Sarah McLachlan

Born: 28 January 1968

Age:

Years Active: 1987–present

Genre/s: Pop, alt-pop, folk-pop, pop rock

Label/s: Nettwerk Music Group, Arista, Verve, Concord

Sarah Ann McLachlan (born January 28, 1968) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, ranked in the top echelon of Canadian musicians. As of 2025, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album is Surfacing (1997), for which she won two Grammy Awards (out of four nominations) and four Juno Awards. She has won three Grammy and twelve Juno Awards in total, and is a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was raised as the youngest of three adopted children by Dorice McLachlan and her husband Jack, a marine biologist. She began playing the ukulele at age four then, for 12 years, studied classical guitar, piano, voice and opera at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts.

At 17, while still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, she fronted a rock band called The October Game. After The October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract by Moev's manager Mark Jowett, who had recently co-founded the Vancouver record label Nettwerk Records. McLachlan's finished high school and spent a year studying jewellery design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and signing with Nettwerk, with its co-founder Terry McBride as her manager.