Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (2:57)

There is a record player there Is in the bridge. Yes. It goes into this sort of retro nostalgia moment.

Alison Stewart (3:05)

Why did you want to start with this particular song for your album?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (3:09)

Well, you know, it didn't turn out that way. As you build a record, as you put all the songs together, you know, an emotional arc starts to take place and form. And the title just kind of made sense for everything that I was working on. The reclamation of self, this idea of, you know, resilience. And this is a new chapter in my life. My little baby has just gone off to university, so I'm now an empty nester. And there's been a lot of times over the last bunch of years where I've had to sort of think about how to redefine myself. And, you know, none of us gets to this point unscathed. I'm 57 and I've lost both my parents and my brother to really hideous cancer. I've gone through a yucky divorce and, you know, one or two sort of disastrous relationships after that that really, you know, that I had to climb out from under, you know, and figure out who I was. And. And so those stories, a lot of them kind of appear on this record because even though I wrote a lot of this qu. You know, I'm drawing on inspiration from things in the past, things that I actually have now a little more objectivity about that I can write about with some more clarity.

Alison Stewart (4:17)

How deep is that song archive of yours? Are we talking like Prince Vault deep?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (4:21)

Are we talking how deep? No, honestly, I think Better Broken is probably it. There might have been. There's six or seven other ideas from that time, but they weren't as strong, they weren't as fully formed. That being said, at some point they may well come back to the surface because musically I think they're strong. It's just the lyrics are the things that I really struggle with.

Alison Stewart (4:42)

It's interesting. So I looked at the whole record track and your songs are, in my opinion, normal length songs. They're four minutes. Yeah. They're five minutes. They're not two and a half minutes, which a lot of artists are doing.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (4:53)

I have too much to say.

Alison Stewart (4:55)

I was gonna ask you about. I was going to ask you about that. Did you ever have that. That conversation with yourself or did you say no, I'm just.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (5:02)

I'm making songs. I've been incredibly lucky in my career that I've kind of had creative control since the get go. And so there certainly times early on when it's like, you know, if you want radio play, it has to be under 3:30, you have to work on that. So, yeah, for a few songs, I went down that road. But generally speaking, for me, a song dictates, you know, it dictates what it's gonna be, how long it's gonna be, and I just kind of let that flow.

Alison Stewart (5:31)

It's your creative process. Just let it go.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (5:33)

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's where the good stuff comes out. When you're free, uninhibited, you know, you're not editing yourself, you are just playing, singing with abandon for the medicinal pleasure of it.

Alison Stewart (5:48)

How do you know when a song is done?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (5:52)

There is no mathematical equation, that's for sure. It feels right. That's about. That's, you know, it feels like I've taken it and experimented and, you know, gone down as many roads as I could and done the best possible job that I can with whatever subject matter I'm talking about musically, you know, getting it to a really solid place where I feel proud of it, where I'm feeling like, okay, I can now let this go to the world. And that's the point at which we go into the studio and then this super collaborative process happens where, you know, you get other musicians and they all add their colors and their nuances to it to elevate.

Alison Stewart (6:36)

Sounds like you are into collaboration.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (6:38)

I love collaboration. I love it. Because of that elevation, you know, I can take things to a certain place where I feel good about it, but I love what other people will bring to something to make it, in my opinion, even better and more interesting.

Alison Stewart (6:54)

My guest is Grammy award winning artist, Sarah McLachlan. She's here for a listening party for her new album, Better Broken. It is out this Friday. This song has an extra special significance for you? Gravity.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (7:07)

Yes, this is. Sorry. Well, you go ahead.

Alison Stewart (7:09)

No, you go ahead.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (7:10)

So I wrote this song as a love letter to my firstborn daughter. She and I have had a very challenged, almost combative relationship for very many years. We're both terribly similar and really stubborn and we just didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. And by the time she went away to university, like we were ready for a break. And she came back after a year. This is Covid 2020. It did not go well for her. She didn't have a good time. You know, a lot of unpleasant things happened and she was a mess and I could not reach her, I could not help her. She wouldn't open up to me. And after a couple weeks I was like, I think we need some help. So we Went to see this family systems counselor that we'd been to before. And after peeling back all the layers of the onion, what came out was the fact that she didn't feel safe to tell me what had happened to her because she thought she would be judged. She thought that, you know, I would blame her somehow, which is an awful thing to reckon with as a parent, especially because my mother was exactly like that. And I thought that I was being so different as a parent, and I feel like I was. But clearly, the way I was communicating with her, she was not getting that. So I had to learn how to change the way I talk to her. And also within the counseling, what we thought in the past was ADHD actually was anxiety. And we finally unraveled that and realized that all those challenges when she was younger, when this wall would go up, when hard things would be put in front of her, it wasn't obstinance or laziness or any of those things. It was this massive anxiety that was undiagnosed because I. I don't have it, so I didn't recognize it. She didn't have the language for it. So to recognize that's actually what it was then, to have tools to manage that. Our relationship since has blossomed. And, you know, I talked to her about, obviously, you know, talking about this publicly about something that's very private and very vulnerable, a very vulnerable time in her life and mine. And she's like, oh, no, mom, I want you to talk about it. I think this is really important, and it helped us so much. I want people to know about family systems counseling and how beneficial it can be for, you know, the whole family, really. And so, so far, she's still on board with that. So I'm being pretty open. I mean, I'm very open about my own life, but it's quite something different to bring someone else's personal things into a very public forum.

Alison Stewart (9:42)

Let's listen to gravity.

Sarah McLachlan (singing) (9:47)

Yours is an island of wild weeds and lush tangled crown. Unbridled energy, all possibility. You pull yourself up on two feet that have not stood alone. Slowly and gingerly reaching with to. It's hard the way you look at me With a rage I cannot place but I'm not the enemy I'll carry you through your pain you can hide away hold your heart at bay I know you want to be be.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (10:52)

No.

Sarah McLachlan (singing) (10:53)

Life will come apart and break and break your heart. I will be my gravity always true. I won't give up on you.

Alison Stewart (11:11)

A beautiful song for a child to.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (11:13)

Hear that I won't give up on you. Yeah, well, I think that's what everybody kid needs to hear is that, you know, they've got a solid and safe place to land.

Alison Stewart (11:23)

So you're Sarah McLachlan, the Grammy winner. Do your kids treat you like Sarah McLachlan, the Grammy winner? No.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (11:31)

No, no, no. You know, kids have a wonderful way of keeping things real and keeping you humble. They do not care unless I can get them tickets to shows.

Alison Stewart (11:42)

That's true.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (11:43)

Then all of a sudden, I'm mildly elevated for a moment.

Alison Stewart (11:46)

How has being a parent affected your songwriting?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (11:52)

Well, the recognition that one's heart can expand way beyond what I thought my capacity for love was, that's opened up a whole new world of joy and terror. Honestly, the only other thing that's really changed is that being a parent is very busy making. There's a lot of work involved. Be able to go and sequester myself away in the mountains for months and do nothing but write. So being add myself, there's a lot of, you know, my days punctuated by waking the kids up, giving them breakfast, taking them to school, picking them up. I became a, you know, big dance mom for a bunch of years because my daughter was super into dance and still is. So, you know, I was distracted by all those things, so it slowed the process down. Really distracted or wildly distracted?

Alison Stewart (12:49)

That's interesting.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (12:49)

Joyfully distracted by parenting. Yeah, it just, you know, it especially in the last. The last 10 years, like, having two teenage girls dealing with, you know, with the challenges. With my daughter, I was also principal fundraiser for my free music schools off the side of my desk. And I continued to play shows and tour a little bit. But, yeah, songwriting kind of took a back seat a little bit. Yeah.

Alison Stewart (13:16)

What brought you back into focus?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (13:17)

I think I finally had enough material. But also actually, the first song that I wrote in a long time was Rise. I wrote that with Luke Doucet and later on with Ann Previn. And it was kind of coming out of COVID really, with this hopeful idea that this thing could actually bring us together, bring humanity together, and didn't really turn out that way. Right. But it's this hopeful lament that, hey, we need to remember that ultimately we need each other. And if we keep just standing on opposite sides of the street and screaming at each other, nothing's gonna move forward. So it's a sort of utopian version of what's not happening right now, but what we'd like to happen, which is, you know, hey, we need to figure this out together.

Alison Stewart (14:08)

Let's listen to that track. This is rise by Sarah McLachlan.

Sarah McLachlan (singing) (14:13)

But we're gonna need each other Quiet the th who do we turn to if we turn on each other? Yeah, we're gonna need each other and listen and hunger the chances and choices Dreams of tomorrow will arise this time we're gonna do better if we can cool things down I know your tales the warning bounce your thirst for higher ground but there's nothing came from envy all your lust to prove me wrong Embracing what divides us it'll never make us strong Come on we gonna need each other to quiet the thunder who do we turn to if we turn on each other? Yeah, we gonn each other in blissing and hunger chances and choices dreams of.

Alison Stewart (15:30)

Tomorrow will I'm Speaking with Sarah McLachlan. She's here for a listening party for her new album, Better Broken. It is out this Friday. So on the show, I love music, as you know. I've had all the women who are on Lilith Fair. We've had like, Liz Phair, Suzanne Vega, Paul Cole's been on the show.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (15:49)

But we also have a lot of.

Alison Stewart (15:50)

Young musicians who come on the show. And Katie Muna, Kayna Gavin from Muna was on the show. Right. And she told us she's a big, big fan of yours. A big, big fan of Lilith Fair. I want to play this little clip that she. We talked about it.

Katie Gavin (16:04)

I mean, I think they're my favorite musicians. And there's so much brilliant songwriting going on there. There's so much introspection. And I really think about the importance for me of seeing women and queer people, like, seeing themselves as just the subjects in their own lives. And I also think about the community. I remember, like, watching the documentary and hearing about the Indigo Girls bringing everybody together and trying to encourage, like, collaboration on the road. And I also have to give a shout out to Sarah. Building a Mystery was like my. On Spotify wrapped. It was like my top. Listened to song for like a couple of years.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (16:43)

Where I love that.

Alison Stewart (16:44)

I love it, too. Where do you hear the Lilith Fair influence in our new generation of female songwriters and male songwriters or others?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (16:56)

I more hear it in. Well, I more see it in, you know, women are dominating the airwaves. Women are championing other women, and women are having other women open up for them. So that shift within the music industry, I think, really changed things. I mean, over the years, one of the most beautiful stories that constantly comes up, young women in particular will come up to me and say, I was there. You all shared Showed me that I can do and be anything I wanted. I'm now running a corporation, and I'm hiring women. And, you know, it's that idea that, you know, we. We have always been in competition with each other for this very small sliver of pie that's been allotted to us in pretty much, you know, every walk of life and all the systems that have been created by men for men. And if we want to change things, ultimately, we have to start, you know, celebrating each other and lifting each other up and giving each other opportunities to create that change. And I feel that I've seen that happen time and time again in the industry now.

Alison Stewart (17:53)

And Katie Gavin is on your record.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (17:55)

And she's on my record. Yeah. I will say as well, I'm a massive fan of her. She is hugely talented and a lovely human.

Alison Stewart (18:05)

Let's listen to Reminds Me featuring Katie Gavin.

Sarah McLachlan (singing) (18:10)

Baby, I loves what I want but everything's changing? The horse is the light that I lean on? Reminds me how heathen good luck can be? We started out as friends and then we fell into the deep? When we first kissed I nearly drowned? You took my hand and you led me to wonder? Like all that was lost had been found? Baby, when I'm feeling blue? Your smile can save me? Pulls me up out of the trenches? Reminds me how easy my life is with you? I used to think love was heavy work? Trying to lift up the broken ones I wasted so much to have been? But those mistakes led me to you? Now I know it was worth walking that crooked light? Cause you and me were meant to be? A sweet and simple melody? And I want to sing this song for you until our time has all run through? You're all I want, all I need all I have is you.

Alison Stewart (19:51)

We're Talking to Sarah McLachlan. Her new album is called Better Broken. You have a new production team in place.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (19:59)

Yeah. So Tony berg and Will McClellan. And before I started making this record, I've been working with Pierre Marchand for 35 years. I love and adore him and what we created, but at the time, I thought, you know, this might be my last record, and I kind of owe it to myself to step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself a little bit. It honestly kind of felt like cheating at first, but Pierre was really gracious and lovely about it, and he's like, no, no, go do it. Go try it. And we had the best time. It's kind of like blind dating, you know, you get into this instantly. You get into a studio, and it's this very intimate, kind of vulnerable environment that you put yourself in, where I was like, okay, I'm just gonna open my world up to you and show you all the things I've been working on. And I played Gravity for Tony the very first day, and he heard it once, and he sat down at the piano. He says, may I? He sat down at the piano and played the entire thing back to me, but added a couple of interesting chord changes in it that actually, in my opinion, made it better. And I'm like, okay. First of all, it's not the simplest song to just, wow, how did you do that? And then he actually made it better. So I thought, okay, this is gonna be good. And then, you know, getting in there, like, within three days, it had felt like I'd known these guys forever. And it was so creative and so inspired.

Alison Stewart (21:18)

What? How do they push you? A producer's job is to make you look good, but it's also to push you.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (21:23)

He. Tony pushed me a lot lyrically. We were. Yeah, he really was like, yeah, you know, the music is really, really great. This song, you know, that needs. It needs a little bit of help, you know? And first of all, I was like, oh, damn you. No, I like it. It's really good. But as soon as he said that, I couldn't unhear it or unthink it. And then because I had so much respect for him, I went back in and reworked a few things, and, well, I made them better. So he forced me not to settle, which is great. So he did a very good job. Never mind being a brilliant musician and arranger and having just the greatest ideas when introducing a new musician, a song, like, just creating a story around it, around the kind of drum kit, for instance, we needed for. If this is the end, he said, I need the saddest Salvation army drum kit. And Matt Chamberlain said, okay, okay, and went over to his studio and pulled out these sloppy old drums and put together this kit that just somehow sounded so sad but fantastic as well and perfect for the song. So he's really great at pulling out not only great performances, you know, creating a picture that really allows a musician just to, you know, to fully shine.

Alison Stewart (22:46)

You were kind enough to let us release to play one more song, which you're not releasing until Friday. One in a long time. What do you want people to know about this song?

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (22:54)

Oh, one in a long line. Yeah. So this was the last song. That's okay. So this is the last song I wrote. I wrote actually with Ann Previn for this record And I think when I was starting to make music for this record and starting to produce it, I was a little bit concerned about how vocal I was going to be about certain things I saw going on in the world. I've never been political in my music, but I felt like considering since Roe v. Wade getting overturned and watching this insidious erosion of the rights of women, not only in America, but all over the world and thinking, how is it that we're going backwards? And the anger and the frustration around that. I have two daughters who are coming up in the world and, you know, I believe every woman should have agency over their bodies. Anyway, so this song is kind of about that.

Alison Stewart (23:39)

The name of the album is Better Broken. It is out this Friday. My guest has been Sarah McLachlan. It has been lovely to chat with you.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (23:46)

Thank you. So nice to be back.

Commercial Narrator (23:48)

Suffering from dry, tired, irritated eyes. Don't let dry eyes win. Use Sustain Pro. It hydrates, restores and protects dry eyes for up to 12 hours. Sustain Pro Triple Action. Dry eye Relief. Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers. And sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details.

Sarah McLachlan (speaking) (24:09)

I need a coffee.

Commercial Narrator (24:11)

And you need Lifelock. Because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply.