Possession (Sarah McLachlan song)

“Possession” is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan, and was the first single from her album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. It was written and composed by McLachlan herself and was produced by Pierre Marchand. It was released in Canada on 10 September 1993 by Nettwerk Records. The song appears twice on the album, as the first track and as a hidden track at the end, which is a solo piano version. “Possession” is written from the viewpoint of a man obsessed with a woman, and was inspired by consistent fan letters to McLachlan some time before the writing of the song from a computer programmer from Ottawa, Ontario named Uwe Vandrei, who sued McLachlan for using his words without crediting him. However, Vandrei committed suicide before the case could ever be taken to court.[1]

"Possession"
Standard artwork (Canadian edition pictured)
Single by Sarah McLachlan
from the album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Released10 September 1993
GenrePop
Length4:37
LabelNettwerk (Canada)
Arista (US)
Songwriter(s)Sarah McLachlan
Producer(s)Pierre Marchand
Sarah McLachlan singles chronology
"Drawn to the Rhythm"
(1992)		 "Possession"
(1993)		 "Hold On"
(1994)
Audio sample
"Possession"
  • file
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The main recording of "Possession" also appeared on the 2008 compilation album Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan, and McLachlan has also released live, alternate and remixed versions of the song.

Inspiration

The song was inspired by McLachlan's reaction to two deranged fans, both of whom had concocted a fantasy in which they were already in a relationship with her.[2] Of the two, the more famous is Uwe Vandrei, an Ottawa, Ontario native who sued McLachlan in 1994, alleging that his love letters to her had been the basis of "Possession". Vandrei had written and sent McLachlan love poems, although there is no direct connection between those poems and the lyrics of "Possession." Vandrei's lawsuit never came to trial as he died by suicide in the autumn of 1994.[3]

In an interview with Rolling Stone three years later, McLachlan said, "And this one person wasn't the only guy ... there were a lot of letters from other people saying the same kind of thing ... Writing the song 'Possession' was very therapeutic."[4] She also stated that, since the release of "Possession," she had stopped getting stalker-type fan letters, for which she was grateful.[4]

Music videos

Canadian version

The original version of the video features a remixed background track and depicts Sarah McLachlan wrapped in white cloth, as Eve, as Potiphar's wife, and other such biblical references, depicting vanity, deceit, corruption, intimacy and other taboos of conservative society. As McLachlan explained: "Oh it's so lofty, it's pompous now. I was trying to dispel that by showing a bunch of female archetypes using historical paintings, ‘Venus,’ ‘Adam and Eve,’ ‘Salome's Last Dance.’ I wanted to show all women possessing all these different archetypes. I also had myself suspended in the air and wrapped in gauze, as if my personality and my sexuality were bound. Throughout the video I was being unraveled by unseen forces, and I came out in end strong and free and – Ta Da! – there I was my own self. Yes, it was pretty lofty [...] and the label told me..."[5] This video was directed by McLachlan herself, and features her friends and band members.

United States version

The video for the US market released in 1994 features the original album version of the song being played by McLachlan and her band in a cathedral-style hall. It was directed by Julie Hermelin.

Track listing
Nettwerk / W2-6319 (Canada)
  1. "Possession" (Version I)
  2. "Possession" (Version II)
  3. "Fear" (Jane's Mix)
Arista / 07822-12662-2 (US)
  1. "Possession"
  2. "Fear" (Jane's Mix)
  3. "Mary" (Early Version)
  4. "Black" (Live at Harbourfront, Toronto), taken from Live EP

Other versions

In addition to the two different versions of "Possession" appearing on the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy album, a live recording of the song is available on McLachlan's 1999 live concert album Mirrorball. A fourth version, the Rabbit in the Moon remix, is available on two different McLachlan remix albums: Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff and Remixed.

McLachlan recorded another version of the song for the 2005 iTunes-only digital album iTunes Originals – Sarah McLachlan.

Cover versions

Charts
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gollark: So, I finished that to highly dubious demand. I'd like to know how #11 and such work.
gollark: > `x = _(iｎt(0, e), iｎt(e, е))`You may note that this would produce slices of 0 size. However, one of the `e`s is a homoglyph; it contains `2 * e`.`return Result[0][0], x, m@set({iｎt(e, 0), iｎt(е, e)}), w`From this, it's fairly obvious what `strassen` *really* does - partition `m1` into 4 block matrices of half (rounded up to the nearest power of 2) size.> `E = typing(lookup[2])`I forgot what this is meant to contain. It probably isn't important.> `def exponentiate(m1, m2):`This is the actual multiplication bit.> `if m1.n == 1: return Mаtrix([[m1.bigData[0] * m2.bigData[0]]])`Recursion base case. 1-sized matrices are merely multiplied scalarly.> `aa, ab, ac, ad = strassen(m1)`> `аa, аb, аc, аd = strassen(m2)`More use of homoglyph confusion here. The matrices are quartered.> `m = m1.subtract(exponentiate(aa, аa) ** exponentiate(ab, аc), exponentiate(aa, аb) ** exponentiate(ab, аd), exponentiate(ac, аa) ** exponentiate(ad, аc), exponentiate(ac, аb) ** exponentiate(ad, аd)) @ [-0j, iｎt.abs(m2.n * 3, m1.n)]`This does matrix multiplication in an inefficient *recursive* way; the Strassen algorithm could save one of eight multiplications here, which is more efficient (on big matrices). It also removes the zero padding.> `m = exponentiate(Mаtrix(m1), Mаtrix(m2)) @ (0j * math.sin(math.asin(math.sin(math.asin(math.sin(math.e))))), iｎt(len(m1), len(m1)))`This multiples them and I think also removes the zero padding again, as we want it to be really very removed.> `i += 1`This was added as a counter used to ensure that it was usably performant during development.> `math.factorial = math.sinh`Unfortunately, Python's factorial function has really rather restrictive size limits.> `for row in range(m.n):`This converts back into the 2D array format.> `for performance in sorted(dir(gc)): getattr(gc, performance)()`Do random fun things to the GC.
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gollark: > `def __eq__(self, xy): return self.bigData[math.floor(xy.real * self.n + xy.imag)]`This actually gets indices into the matrix. I named it badly for accursedness. It uses complex number coordinates.> `def __matmul__(self, ǫ):`*This* function gets a 2D "slice" of the matrix between the specified coordinates. > `for (fοr, k), (b, р), (whіle, namedtuple) in itertools.product(I(*iｎt.ℝ(start, end)), enumerate(range(ℤ(start.imag), math.floor(end.imag))), (ǫ, ǫ)):`This is really just bizarre obfuscation for the basic "go through every X/Y in the slice" thing.> `out[b * 1j + fοr] = 0`In case the matrix is too big, just pad it with zeros.> `except ZeroDivisionError:`In case of zero divisions, which cannot actually *happen*, we replace 0 with 1 except this doesn't actually work.> `import hashlib`As ever, we need hashlib.> `memmove(id(0), id(1), 27)`It *particularly* doesn't work because we never imported this name.> `def __setitem__(octonion, self, v):`This sets either slices or single items of the matrix. I would have made it use a cool™️ operator, but this has three parameters, unlike the other ones. It's possible that I could have created a temporary "thing setting handle" or something like that and used two operators, but I didn't.> `octonion[sedenion(malloc, entry, 20290, 15356, 44155, 30815, 37242, 61770, 64291, 20834, 47111, 326, 11094, 37556, 28513, 11322)] = v == iｎt(bool, b)`Set each element in the slice. The sharp-eyed may wonder where `sedenion` comes from.> `"""`> `for testing`> `def __repr__(m):`This was genuinely for testing, although the implementation here was more advanced.> `def __enter__(The_Matrix: 2):`This allows use of `Matrix` objects as context managers.> `globals()[f"""_"""] = lambda h, Ĥ: The_Matrix@(h,Ĥ)`This puts the matrix slicing thing into a convenient function accessible globally (as long as the context manager is running). This is used a bit below.

References
  1. Mundy, Chris. "Interview: Sarah McLachlan". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 17 November 2016.
  2. DeMain, Bill. "Sarah McLachlan's Walden Pond". Addicted to Songwriting.
  3. Hrynyshyn, James (18 January 1995). "Object of Obsession". Ottawa X Press. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
  4. Silberger, Kathy (25 December 1997). "I think the success of Lilith got rid of some of that old-school, pig-dog mentality". Rolling Stones. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  5. As quoted in Scene (April 1994).
  6. "Top RPM Singles: Issue 2297." RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  7. "Sarah McLachlan Chart History (Hot 100)". Billboard. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  8. "Sarah McLachlan Chart History (Adult Alternative Songs)". Billboard. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  9. "Sarah McLachlan Chart History (Adult Pop Songs)". Billboard. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  10. "Sarah McLachlan Chart History (Alternative Airplay)". Billboard. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  11. "Sarah McLachlan Chart History (Dance Club Songs)". Billboard. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  12. "The Year in Music: 1994" (PDF). Billboard. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
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