Sarah McLachlan Talks Lilith Fair, "Angel," Toy Story and First Album in 11 Years

Zach Sang Show

Sangasong, LLC

Tv & Film, Music

4.7 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back with her first album in eleven years — Better Broken — we’re so thrilled to have Sarah McLachlan on the couch for the first time. A trailblazing, confessional, slice-of-life songwriter whose music goes for the jugular and resonates to this day, McLachlan broke in the 90s, rising up with the likes of Jewel, Tori Amos, Sheryl Crow, and Alanis Morrissette, to name a few. As artists they had to work ten times harder than their male contemporaries. Imagine a world where the powers that be said: two women on a bill? Nah. Two female artists played back-to-back on the radio? You must be joking!

Off the back of such rampant discrimination the Canadian singer founded the traveling, female-foregrounded festival, Lilith Fair when she was just 29-years-old. It ran for three summers and at one point was bigger than Lollapalooza. We talk about all this and the newly released Lilith Fair documentary out on Hulu now (watch it!), not to mention how, given the constant erosion of women’s rights thanks to the current administration, a new gen Lilith Fair feels more timely than ever!

We also get into the nitty-gritty of what she’s been up to for the past eleven years, her experiences parenting (and collaborating with) her two daughters, and the stories behind some of her biggest hits like ‘Angel’ — about the tragic passing of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. He was an artist she didn’t know personally and yet now, on this album she’s collaborating with Jonathan’s sister Wendy, herself a legendary guitarist who was part of Prince’s band. Additionally we discuss the creation of her seminal 1993 LP, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, her stalker(s) and the song it inspired, and her cover of Randy Newman’s ‘When She Loved Me’ (off Toy Story 2).

McLachlan is stunningly candid about her own childhood, her relationship with her mother and generational patterns, and the topics on her new album, which in part parses a toxic romantic relationship — confronting her own denial, self-loathing, and eventually healing (and a massive f**k you!).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, beautiful human. I'm Zach. That's Dan. And today we welcome really one of the greatest
0:11.0	lyricists to ever do it. She's sold over 40 million record. She's a trailblazer. Say hello to Sarah McClaughlin.
0:16.4	Hey. Hi. This is great. This is cool. It's also it's also have a new album. Yeah, well, especially after 11 years. I had no idea it had been so long until someone actually said that. I'm like, that seems crazy. But now that I think about it, yeah, it's been a hot minute since I put out a record. What is the, okay, so much changes in 11 years?
0:37.9	Yeah.
0:39.2	Like the most changes.
0:45.8	Yeah, well, I had two teenagers, young teenagers, 11 years ago, and I became a full-on dance mom.
0:54.9	I was also chairing both the board of my music schools and my foundation board and being the principal fundraiser for many years for those things.
1:01.1	So I was wearing a lot of hats besides continually playing gigs and I guess on the occasion writing songs. It did kind of take a back seat for a while.
1:05.1	Yeah, like what is writing music during those moments in life? What does it mean to you?
1:08.7	And how does it change from what it meant before?
1:10.8	It's kind of like a, it's stepping out of radio. those moments in life, what does it mean to you? And how does it change from what it meant before?
1:16.6	It's kind of like a, it's stepping out of reality and into another realm.
1:21.4	But for me, it's like I think some of the biggest comforts I have in life are sitting at the piano and just playing for the sake of playing, playing with abandon.
1:25.4	And it's often in those moments when I'm calm it's usually like
1:28.2	early in the morning before everybody else gets up where my mind is less noisy that's where
1:33.1	songs start has it been like that from the very beginning uh kind of yeah I think my process is really
1:40.0	not changed very much um I think the reason it takes me so long to write and to finish songs is because
1:45.8	my brain is so noisy and I have a lot of going on and I'm very easily distracted. So the way
1:51.4	that I need to get things done is, A, have a hard deadline and B, have no distraction. And having two
1:58.6	teenage daughters and being a fundraiser and helping run these schools is
2:03.3	continues to be challenging. I just, I just dropped off my baby, my youngest at LMU.
2:11.9	Congrats. Yeah. That's a big deal.
	...

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