Sarah McLachlan

Biography

In 1999 Sarah McLachlan was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. The citation names three things: her recording career, the Lilith Fair festival and her donations to women’s shelters across the country.

She was born on 28 January 1968 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the youngest of three adopted children. Her father, Jack McLachlan, was a marine biologist. She began playing the ukulele at four, then spent twelve years at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts studying classical guitar, piano, voice and opera. At seventeen, still at school, she sang in a rock band called The October Game. After the band’s first concert at Dalhousie University, where it opened for Moev, Moev’s manager Mark Jowett offered her a contract. He had just co-founded the Vancouver label Nettwerk Records. She finished school first and spent a year studying jewellery design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Then she moved to Vancouver, where Terry McBride, the label’s other co-founder, became her manager. It took almost two years to build a repertoire. Her first album, Touch, was well received by critics and the public. Next came Solace (1991), her first notable success in Canada, and her first collaboration with the producer Pierre Marchand, who has worked with her ever since. The album was certified double platinum in Canada.

International success came with Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (1993). The song “Possession” was included on the soundtrack of the television series Due South in 1996. The label did not chase radio play but bet on live shows, and McLachlan toured almost without a break from 1988 until the middle of 1996. In 1994 came The Freedom Sessions, alternative versions of the same songs.

Her Surfacing (1997) reached number one in Canada and number two on the US Billboard 200. For it she won two Grammy Awards, for “Building a Mystery” and for the instrumental piece “Last Dance”, and four Juno Awards, including Album of the Year. The song “Angel” from the album was written in response to the fatal overdose of Jonathan Melvoin, the touring keyboardist of the Smashing Pumpkins. In 1998 it was heard in the film City of Angels, and the soundtrack topped the Billboard 200. A year later came the live album Mirrorball, and the live version of “I Will Remember You” brought her a third Grammy. Around the same time she sang the off-screen voice of Jessie in Toy Story 2, and the song “When She Loved Me” was nominated for an Academy Award.

The idea for Lilith Fair came in 1996, when radio stations and promoters were unwilling to book two female singers in a row. McLachlan put together a tour with Paula Cole, and in 1997 she founded the festival, taking the name Lilith from the medieval legend of Adam’s first wife. The first season earned 16 million dollars and was the top-grossing touring festival of the year. Over three seasons, from 1997 to 1999, the festival drew two million people and raised more than seven million dollars for charity. An attempt to revive it in 2010 failed: of 36 North American shows, 13 were cancelled, and the European leg never took place.

At the end of 2001 McLachlan took a break from music. In 2002, with money earned from Lilith Fair, she opened a free music programme for children in Vancouver. It later grew into the Sarah McLachlan School of Music for at-risk youth. In the 2024/25 school year it taught 1,754 students. The school is housed in a converted bowling alley donated by the Wolverton Foundation, and it has branches in Edmonton and New Westminster.

Afterglow (2003) topped the Canadian chart and debuted at number two in the US. Wintersong (2006) was a Christmas album. Shine On (2014) came out on the label Verve, and it won a Juno Award for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year. The same prize went to Wonderland (2016). In 2019 she hosted the Juno Awards ceremony. Her tenth studio album, Better Broken, was released on 19 September 2025.

Her honours include twelve Juno Awards (from 26 nominations), three Grammys (from fourteen nominations), induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (2024), and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement (2015). In 2024 Canada Post issued a stamp with her portrait.