Sarah Ann McLachlan (born January 28, 1968) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. As of 2025, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album is Surfacing (1997), for which she won two Grammy Awards (out of four nominations) 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 was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was raised as the youngest of three adopted children by Dorice McLachlan and her husband Jack, a marine biologist. She began playing the ukulele at age four then, for 12 years, studied classical guitar, piano, voice and opera at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts.
At 17, while still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, she fronted a rock band called The October Game. After The October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract by Moev's manager Mark Jowett, who had recently co-founded the Vancouver record label Nettwerk Records. McLachlan finished high school and spent a year studying jewellery design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and signing with Nettwerk, with its co-founder Terry McBride as her manager.
After taking nearly two years to build a repertoire, McLachlan recorded her first album, 1987's Touch. The album received both critical and commercial success. 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 another Nettwerk band, The Grapes of Wrath.
McLachlan's 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 producer Pierre Marchand, who has been her collaborator ever since. The album was certified double platinum in Canada, and gold in the US.
1993–2002: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, The Freedom Sessions, Surfacing, Mirrorball
1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was an immediate hit in Canada. 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. Nettwerk was innovative; it was the first record label to have a website, which made McLachlan much more accessible. It was also the first label to release Enhanced CDs. In 1994, McLachlan released The Freedom Sessions, which was alternative versions of the songs from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. It became the first Enhanced CD to debut on the Billboard 200 and then be certified gold.
Pushing along McLachlan's success was non-stop touring. Another way in which Nettwerk was different from other labels is that it did not chase radio—it believed in generating sales by putting artists in front of audiences. That meant constant touring; McLachlan's touring began in the latter half of 1988. She did not get a break until mid-1996.
In 1997, McLachlan released Surfacing. It was her best-selling album and earned her two Grammy Awards, one for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for "Building a Mystery") and one for Best Pop Instrumental Performance (for "Last Dance"). It 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.
One song from Surfacing, "Angel", became a massive international hit and remains the unofficial song of mourning, loss and healing. It was inspired by the fatal overdose, in a hotel room, of Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin; McLachlan now knew how depressing endless touring can be. The song has touched millions, notably hip-hop artist Darryl McDaniels (Run-D.M.C.), who said it saved his life, and featured McLachlan on the track "Just Like Me" on his 2006 album Checks Thugs and Rock n Roll. In 1998, "Angel" featured in the motion picture City of Angels; that soundtrack reached number one on the Billboard 200. More than five months after the film disappeared from the theaters, the soundtrack remained firmly entrenched among Billboard's 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.
In June 1999, McLachlan released the live album Mirrorball. Its singles included a new live version of her 1995 song, "I Will Remember You", which had first been released on the soundtrack of the film The Brothers McMullen, and then on McLachlan's 1996 compilation album Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff. As a single, in 1995, it peaked at 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 in Canada, and garnered McLachlan her third Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Also in 1999, 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 ceremony, but did not win.
2003–2006: Afterglow, Wintersong
Following the death of her mother in December 2001, and the birth of her first daughter five months later, McLachlan took a break from music to focus on motherhood. She 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 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 re-recorded "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 Canadian stops was released in November 2004.
In October 2006, McLachlan released a Christmas album, Wintersong. The album included 11 new recordings, including covers of Joni Mitchell's "River", Gordon Lightfoot's "Song for a Winter's Night", and John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", which she recorded with her outreach children and youth choir. The title track is an original work of McLachlan's. Wintersong debuted at No. 42 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Platinum in the US in December 2007, selling 1.1 million copies by 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 in Portland, Oregon. Two compilation albums were then released: Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan in 2008 and, in 2010, The Essential. In the meantime, McLachlan was busy with Lilith Fair.