Sarah McLachlan

Hi, I'm Sarah McLachlan. Will YOU be an angel for a helpless animal?

Sarah Ann McLachlan (born 28 January 1968) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She specializes in emotional music that is a mixture of Baroque Pop, folk-rock, and adult contemporary. She is also known for her soothing voice that is in the mezzo-soprano vocal range. In addition to her personal artistic efforts, she founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians in the late 1990s and in 2010. It was originally created in backlash of radio stations not wanting to plays songs by female artists back-to-back.

Discography:

• Touch (1988)
• Solace (1991)
• Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (1993)
• Surfacing (1997)
• Afterglow (2003)
• Wintersong (2006)
• Laws of Illusion (2010)

Sarah McLachlan provides examples of the following tropes:

• Audience Participation Song: "Blackbird", "Ice Cream", really any one of them.
• Award Bait Song - "When She Loved Me" in Toy Story 2, written by Randy Newman.
• Banned in China: The original video for "Possession" was apparently too spooky or something for America, so they made another one.
• Break Up Song: "U Want Me 2". However it would perhaps be more correct to discuss the songs that could not be classified as Breakup Songs.
• Broken Bird
• Canada, Eh?
• Cover Version: She's covered "Dear God" by XTC, "Song for a Winter Night" by Gordon Lightfoot, "Blue" and "River" by Joni Mitchell, "Gloomy Sunday" by Rezső Seress, "Blackbird" by The Beatles (for the soundtrack of I Am Sam), "Homeless" by Paul Simon, "Unchained Melody" by The Righteous Brothers, and "The Rainbow Connection". Pretty much all of Wintersong consists of covers. She also covered the chorus of Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" for DMC's song "Just Like Me".
• Creator Breakdown: Your Mileage May Vary about whether played straight or inverted after the birth of her daughter.
  • The songs "U Want Me 2" and "Don't Give Up on Us" were written in reaction to the breakup of her marriage.
• "God Is Love" Songs: "The Prayer of St Francis".
  • Inverted with her cover of XTC's "Dear God"
• Grief Song: You'd be better off listing the ones that aren't.
  • "Push" isn't, but I doubt Sarah will play it after her marriage fell apart.
• Hidden Track/Rearrange the Song: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy has a second version of "Possession", this one an acoustic piano ballad, as a hidden track at the end.
• Hot Mom
• Isn’t It Ironic: Angel is about heroin abuse, specifically the fatal overdose of The Smashing Pumpkins' keyboardist, but is used in a PSA narrated by McLachlan herself for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
• Ladette: She likes a good scotch, admits she burps and farts a lot and curses like a sailor.
• Les Yay: Says that she has been open to the idea of loving a woman and has "kissed her fair share"
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "Possession", one of her most upbeat, rockingest songs, is about a stalker.
  • "Angel" is about the overdose of Jonathan Melvoin.
  • Most of her songs are this trope. "Vox", "Fallen", etc.
• Ms. Fanservice: Appeared in two of her early videos completely naked.
• New Sound Album: Surfacing dropped the folk-rock influences of her earlier albums and replaced them with adult contemporary ones.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Possession", "Vox", "Touch".
• Obsession Song/Stalker with a Crush: "Possession".
• Precision F-Strike: "A beautiful fucked up man" in "Building A Mystery".
• Property of Love: "Sweet Surrender"
• Protest Song: "World On Fire". The video borders on Anvilicious as it list every expense that went into the video and what was bought with the money instead.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Not only is "Possession" about a stalker, the lyrics were inspired by actual stalking letters that McLachlan received from her very own stalker. Who then tried to sue her for plagiarism.
• Record Producer: All her albums since Solace have been produced by Pierre Marchand.
• Refrain From Assuming: The song is just called "Angel", people. Also, "Possession" falls victim to this due to Non-Appearing Title.
• Ripped from the Headlines: "Angel" was written after seeing several famous musicians die of heroin overdose. "World On Fire" was inspired by the 9/11 attacks.
• Signature Song: "Angel".
• Slash Fic: And quoting from The Big List of K/S Cliches:

Is the title taken from a song by Loreena McKinnett or Sarah MacLachlan?
Is the story preceded by a quote from a song by Loreena McKinnett or Sarah MacLachlan?
Is a song by Loreena McKinnett or Sarah MacLachlan played during the story?
Is a song by Loreena McKinnett or Sarah MacLachlan sung during the story?

• Star-Spangled Spandex: The music video for "Building a Mystery" has a dress like this.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: "U Want Me 2".