Sarah McLachlan is back with her first album in nearly a decade, and plans to celebrate with fans across the country on her Better Broken Tour beginning in November. The GRAMMY-winning singer recently sat down with us at the Hard Rock Hotel New York for an Audacy Check In, to talk about her latest project, Better Broken, the new Lilith Fair documentary, and much more.
LISTEN NOW: Audacy Check In with Sarah McLachlan
The new album from Sarah all started with the song, "Rise," which McLachlan penned coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. "I just felt like I need to get this song out," she tells Audacy's Race Taylor. "It was kind of this hopeful lament about the world that we're entering into and this idea that we are creating all these divisions, and people are so scared and angry, and I have this sort of hopeful utopian version that if we just figure out how to get along and recognize that we need each other, maybe we'll start making better choices. Clearly that hasn't happened so far."
"Then it was like, 'OK, I've got enough material, let's get in the studio and start recording,' and that's kind of what happened and here we are, finally a new record."
The new collection of songs is another batch of raw and honest anthems from McLachlan, with Better Broken marking her first new album since 2016's holiday release, Wonderland.
"When you think about what 'Better Broken' means, it's kind of about the resilience that we have to have as individuals to manage the world," admits Sarah. "We constantly, we get hurt, we fall down, we have to pick ourselves up and pick up the pieces and rebuild ourselves, which we've done numerous times by the time we get to 57."
McLachlan's 57th year has been a big one even beyond the new album and upcoming tour. Hulu also recently released, Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery - The Untold Story, which shares behind-the-scenes views of the landmark festival that McLachlan founded.
"To have this time capsule of 3 of the most important years of my life and my career, so succinctly put together in this beautiful piece, what a gift for me," shares Sarah. "I just felt this immense pride and joy of getting to have this thing that I now get to carry with me, and also for the world to see this and for young women and young men to see it's like this. We can do things a different way. We can do things a better way if we work together and communicate with each other and lift each other up instead of tear each other down."
Looking back on Lilith Fair, McLachlan says, "It was a lot of fun and honestly it was just such a simple concept at the beginning. I didn't want to have all the responsibility of a show on my shoulders, but I thought, 'well let's just get some other women.' There's so many amazing women coming up, getting a ton of radio play, having success, and the few festivals that were out there that they were completely male dominated, and I said 'well let's just do something ourselves.' And then we were told we couldn't. And that was certainly, you know, it's like, don't tell me I can't do something, like come on, I'm definitely going to prove you wrong."
To hear much more from Sarah McLachlan about her collaborations, the Lilith Fair, and her new album, Better Broken, check out the full conversation above.