A Closer Look

Sarah McLachlan has been making the rounds lately, and judging by the reception, she has been missed.

In October, she released Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan, which entered high on both the Canadian charts and Billboard’s Top 200. She has appeared all over Canadian and American television and radio, from a concert on CBC Radio One to performing her new single, “U want me 2,” for Regis and Kelly. And she recently signed on as the headliner for the 2009 Cultural Olympiad, a mammoth series of events connected to the Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

The fan response to Closer seems to reject the notion that her best work is behind her — people are craving another album of new material. It has been five years since 2003’s Afterglow, a popular success which topped the Canadian charts and reached No. 2 in America, but left critics and fans somewhat cool. Now, as they listen again to 14 of McLachlan’s biggest hits along with two new songs, fans wonder when they can expect a new release — something to earn the affection given Solace, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Surfacing, her three artistic and commercial smashes from the 1990s.

The expectations must be daunting. Her fans seem to invest very personally in her songs, feelings they protect like raw nerves. Will any new McLachlan material be heard on its own merits? Such are peculiar complications of being one of Canada’s best loved musical artists.

A personal appeal
When McLachlan strides onto a concert stage, the crowd’s reaction is immediate and unstinting. She has a presence that can provoke wild cheers one moment and attentive silence the next. She is, of course, an undeniably attractive woman, graced with a beauty mixed with sophistication and intelligence. In photographs, (like the ones in this article) she seems to hold out the promise of a personal connection — a knowing look cast from behind that mysterious smile.

Musically, McLachlan’s songs are approachable but not bland, larded with pop hooks and propulsive beats that invite repeated listening. Her distinctive voice brims with emotion, swinging effortlessly from earthy to intimate to bracing to vulnerable. These are songs we want to sing in the shower, if only we were up to the vocal challenge.

Her lyrics, frequently described as “enigmatic,” seem to arrive from some deeply personal place. But ask five fans what a song like “Angel” means to them, and you’ll get 10 stories. McLachlan has said the song is about the heroin overdose death of Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, but its appeal is malleable enough to have served as emotional punctuation in a long list of movies and TV shows.

It’s this mix of the personal and the universal that has helped McLachlan connect so deeply with such a broad audience. For those who love her music, a McLachlan song can strike deep chords and mysterious emotions. No matter what the song is “really” about, it quickly becomes connected to feelings that are important and immediate for the listener. It’s quite the trick, really.

There is, however, a down side to this trick, even a dark side. The song “Possession,” from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, ranks with The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” as one of pop music’s great misunderstood “love” songs. The tune is pretty enough for slow dancing, but the music carries an undeniable current of menace. And a close listen to the lyrics: “And I will be the one / To hold you down / Kiss you so hard / I’ll take your breath away,” reveals the chilling story of a stalker. That story took a bizarre and ultimately tragic turn when an obsessed fan filed a lawsuit insisting that the song was about him. As McLachlan told Rolling Stone magazine, “This one person wasn't the only guy ... there were a lot of letters from other people saying the same kind of thing....”

But for McLachlan’s true fans, her songs are indelibly connected with their experiences in high school, university or wherever they were and whatever they were doing when they first heard her sing them.

A Grown-up Audience
McLachlan’s career has already spanned 20 years. She has had a tremendous impact on the North American music industry, from the unprecedented success of Lilith Fair (the travelling music festival she founded to celebrate female artists) to her profound musical influence on a generation of female singers and songwriters. Her fan base remains vast and devoted.

For someone who can listen to “Building a Mystery” and conjure memories from 10 years ago, McLachlan’s songs are evergreen in their evocative power. But life has, of course, moved on for her fans, as it has for McLachlan herself.

So now that she has given us our retrospective, let’s savour it and bask in the memories. The songs will always be there, their beauty undimmed, and there are always new fans to discover them.

But it would be wonderful to begin again, with an all-new recording. It would not be fair to expect her new songs to pack the same emotional wallop as our old favourites, at least not at first listen. So let’s make a bargain with Sarah McLachlan: if she will give us fresh songs, we will listen to them with fresh ears, and be open to whatever she has to offer. •