Sarah McLachlan

Sarah Ann McLachlan OC OBC (born January 28, 1968) is a Canadian singer-songwriter.

McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

She was placed with the McLachlan family, which later legally adopted her.

As a child, she was a member of Girl Guides of Canada, participating in Guiding programs.

She played music from a very young age, beginning with the ukulele when she was four.

She studied classical guitar, classical piano, and voice at the Maritime Conservatory of Music through the curriculum of The Royal Conservatory of Music.

At 17, while she was still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, in Halifax, she fronted a short-lived rock band called The October Game, whose members also included drummer Creighton Doane.

One of the band's songs, "Grind", credited as a group composition, can be found on the independent Flamingo Records release Out of the Fog and the CD Out of the Fog Too.

It has yet to be released elsewhere.

Following The October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract with Vancouver-based independent record label Nettwerk by Moev's Mark Jowett.

McLachlan's parents insisted that she finish high school and complete one year of studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and embarking on a new life as a recording artist.

She finally signed to Nettwerk two years later before having written a single song.

When she was 19, a mutual acquaintance introduced her to her birth mother.

McLachlan did not seek her out and was ambivalent about meeting her.

There she recorded her first album, Touch, in 1987, which received both critical and commercial success and included the song "Vox".

During this period she also contributed to an album by Moev, provided vocals on Manufacture's "As the End Draws Near", and embarked on her first national concert tour as an opening act for The Grapes of Wrath.

Her 1991 album, Solace, was her mainstream breakthrough in Canada, spawning the hit singles "The Path of Thorns (Terms)" and "Into the Fire".

Solace also marked the beginning of her partnership with Pierre Marchand.

Marchand and McLachlan have been collaborators ever since, with Marchand producing many of McLachlan's albums and occasionally co-writing songs.

1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was an immediate hit in Canada.

In 1994, McLachlan was sued by Uwe Vandrei, an obsessed fan from Ottawa, who alleged that his letters to her had been the basis of the single "Possession".

The lawsuit was also challenging for the Canadian legal system since Vandrei was an admitted stalker whose acknowledged goal in filing the lawsuit was to be near McLachlan.

Consequently, precautions were taken to ensure McLachlan's safety if she had to be in the same location as Vandrei.

Before the trial began, however, Vandrei was found dead in an apparent suicide.

Vandrei's preoccupation with McLachlan was explored at length in Canadian author Judith Fitzgerald's book, Building a Mystery: The Story of Sarah McLachlan & Lilith Fair.

From her Nettwerk connection, her piano version of the song "Possession" was included on the first Due South soundtrack in 1996.

Over the next two years, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy became McLachlan's international breakthrough as well, scaling the charts in a number of countries.

In 1997, McLachlan married her drummer, Ashwin Sood, in Jamaica.

Following the success from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan returned in 1997 with Surfacing, her best-selling album to date.

The album earned her two 1998 Grammy Awards, one for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for "Building a Mystery") and one for Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance (for "Last Dance"), and four Juno Awards, including Album of the Year for Surfacing and Song of the Year and Songwriter of the Year for "Building a Mystery".

Reaching number one on the Canadian Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200, the album has since sold over 16 million copies worldwide and brought her much international success.

Still in the spotlight from the album, McLachlan launched the highly popular Lilith Fair tour.

While she was pregnant with her first child, her mother died from cancer in December 2001.

While working on her next album, Afterglow, she gave birth to daughter India in Vancouver on April 6, 2002.

On June 22, 2007, she gave birth to her second daughter, Taja, also in Vancouver.

McLachlan announced her separation from Sood in September 2008 and they divorced the same year.

The signing with Nettwerk prompted McLachlan to move to Vancouver, British Columbia.

As of 2015, she had sold over 40 million albums worldwide.

McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards (out of four nominations) and four Juno Awards.

In addition to her personal artistic efforts, she founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians.