With a voice as pure and unblemished as a songbird’s,
Sara McLachlan has established herself as an unparalleled genre blending singer/songwriter. McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, and adopted in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada. She knew she wanted to be a performer early in life—her high school yearbook says she was destined to be a rock star. At 17, she was offered a record contract based on her performance in her first band called October Game, but her parents nixed the deal to keep Sarah in art school. Her debut album Touch in 1988, quickly attracted a wide a
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udience of music lovers. Her college radio hit "Vox" aided in the success of her first album which achieved gold status in Canada. By the end of the year, Arista Records had her sign a deal in the United States. Over the course of the next two albums, McLachlan built up a steady following in Canada and the United States with such signature Sarah McLachlan songs as “
Hold On” and “Good Enough.” At the same time she established and developed the Lilith Festival, an annual musical festival to showcase female musicians.
By July 1997, her long awaited fourth album Surfacing, was launched. The single "
Building a Mystery" catapulted the album at # 2 in the US, while reaching # 1 in Canada. She was benefiting from the incredible success that Lilith generated, which allowed her to sell 3 million copies in the US alone. After taking a hiatus to get married and have a baby, McLachlan returned to public life and touring with her 2003 album release, Afterglow, which contained the singles "
Fallen", "Stupid", and "World On Fire." Rather than shoot a conventional music video for "
World On Fire", McLachlan donated all but $15 of the $150,000 budget to various charitable causes around the world and then used the video to explain how it benefited the communities that received the money. As of 2006, she has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Her best-selling album to date was Surfacing, for which she won four Juno Awards and two Grammy Awards. Indifferent to trends and fads, McLachlan continues to write and sing intimate and evocative tunes with a passionate intensity rarely found in most of today's music.