December, 2003

Publication title: Songwriters Magazine, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Brett Grainger

Change is good

Sarah McLachlan fumbles towards a new writing process

Some songwriters are like baseball players “when they get a hit, they try to do the exactly the same thing the next time they’re at bat. This dedication to what has worked in the past can sometimes verge on the superstitious. Even a superstar like Sarah McLachlan is not immune to the phenomenon. For much of her 15-year career, the singer/ songwriter’s pattern was to drop out of civilization whenever she needed a few new songs. Her habit of retreating to a remote log cabin in the backwoods of British Columbia for long periods became the stuff of legend in the recording industry.

Yet no matter how steadfast a writer is about observing personal rituals, even a star can hit a slump. It’s been six years between the release of McLachlan’s last studio album (1997’s Surfacing) and her current CD, Afterglow (which garnered the 35-year-old Halifax native a Grammy nomination for the single “Fallen”). For a time it looked like the album might not get made at all. After months of trying what had always worked before, McLachlan finally admitted defeat and came out of the woods empty handed. “I was just completely paralyzed”, she says over the phone from her home in North Vancouver.

“I just had to let it go and realize that I was not going to be able to make any kind of music this way. So I finally did let go and a big burden came off my shoulders. It was like, “You know what? It’s all going to be fine.’ And it was, and it always is. “

While McLachlan questioned her habitual approach to writing, everything else in her life underwent radical change, as well. First, she became a bride marrying her longtime drummer, Ashwin Sood. Next came the revelation that her mother was dying of cancer. Joy and pain became further entangled with the birth of her daughter, India, just four month after her mother’s death. “It’s all very entwined, the lightness and the dark”, she observes.

All these changes meant even more time away from her unfinished record. When she finally returned to her half-finished songs, McLachlan discovered that her new responsibilities as a mother meant that she would have to find a new way to write music; no more prolonged flights from reality, she would have to find a more flexible groove that allowed her to balance diaper changes with trying out new chord progressions. So she began scheduling writing time into her daily routine. “I’d have an hour or two during the day when I would have to go and “be creative’,” she says. At first, it was difficult. “It takes a certain amount of discipline to get into that mode”, she admits, “and for the longest time I just couldn’t find the energy.”

In the past, McLachlan has said that songwriting is like “admitting you need therapy, because of all the emotional baggage it brings to the surface.”
Given all this change, one might have expected the songs on Afterglow (a title she describes as “transition”) to address issues of grieving and mother hood. Yet, aside from “World on Fire”, whose lyrics evoke the memory of the World Trade Center disaster, Afterglow doesn’t allude to the personal events in McLachlan’s life. She prefers to stew and ruminate before committing her feelings to verse and says that these changes are still too close to home to write about. Instead, like the songs on Surfacing and Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Afterglow addresses the timeless questions of finding and losing love.

Another obvious connection to her previous work is McLachlans’ ongoing collaboration with Pierre Marchand, the Quebec-based producer who first worked with McLachlan on her 1991 album, Solace. McLachlan calls Marchand her “musical partner”, and acknowledges his role in helping her get through more than one writing slump. “He’s got such a wealth of creativity”, she says. “Sometimes, working on a song, I get stuck so quickly, and he’ll slog away at it for two days and come up with the most beautiful idea that takes it in a whole new direction.”

It also helped that Marchand has recently seen some changes to his owns creative habits. Within months of little India’s birth, Marchand, too, became a first-time father. The offspring wreaked havoc on their parent’s professional schedules. “It was disastrous”, remembers McLachlan. “Neither of us was getting any sleep.” But empathy overcame exhaustion. “With every record, whatever weird emotional stuff is going on, we seem to be on parallel planes.”

As the patterns of parenthood tame McLachlan’s manic habits of the past, does the songwriter ever fear that happiness and routine might take some of the edge off her music? “I hate to say it, but it’s kind of true”, she confesses, “for me, anyway. I love being a mother, it’s the most amazing thing in the world. But it didn’t do much for my creativity, that’s for sure”.

So how will she keep her newfound peace from sabotaging her songwriting? “Even when you’re happy, you can still remember the times when you weren’t”, she responds. “Maybe it’s better to look at the unpleasant situations with a more objective view. I think you can only do that once you’ve found a bit of peace.”

McLachlan is circumspect about the changes that overthrew her personal and professional life while fumbling towards Afterglow. “Change is scary”, she admits, “but it’s inevitable and important for growth. It’s been really hard, but I’m so happy in my life. And I’m so happy with this record too “and for the longest time I really wasn’t. I thought all the songs were crap and I was putting all this pressure on myself to get it finished for all the wrong reasons “ just because I thought I should get it out there. That’s no way to make music. So I had to walk away for a while, and it was probably the best thing I ever did.”