All's fair in love and music (From Redditch Advertiser)

All's fair in love and music

7:00am Saturday 10th July 2010

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Despite selling millions of albums around the world, Sarah McLachlan remains relatively unknown in the UK. The Canadian songwriter talks about her career, and this summer's Lilith Fair tour, which showcases female artists.

With more than 40 million album sales and a clutch of awards to her name, Sarah McLachlan is probably the most successful recording artist you've never heard of.

The 40-year-old songwriter has been releasing her emotional torch songs since the late Eighties, and has become a household name in the US and her native Canada.

The LA Times went so far as to call her a "Cultural hero for a generation of female musicians", thanks to the women-artist-only festival she founded, Lilith Fair - yet the UK has been a harder nut to crack.

"I think it takes a lot of time to break a country," she says, sleepily.

Sarah's just woken up in her hotel room. The first Lilith Fair tour in 10 years got underway the previous night in Edmonton, Alberta.

"You really have to put the time in, and although I've been to the UK a number of times, there'd be three years between tours. I think part of my success in the US was that I toured extensively, playing to 30 people, 300 people, 3,000 people, whatever."

If all goes well with Sarah's new album Laws Of Illusion, we'll be seeing a lot more of her over here, and there's also talk of bringing the Lilith Fair to these shores.

"We'll have to see how that goes," she says, knowingly.

Known for her emotional, downbeat songs of romance and love-gone-wrong, Sarah's new album, Laws Of Illusion, is a more upbeat collection, marking the end of a difficult period in her life.

In 2008, she separated from her husband and father of their two children, Ashwin Sood, the former drummer in her band.

"The album's telling a story," she says, "like a thematic picture of the last three years of my life. That was when the rug was pulled from under me and my world shifted greatly."

If the music on the album is more upbeat, the titles of the songs within are much more telling: Awakenings, Illusions Of Bliss, Forgiveness, Heartbreak and Don't Give Up On Us are just some of the tracks on the album and even though some of them "are about lots of other people", listening to the album is like hearing someone's catharsis first hand.

"In a divorce, I think the thing that really gets you is the perception you have of your reality, and the shattering of that. When it falls apart, there's a complete shift in your world, mentally and physically, and for me, that was a huge undertaking. I had to pick myself up, and this record is about those trials and tribulations.

"It was such a huge, massive shift, though. I was with Ashwin since I was kid, and now I'm 40 years old and single with two kids.

"I've always been open about things like this," she continues. "Music is an amazing way to work through problems, although I have to be sensitive that there are other people involved.

"I've said things in songs in the past that I perhaps shouldn't have. A song like Forgiveness, for example. If my ex hears that, it's going to gut him. It's not about him, I wrote the chorus seven years ago, but the obvious conclusion to draw is that it's about him."

Thankfully for Sarah, she now feels back to her normal self, and "is in a great place".

"We're fine with each other too. He's a great guy, a great dad, but it didn't work out. I thought we'd have the relationship forever, but that wasn't to be."

Understandably, after the ordeal of a divorce, Sarah wanted to throw herself into a project, so decided on resurrecting the Lilith Fair festival.

"It's amazingly important to have work to do when you're down. Bring it on! And I throw myself at things even more, the album, the tour... In the last few years I wasn't that involved in the music business, aside from the odd gig and things, so I had to reconnect with that."

The roots of Lilith Fair go back to 1996 when Sarah became increasingly frustrated with concert promoters and radio stations for their stance on female artists.

"I always thought that if you put good music on at a concert, people would come, but we were constantly finding promoters who said you couldn't have two women on the same bill, and radio DJs that said you couldn't play two female artists back to back.

"We started the festival after that, and a large part of it became about proving those people wrong."

As well as promoting female artists, Lilith, named after the Jewish legend that Lilith was Adam's first wife, also managed to raise more than $10 million for women's charities in North America.

"The main inspiration was just to put on a great show, and the fact that there were so many great women artists coming up, not represented in the summer festival market, was just wrong.

"If you looked at Lollapalooza back then, it was all guys," she continues. "Lilith became a bit of a phenomenon that exceeded any expectations I had. The media scrutinised the festival a lot though, and we were either too feminist or not feminist enough depending on who you talked to, so we had to defend it a lot on a daily basis. I was accused of hating men, you name it!"

The festival ran for three summers, featuring the likes of Sheryl Crow, Tracy Chapman, Carly Simon, Emmylou Harris, Erykah Badu and Missy Elliott, before coming to an end in 1999.

"We proved the received wisdom was wrong back then - you can put a whole bunch of women together and people will like it and buy tickets.

"There are inequalities everywhere, but Lilith definitely opened doors for female artists. This time around, 10 years since we last did one, things are better, but I wanted the sense of unity.

"I wanted to be part of something again."

Extra time - Sarah McLachlan :: Sarah McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and adopted to Jack and Dorice McLachlan, an American couple living in Canada.

:: As a child, she had singing lessons as well as studying classical guitar and piano.

:: She released her debut album, Touch, in 1988, and followed it up three years later with Solace which proved to be a minor breakthrough.

:: In 1997, she released Surfacing, which is her best-selling album to date. It won two Grammy awards and four Juno awards.

:: Sarah has two daughters: India, 11, and Taja, who is three.

:: Earlier this year, 14-year-old Britain's Got Talent contestant Olivia Archbold sang Sarah's song In The Arms Of An Angel in her audition. As a result, Sarah's song re-entered the charts.

:: Please note: Sarah McLachlan's seventh album, Laws Of Illusion, is out now.

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