Michael Griffiths
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Not sure if you know (you probaby do)...but read it (and don't weep). You are now famous in our great land - "Screaming Flower from Chicago"!
http://canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=a0eefe21-5dac-44ee-b49c-d5802d42159e
Sarah McLachlan resurfaces with beautiful album, new perspective on life
ANGELA PACIENZA
Canadian Press
Monday, October 27, 2003
Sarah McLachlan returns with Afterglow, her first record of new material in six years. (CP/ handout)
TORONTO (CP) - When we last heard from Sarah McLachlan she had retired her prosperous Lilith Fair franchise and retreated to her Vancouver home to catch up on life after what seemed like a dozen straight years of work, work, work.
The semi-retirement, begun in 1999, gave the chanteuse a chance to start a family and rekindle her creative spirit. "I've been pretty much just living a normal life," the 35-year-old singer explained from her Vancouver home as she prepared to leave for TV interviews in Toronto. "I was living a life different from what I was used to and it was very nice."
Next week she returns with Afterglow, her fifth studio album and the first since 1997's Surfacing (a live album of hits followed in 1999).
The first single Fallen, about not being able to come back from some mistakes, hit radio in early September and was an instant hit.
Now McLachlan is hip deep in the promotional circus that comes with a new release, appearing on dozens of talk shows and radio stations.
Fan sites have been abuzz in anticipation of the new album; message boards have been bustling with postings. "O.M.G. I am so excited. I love her. She is just about one of my favourites of all time," wrote Screaming Flower from Chicago. Meanwhile, the industry hopes the album will give a boost to CD sales as year-end nears.
The Halifax-born singer, who's married to her drummer Ashwin Sood, admits she walked away from music for a while as she dealt with the changes in her life. The break included major life events including giving birth to her daughter India five months after the loss of her mother.
"At a certain point, I put a lot of pressure on myself to get back into it," she starts, her voice soft and delicate. "That didn't actually work. It backfired so I just gave it up for a while. I was paralysed. I put so much pressure on myself to create, which is ridiculous. I was worried that I'd been gone so long, so much time elapsed between records. I had this idea in my head that I wanted to get it out as soon as I could, all this stuff for the wrong reasons other than for the joy of making music."
McLachlan penned Afterglow, out Nov. 4, over the last two-and-a-half years with longtime collaborator producer Pierre Marchand in Vancouver and Montreal.
There is always a fear that an artist's return from a break of a few years to start a family could be marked by lacklustre songwriting. But McLachlan insists Afterglow is not representative of the euphoric bliss she felt post-birth and promised a meaty emotional journey.
"Everybody will assume that the songs are going to be about love and about babies. They're not about my present situation. They're about my desire to get out of the past," says the brunette, who's grown out her pixie haircut. "I don't have any objectivity about situations that I'm going through at the time. It takes me five or six years to be able to write about something, have the time to process things to the level that I feel comfortable putting them out there."
But she admits her head was in a different place while working, and it'll be a challenge to shift gears from being full-time mommy to full-time popstar.
"Having a kid definitely made me, just everything, everything shifted so much. I used to go be in the woods for months to focus so I could write and now I'd have an hour or two max in the day where I could try to be creative," she says. "It was a really hard process because my focuses kept getting brought back to her."
But the headstrong singer, who once demanded her song I Will Remember You be removed from a documentary about the Columbine High School shootings, is determined to balance her two lives.
"Definitely, the scariest element of it all is how to reconcile continuing to be the best a mother that I can be and a career. That's the quandary of so many working women," she says.
But even a pro like McLachlan, who's earned three Grammy Awards, the Order of Canada and six Juno Awards, admits to feeling slightly nervous about returning to a transformed music industry.
"It's a whole new ball game now. The things you have to do now are quite different from what you would have had to do five or six years ago," she says of an intense marketing tour in the post-downloading business culture which will take her through Canada, the U.S. and later Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. "I'm going to every single radio station across North America, it seems."
She won't have a chance to start touring until at least next summer, she says adding, "I'm anxious to get back out there."
The singer will also be heard on Run DMC's Darryl McDaniels' new album, Checks, Thugs and Rock 'n Roll. The pair, who met at a Grammy party several years ago, put a fresh spin on Harry Chapin's Cat's In the Cradle.
A quick look at Sarah McLachlan's career:
Born: Halifax, Jan. 28, 1968.
School: Received classical training in guitar and piano at the Nova Scotia Royal Conservatory.
Big break: Nettwerk Records executives caught her playing in an university bar with her New Wave band and offered her a deal.
First album: Touch, 1988.
Hits: Adia, Hold On, Into the Fire, Sweet Surrender, Angel, Building a Mystery, I Will Remember You.
Awards: Three Grammys, Six Junos, Order of Canada.
Sales: Has sold over 25 million records worldwide.
Upcoming appearances: Late Night with David Letterman on Nov. 3, Live with Regis & Kelly on Nov 5 and Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Nov. 12.
? Copyright 2003 The Canadian Press
http://canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=a0eefe21-5dac-44ee-b49c-d5802d42159e
Sarah McLachlan resurfaces with beautiful album, new perspective on life
ANGELA PACIENZA
Canadian Press
Monday, October 27, 2003
Sarah McLachlan returns with Afterglow, her first record of new material in six years. (CP/ handout)
TORONTO (CP) - When we last heard from Sarah McLachlan she had retired her prosperous Lilith Fair franchise and retreated to her Vancouver home to catch up on life after what seemed like a dozen straight years of work, work, work.
The semi-retirement, begun in 1999, gave the chanteuse a chance to start a family and rekindle her creative spirit. "I've been pretty much just living a normal life," the 35-year-old singer explained from her Vancouver home as she prepared to leave for TV interviews in Toronto. "I was living a life different from what I was used to and it was very nice."
Next week she returns with Afterglow, her fifth studio album and the first since 1997's Surfacing (a live album of hits followed in 1999).
The first single Fallen, about not being able to come back from some mistakes, hit radio in early September and was an instant hit.
Now McLachlan is hip deep in the promotional circus that comes with a new release, appearing on dozens of talk shows and radio stations.
Fan sites have been abuzz in anticipation of the new album; message boards have been bustling with postings. "O.M.G. I am so excited. I love her. She is just about one of my favourites of all time," wrote Screaming Flower from Chicago. Meanwhile, the industry hopes the album will give a boost to CD sales as year-end nears.
The Halifax-born singer, who's married to her drummer Ashwin Sood, admits she walked away from music for a while as she dealt with the changes in her life. The break included major life events including giving birth to her daughter India five months after the loss of her mother.
"At a certain point, I put a lot of pressure on myself to get back into it," she starts, her voice soft and delicate. "That didn't actually work. It backfired so I just gave it up for a while. I was paralysed. I put so much pressure on myself to create, which is ridiculous. I was worried that I'd been gone so long, so much time elapsed between records. I had this idea in my head that I wanted to get it out as soon as I could, all this stuff for the wrong reasons other than for the joy of making music."
McLachlan penned Afterglow, out Nov. 4, over the last two-and-a-half years with longtime collaborator producer Pierre Marchand in Vancouver and Montreal.
There is always a fear that an artist's return from a break of a few years to start a family could be marked by lacklustre songwriting. But McLachlan insists Afterglow is not representative of the euphoric bliss she felt post-birth and promised a meaty emotional journey.
"Everybody will assume that the songs are going to be about love and about babies. They're not about my present situation. They're about my desire to get out of the past," says the brunette, who's grown out her pixie haircut. "I don't have any objectivity about situations that I'm going through at the time. It takes me five or six years to be able to write about something, have the time to process things to the level that I feel comfortable putting them out there."
But she admits her head was in a different place while working, and it'll be a challenge to shift gears from being full-time mommy to full-time popstar.
"Having a kid definitely made me, just everything, everything shifted so much. I used to go be in the woods for months to focus so I could write and now I'd have an hour or two max in the day where I could try to be creative," she says. "It was a really hard process because my focuses kept getting brought back to her."
But the headstrong singer, who once demanded her song I Will Remember You be removed from a documentary about the Columbine High School shootings, is determined to balance her two lives.
"Definitely, the scariest element of it all is how to reconcile continuing to be the best a mother that I can be and a career. That's the quandary of so many working women," she says.
But even a pro like McLachlan, who's earned three Grammy Awards, the Order of Canada and six Juno Awards, admits to feeling slightly nervous about returning to a transformed music industry.
"It's a whole new ball game now. The things you have to do now are quite different from what you would have had to do five or six years ago," she says of an intense marketing tour in the post-downloading business culture which will take her through Canada, the U.S. and later Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. "I'm going to every single radio station across North America, it seems."
She won't have a chance to start touring until at least next summer, she says adding, "I'm anxious to get back out there."
The singer will also be heard on Run DMC's Darryl McDaniels' new album, Checks, Thugs and Rock 'n Roll. The pair, who met at a Grammy party several years ago, put a fresh spin on Harry Chapin's Cat's In the Cradle.
A quick look at Sarah McLachlan's career:
Born: Halifax, Jan. 28, 1968.
School: Received classical training in guitar and piano at the Nova Scotia Royal Conservatory.
Big break: Nettwerk Records executives caught her playing in an university bar with her New Wave band and offered her a deal.
First album: Touch, 1988.
Hits: Adia, Hold On, Into the Fire, Sweet Surrender, Angel, Building a Mystery, I Will Remember You.
Awards: Three Grammys, Six Junos, Order of Canada.
Sales: Has sold over 25 million records worldwide.
Upcoming appearances: Late Night with David Letterman on Nov. 3, Live with Regis & Kelly on Nov 5 and Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Nov. 12.
? Copyright 2003 The Canadian Press
Is this for real? *doesn't sound like how Miss Flower talks....
