If Sarah McLachlan’s life were a Joni Mitchell song, she would be in her Both Sides Now era – with a twist. McLachlan is living both sides, in a way, right now.
This week she launches a new album, Better Broken. A documentary about her 1990s all-female music festival, Lilith Fair, just had its world premiere at TIFF. Next month, she resumes the anniversary tour for the album that turned the Canadian singer-songwriter into a superstar more than 30 years ago, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. She was in her 20s then. Now, she has just become an empty-nester.
During a recent interview at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music in Vancouver, her ethereal voice echoes through the hallways as she occasionally stoops to greet her dogs, who wander in and out. Her speaking voice is a bit raspy, but not with the acute laryngitis that forced her to cancel much of last year’s tour. She is hoarse from too much talking – schmoozing, a speech, singing – at an event at her home a few days earlier, a fundraiser for the school.
“It was a massive success, but I’m still exhausted,” she says with a laugh. “I am, you know, almost 58 – and you just don’t bounce back any more.”
McLachlan has bounced through a lot – divorce and other disappointments, the misogyny that birthed and dogged the first Lilith Fair, the failure of the festival’s reboot in 2010. Single motherhood, menopause, the isolation of COVID, the challenges of midlife. Stuff that could break anyone. But repair is written on every inch of her face, every line of this new album.
“I am the happiest I’ve ever been,” she says. “I feel really strong, not only in my body, but in my mental capacity, in my sense of self and where I stand.” That strength is important, she adds. “Because I certainly wouldn’t want to feel insecure about that, going out into this very public world where everybody’s like, okay, how can we tear you down?”
Sarah McLachlan performing at Lilith Fair, Thunderbird Stadium, in Vancouver, in August, 1997. A documentary about Lilith Fair, McLachlan’s 1990s all-female music festival, just had its world premiere at TIFF.Crystal Heald/Supplied
McLachlan grew up in Nova Scotia, learned ukulele as a young child, graduated to guitar and piano, and dreamed of a music career.
“I’ll never forget hearing Peter Gabriel when I was 16 years old for the first time,” she recalls. She thought: “I want to make music that makes other people feel the way he makes me feel.”
She joined a band at school and, as if this were Hollywood rather than Halifax, was discovered by a record label executive. Vancouver-based Nettwerk Music Group eventually signed her and McLachlan swapped coasts. She released her first album, Touch, in 1988, followed by Solace.
Luke Doucet, who has played with McLachlan for years, first heard her during the Solace tour in the early nineties. His then-band had been double-booked by accident with some hot new ingenue – McLachlan – at Amigos Cantina in Saskatoon. So they opened for her. Then she came onstage.
“I was gobsmacked,” he recalls. His bandmates, in the van afterward heading to Edmonton, were speechless. “Everyone, in their own time, said the same thing, which was, like, I don’t know how to react to what I just experienced.”
Later, Doucet landed a spot in McLachlan’s band for the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy tour and witnessed firsthand as she skyrocketed to international superstardom.
When McLachlan launched the Fumbling 30th anniversary tour last year, Doucet wasn’t sure how people would respond. But from the stage, he could see fans in the first few rows, singing along to every word, crying. “Not one person or two people; like, dozens of people are in tears,” Doucet recalled last week from Nashville. “It was very moving for me to experience that.”
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is a medley of anecdotes, archival footage and contemporary interviews from stars.HO/The Canadian Press
McLachlan continued her climb – from superstar to the stratosphere with Lilith Fair, the travelling festival she famously founded at a time when radio stations were loath to play two female artists back-to-back. From 1997 to 1999, the cross-genre all-female bill included, over the years, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Emmylou Harris, Indigo Girls and many others.
The documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is a medley of anecdotes, archival footage and contemporary interviews from stars including Crow, Erykah Badu and Olivia Rodrigo – and, of course, McLachlan, who talks about the tour’s “great, positive, ego-free energy.” Bonnie Raitt recalls a palpable feeling of camaraderie and Jewel its “unabashed sincerity.” In an archival interview, Sinead O’Connor calls it “a very healing experience.”
Director Ally Pankiw didn’t attend Lilith; she was just a kid in Alberta then. But her hazy impression was informed by irksome flower-child stereotypes – untrue, as she learned. “It was, like, very radical. It was very cool. It was very punk. It was not just a few women in flowing dresses singing folk music, under the full moon. It was this massive commercial success.”
Sarah McLachlan, in red, performs with Indigo Girls, Erykah Badu, and others at a Lilith Fair concert in Mountain View Calif., in June, 1998. From 1997 to 1999, the cross-genre all-female bill also included Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Emmylou Harris, and many others.Tim Mosenfelder/ImageDirect
Pankiw interviewed McLachlan three times for the film, primarily in two sessions a few months apart in 2023. It was, she says, “heaven.”
“Everyone knows she’s an angel; she’s so benevolent and wonderful and lovely and kind and Canadian. But she’s also really funny.”
The film, produced by Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy, suggests that Lilith Fair helped pave the way for women such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé to be at the centre of pop culture. “I think it wouldn’t be too bold to say,” says Pankiw, “that a lot of the very successful artists, female artists, of today probably had a slightly easier time with one aspect of their career path because of the work that was done in the era of Lilith. By Lilith. By Sarah.”
McLachlan with her dogs Poppy and Talulah at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music.Grant Harder/The Globe and Mail
McLachlan has won three Grammys, 12 Junos and sold more than 40 million albums. Since becoming a parent, she has receded somewhat from the spotlight. Family took centre stage – along with her school, where more than 1,200 at-risk and underserved youth receive free instruction every year, and being active in nature.
McLachlan is no figurehead; she is deeply involved in the school, which began in 2002 and now has three locations, far beyond hosting fundraisers. “I’ve even seen her in this building, with coveralls, on a ladder, painting the walls,” says Boris Favre, who has taught there since 2004.
Outside, she surfs in summer, skate-skis in winter and hikes daily with her dogs Poppy and Talulah.
Her love of nature – plus heartache, and the joys of new love – is reflected on Better Broken, her 10th studio album and her first with producers Tony Berg and Will Maclellan, both of whom have worked with Phoebe Bridgers.
“I took my soul out to the trees and asked for comfort,” she sings on Only Way Out is Through. The track Gravity came out of struggles with her older daughter, worked out in family counselling. “As a famous person, there’s always this, oh, you have this perfect life, and these perfect kids, and everything’s so easy,” she says. “I struggle too.”
The album also gets political. One in a Long Line is a fiery anthem for women’s rights. “As a woman, there’s times for complacency and times to stay quiet, and this is not a time to stay quiet,” says McLachlan.
“I have daughters, you know? I need to say something about this. I’m afraid, and I’m angry,” says McLachlan, whose daughters sing on the track. “How are we back at this place in 2025?”
On Wilderness, she sings about time running out. Does she feel that way, at 57?
“Hell, yeah. Profoundly. Oh my God, there’s so much more I want to do.” Mountains to climb, waves to surf, travel. Grandchildren, she hopes.
She thinks a lot about mortality, having lost both of her parents – and as she ages herself. “I look at old people all the time now, and I go, that’s going to be me in 20 or 30 years.”
McLachlan dreamed of a music career while growing up in Nova Scotia, learning the ukulele before graduating to guitar and piano.Grant Harder/The Globe and Mail
Did she ever get to tell Peter Gabriel about his influence on her career and life? Yep. She was 21, recording at Daniel Lanois’s studio in New Orleans, “greener than green” when in the shared kitchen, she spotted Gabriel getting a beer.
“He was so gracious and kind, and I was a bumbling mess because I was just so overwhelmed.” His kindness, she says, taught her a life lesson: “Okay, this is how I always have to behave.”
Case in point: Just before she shares this story with me, she has been told a similar story by another interviewer. In the 1990s, McLachlan was looking at a house for sale in Vancouver at the same time as CBC journalist Ian Hanomansing. He recognized her, and, as he told her years later during this interview, he felt like he bumbled when he approached her and introduced himself.
“He said, I was so gracious and kind to him,” McLachlan tells me. He told her it had a huge impact.
“Many times, I’ve run into people who have clearly been nervous and kind of blurted something out that didn’t quite make sense, and I think back to Sarah,” later confirmed Hanomansing, who was chuffed when McLachlan shared her Peter Gabriel story.
“And then I thought about the connection,” the journalist continued. “In a weird way there’s a connection between Peter Gabriel’s kindness to her, her kindness to me and, I hope, my kindness to other people.”
McLachlan has won three Grammys, 12 Junos and sold more than 40 million albums.Scott Legato/Getty Images
McLachlan goes back on tour next month for the Fumbling anniversary dates she had to cancel last year. Early in that tour, McLachlan got sick with multiple viruses. Despite having been able to push through in the past, she just couldn’t this time. “I just got worse and worse,” she says. “I had to pay for the entire tour and not do it.” She also felt like she had let everybody down.
Still, backup singer Melissa McClelland says McLachlan was stoic and open-hearted through it.
“She’s so positive. You would never be able to tell that she was heartbroken or stressed about it,” says McClelland. “She was doing the best that she could and she was struggling. And that’s scary; I mean, that’s your instrument. That’s an exquisite instrument, Sarah McLachlan’s voice.”
McLachlan says the experience gave her PTSD – including the big fear: “Is my voice ever going to come back?” It was gone, she says, for about three months.
“I just finished this record that I’m madly in love with and so proud of and I’m thinking, okay, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to sing that way again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sing these songs.”
She can sing the songs. And she will, a few of them, during the resumed Fumbling tour. Later, she hopes to full-on tour Better Broken.
Along with the forest, mountains and ocean, McLachlan’s happy place is working. She loves to write and record. “Yeah,” she promises, “there will be more music.”
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is available to stream on CBC Gem. The Fumbling Towards Ecstasy tour begins Oct. 15 in Victoria.
