender,” and “I Will Remember You,” was inducted last month into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at Toronto’s Massey Hall.
This year, she has returned to public life in a big way, hitting the road for a sold-out amphitheatre tour in America — 30 dates in all, including a couple in Canada — to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her breakthrough album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. At the end of October, she will head out again for more dates in Canada, coast to coast, starting off with a handful in the U.S., and concluding Nov. 20 in Victoria, BC.
Karen Bliss talked to McLachlan about her “ridiculous” job, sorting out her “muck” through songwriting, her non-profit Sarah McLachlan School of Music, selling a portion of her song catalogue, and the impact of Lilith Fair, the groundbreaking music festival she created in the late 90s (1997-1999, 2010), featuring female-led bands and solo acts.
You’ve won Grammys and Junos and been inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame and Canadian Music Hall of Fame, how is Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame different for you, that it is for songwriting?
Well, it’s certainly an honour. All these kinds of awards and accolades, as much as they’re fantastic, they’re not why I do it. At the same time, to be recognized for something that I think has been such a big part of my life, and I feel really proud of, I’m not going to lie, that feels pretty good [laughs].
It’s a unique way to make a living. When you look back on how long you’ve been doing it, it’s an odd job, right?
It’s ridiculous. Honestly, nearly every day, when I think about it, and if I’m asked about it, I say, “I have the most ridiculous job in the world.” It’s hard for me to call it a job because I feel so lucky. It’s something that I absolutely love to do so much.
Maybe, not the songwriting; I don’t love it. I find it necessary and it’s, for me, an incredible cathartic outlet. It’s always been my way of sorting through all the muck and all the challenges in my life and making music, singing, particularly writing about it, just feels like, as I say, my way through.
So you like performing more than the songwriting?
The performing is the cherry on the top. It’s the culmination of all the blood, sweat and tears. For me, writing is pretty lonely. You’re isolated and that’s a necessary state for me to be able to do it, to be calm, and have my mind open and sort of peaceful — or not peaceful [laughs]. I have a noisy brain [laughs]. So, to push through and get to a place where I feel good about a song. Performing it after the fact is joyful and it’s this amazing release.
People ask me, “Do you go back to the place where you wrote that, if it’s a heavy, sad song?” I’m like, “Not at all.” I mean, I’m singing it and I’m feeling it, but what I’m feeling is the joy of moving through it and releasing it and feeling better about the situation.
Your last studio album was Wonderland in 2016. You did play a new song, “Gravity,” in the encore of when I saw you at Budweiser Stage. Obviously, you have written other songs, so is writing a way you work through things, like writing that letter to an ex and burning it that they say you should do. Do you do that? Write a song, get everything out and then you’re like, “Well, I’m not going to let anyone else hear that.”
Certainly, there’s been a few songs. It’s funny, when I almost finished my new record and I felt like I had a body of songs, I had enough songs to start working on a record and I played a lot of them for my producer and he’s like, “Nope. Nope. No.” He was like, “You’ve already said that in this song” and “This song is really strong” and “Those are just more of the same.” And he says, “Do you really want to keep telling that story?” And in my head, I was thinking, “I don’t really want to tell this story anymore. It’s such old news.”
But, at the same time, these are the group of songs I have. And so, he’s like, “Those aren’t that strong.” I mean, bless him, he’s very blunt [laughs], and I’m like, “Damn you, you’re right.” It also meant I have to go back to the drawing board and write a whole bunch more songs, which I ended up doing, which I’m very proud of. But, it just took a little while longer therefore.
But, yeah, I get to a place where I need to get it out, and certain things I needed to write about a lot because there’s a lot of processing. But now, being so far on the other side, it’s like, “Oh, I’m so bored with that. I’m so done with that story and that part of my life, and I don’t need to revisit it.”
You obviously have a great relationship with your producer that they can say that. Some people think what they do is brilliant, and others always think they suck until someone says it’s great and you think, “Hmm, oh, okay.”
I would argue that’s a healthier response [laughs]
To think that you suck [laughs]?
If I thought everything I did was brilliant, I think I’d be insufferable. Most people are [laughs]. No, I agree. Maybe not that it sucks, but you’re just like, “Well, I did my best but…”
You know, to be honest, this is the first time that I think I feel really, really proud of these songs. I think I did do a really good job. And maybe that’s my age, or maybe that’s just the place I’m in now in my life where it goes hand in hand with getting this award where it’s like, “This is the first time now in the last couple of years, where I’m actually like I’m really proud of what I’ve done, what I’ve achieved, and the body of work that I have, and this is okay.”
I always used to feel tons of imposter syndrome, and I still feel like I could always do better, and I always have something else to say and it will be something that I like and, hopefully, other people will like because it’s very selfish writing for me. I don’t do it for anybody else.
A documentary on Lilith Fair is coming out next year where they’re going to delve into the impact of it based on that Vanity Fair piece, which was an interesting read. I want to ask you what you think the legacy is — and then I’ll bring up some recent stats.
Well, for me, the most obvious legacy is the continuum of giving. I took all the money that I made from Lilith and put it into a foundation. I started a Sarah McLaughlin School of Music, which is a completely free music and mentorship program in Vancouver. We’ve subsequently gone on to start schools in Surrey and in Edmonton. There’s over 1,100 kids a year, and it’s completely free, 22 years in now. I’ve started an endowment fund. I just put $4 million into that, to grow to $30 million, so the schools can be relatively self-sustainable because I continue to fundraise actively and do gigs actively and put money into the school every single year. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, that’s really hard to sustain. So we’re really working actively now to grow the endowment.
So, the fact that so many young people now have the opportunity to have a robust music program in their lives, the way I did when I was a kid, which saved me, by the way — having music in my life early on, and knowing I had something that I could go to that was like this medicine and comfort for me, was always, and still is, so incredibly valuable. So that’s a really important legacy.
I also think we showed a lot of young women in the world, whether they wanted to be in music or anything, that women could do whatever we wanted. We could follow our dreams, crazy dream being a musician, and be massively successful at it.
And I think showing young women that we could do that, and especially when the industry was trying to keep us small and marginalized, like you can’t play to women back-to-back in the radio, you can’t have women open up for you. There was always this divide and this competition that was created for women in any industry, I might add, and still is fighting for a small piece of the pie. And one of the big things that I really wanted to dispel was that that’s not us doing that; that’s the patriarchy doing that. And I thought, and still believe that there’s a place for everybody in this world. There’s a place for a lot of different kinds of music. And because the music made by women was not being properly represented because there were so many women being incredibly successful, I thought, “Well, let’s just do that ourselves.” And the huge success of that, I really think it forced some change.
That being said, now you’re going to talk about stats and how things haven’t really changed that much [laughs]. Things have gotten better. And when you look at the charts right now, it’s dominated by women and people like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, who are mega stars. Change is happening. Do I wish it was happening quicker? Absolutely. Change is tough and you’re dealing with thousands and thousands of years of patriarchy, but, honestly, if we want change, we have to build our own systems and we have to support each other as women.
I’m sure you’ve seen when people take the poster of whatever the music festival is and start removing the male-dominated bands. And that’s leaves pretty much a blank page with maybe four women on there.
Yes.
In the past 10 years, Keychange launched to get organizations and festivals to achieve a 50/50 gender balance. But, still, a report by the BBC in 2022 found that 13% of UK headliners at the top 50 festivals were female and half those festivals had no female headliners in the lineup. What you did with Lilith Fair was so ground-breaking, you would think we’d be further ahead.
Yeah. Well, like I said, change is slow and painful. And I think that we, as women, need to build their own systems. Beyonce’s doing that, Taylor’s doing that, they’re their own planets [laughs] and they have a ton of power. Taylor, in particular, bringing along so many other young female artists, I think, is amazing. And, it’s slow. And, like I said, for me, the most important thing is that we, as women, if we have power, we need to use that power to bring other women alongside.
You sold a portion of your catalog [to Primary Wave], which went towards the endowment you mentioned. Did you do it to place your trust in people who won’t place one of your songs in a Trump suntan lotion commercial after you are gone?
Yeah, these are good guys. I know them pretty well. I retain 30% control of it. Nothing happens without my say so, or, if I die, my estate — and I trust the people in my estate. I first thought, I can hold on to that or I can put that money to use now. So that was my idea with this: I’m going to take that money now and start the endowment for the school and start traveling [laughs].
And you’re still young so there’s going to be many more songs going forward. When do you think your new album is going to be coming out?
Some point next late spring, I think. I think we’re going to mix in November. It takes, what, six months of turnaround before you can put it out? The powers that be will look at the best time to release it.
