It was 1994. I remember it clearly because I was standing in front of a CD rack when I saw her—this red-headed woman with a half-smile, staring right at me. Her right hand was resting on her heart, and everything about her, from her bright hair to her pale face, popped against this moody, dark background. The name “Sarah McLachlan” was scrawled on the side, right next to the album title: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Mysterious, alluring—it had me hooked before I even knew who she was. I didn’t have a clue what she sounded like, but I was the type of person who bought records based on a gut feeling and the cover art. So, naturally, I grabbed it.
When I got home, I threw the CD into my player, and the first track, Possession, opened with this ethereal fade-in of an organ. And then, her voice. That haunting, crystal-clear voice cutting through, delivering these lines that hung in the air:
“Listen as the wind blows
From across the great divide
Voices trapped in yearning
Memories trapped in time
The night is my companion
And solitude my guide
Would I spend forever here
And not be satisfied?”
That was it. I was hooked—right then and there. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was a revelation. Song after song, it pulled me deeper. The lyrics were poetry, pure and simple. The melodies were haunting, the band was flawless, and the production—wow, the production. As an audiophile, I couldn’t get enough of the clean separation of instruments, the way her voice was the main emphasis in the mix. Remember this was in the mid-’90s, not long after I’d graduated college and was deep into running our first company. MP3s were still a couple of years away. Those songs, that album, travelled with me everywhere as they meant the world to me.
Before that, my music taste had been shaped by everything around me. The folksy ’70s my parents played at home, the neon pop soundtracks of ’80s music videos, and the angst-filled garage grunge of the ’90s. These were the sounds I’d grown up with—sounds that played in the background while I slept, worked, cried, laughed, danced. I loved them all. I still do.
But as much as I loved The Beatles, ABBA, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, and all the others—they weren’t mine. I didn’t discover them. They were handed to me by the world, by culture. But Sarah? Fumbling Towards Ecstasy? That was mine. I discovered her, all on my own. No one recommended her. My friends didn’t know who she was. Radio stations weren’t playing her. She wasn’t on TV. We were the same age, and everything she was singing about felt like it was meant for me. It was like I’d found a muse, whispering directly into my ears. Which, in hindsight, is kind of eerie, considering the theme of her song Possession, where she sings:
“You speak to me in riddles and
You speak to me in rhymes
My body aches to breathe your breath
Your words keep me alive.”
Another song that really hit me was Good Enough. It’s raw, it’s heartbreaking—a song about the abuse of women and girls. The chorus echoes with the kind of chilling lines that serial abusers might use to manipulate their victims:
"So, don't tell me I
Haven't been good to you
Don't tell me I
Have never been there for you
Just tell me why
Nothing is good enough."
But my favourite track has to be Hold On. Sarah once mentioned in interviews that she wrote it after watching a documentary about a woman caring for her husband, who had contracted HIV, until his final days. The song is intense—its beating heart sounding percussive rhythm grows louder, more frantic as the song approaches the end, like a clock ticking down, and it gets under your skin in the best possible way.
No, she doesn’t sing about fairies or unicorns. But that’s exactly why I love this album—because she tackles the dark morbid stuff, in her angelic voice.
I tried to get my friends to listen to her, but honestly, I wasn’t too concerned when they didn’t bite. She wasn’t TV famous in my part of the world, and at the time, I was starting to branch out musically, listening to stuff no one else cared about. I liked it that way. It felt like she was mine.
But that all changed when she released Surfacing a few years later. Suddenly, Sarah McLachlan wasn’t just my secret anymore. That album brought us Angel, which—let’s face it—is overplayed now, but still an undeniable masterpiece. It’s funny to think that so many people consider it this beautiful song for wakes and memorials, never realizing it was about a rock star who overdosed in a cold hotel room because the pressure had crushed him.
Now, here we are, 30 years since Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and I’m thrilled that Sarah McLachlan has become a household name. She announced the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy 30th Anniversary Tour recently in celebration of that breakout album. Her music still hits me like it did back then, and I love that anyone with a streaming account can experience that same joy, anytime, anywhere.
And for those of you who might discover her on your own—maybe through a random YouTube recommendation—I hope you feel the same spark I did when I first heard her voice.