Sarah McLachlan
Juno and Grammy award-winner Sarah McLachlan (born 28 January 1968 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) is a Canadian songstress best known as the founder of the all-female traveling music show Lilith Fair, as well as for her songs "Building a Mystery," "Adia," "Angel," "Hold On," "I Will Remember You," "Sweet Surrender," "Possession" and "World on Fire."
Biography
Sarah McLachlan is a world-renowned singer/songwriter, philanthropist and entreprenuer. Having learned to sing and play both guitar and piano as a child, she signed with Arista Records in 1988, relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, and began writing songs for her debut album. Released in January 1989, Touch established McLachlan as one of the most promising young faces on the music scene, achieving critical and commercial success and producing her first single and video, "Vox." She followed up Touch in late 1991 with her sophomore effort, Solace, which yielded her first hit single, "Into the Fire," and topped the sales of her debut.
It wasn't until the release of her third album, 1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, however, that McLachlan would become a major recording star across the globe. Featuring the singles "Hold On," "Good Enough" and "Possession," Fumbling Towards Ecstasy would go on to sell five million copies worldwide and receiving near unanimous critical acclaim. It was that success that allowed McLachlan to support her fourth studio album, 1997's Surfacing, with an all-woman touring show she dubbed Lilith Fair, which was modeled on such (predominatly male) traveling concert tours as Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E., Ozzfest and Warped Tour. The album and tour were both huge successes, and McLachlan scored her biggest hits yet with the songs "Building a Mystery," "Aida," "Angel" and "I Will Remember You." She also donated profits from Lilith to various women's charities, adding philanthropy to her list of achievements.
After taking time off to marry her longtime drummer, Ashwin Sood, and give birth to the couple's first child, a daughter named India in April 2002, McLachlan returned to the charts in 2003 with the release of her fifth studio album, Afterglow, which, like its predecessors, was a huge commercial and critical smash, yielding the hit singles "Fallen" and "World on Fire." In 2005, she founded Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach ~ An Arts Umbrella Project, a foundation devoted to providing underprivileged youth in the Vancouver area "high quality music instruction in guitar, piano, percussion and choir. The program also provides a support network for inner city youth that will enable them to develop a life-long love of music and enthusiasm for learning" [1].
Miss McLachlan is currently pregnant with her and Sood's second child, due in summer 2007, and is writing songs for her sixth studio album, which she hopes to release sometime in 2008 [2].