April 11, 2005

Publication title: WHO, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Di Webster

Sarah McLachlan

Welcome back. Did you bring your little girl (India, nearly 3) with you?
Oh, yeah. She comes everywhere with us. She’s an incredible traveller. I really don’t think I could be doing this otherwise. We started flying with her at a month old and she’s been great.

You’re obviously enjoying motherhood.
I love it. We’re talking about having a second one, which is terrifying. It’s so over-whelming, the responsibility of it. And she’s challenging. You get into a comfortable place with your kid, and then they just smack you in the face with something totally new. She, all of a sudden, escalates from zero to a hundred and starts shrieking when you’re on an aeroplane, in business class, with a lot of really cranky passengers who are going, “Shut that kid up!” What do you do? You can’t muzzle a child, and she’s really hard to reason with. I almost got into fisticuffs with this guy the other day. He was so nasty, practically swearing at us, and my blood started boiling. I’m very passive-aggressive, I never say anything to anybody, and I was like, ‘Oh, you relax!’ right at him (laughs). Then my heart started pounding and I just picked her up and left and went back to economy and we just stood back there for about half an hour.

You once said that as a kid, music saved your life. What did you mean?
That’s a little dramatic, I suppose, but like most kids I was pretty awkward. I was very insecure, I was picked on horribly because I was quite sensitive and I’d cry at the drop of a hat, so music was this one thing that I always knew I had. I was really good at it and I knew I was good at it. And that really fed me and it’s the one thing that made me feel good about myself.

I saw that you performed with Avril Lavigne at a tsunami benefit. Were you as intense and cranky as she is when you were her age?
How do I answer that? No, I’ve always been pretty much the way I am. I don’t know what’s up with Avril. I feel for her, because to be that young and to be put in the spotlight in the way she’s been, she’s so unready for it emotionally and has very few coping mechanisms. She’s just like a deer in the headlights. Her peers, in her mind, are Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and that’s pretty scary because there’s not a whole lot of substance there. It’s just celebrity for the sake of celebrity.

And she has some talent.
That’s the thing. It’s like, “What are you doing? They’ve got nothing to do with you.” I hope she’s finding her way. I worry about her. I’ve spent a bit of time with her and she can be very sweet. She’s just so shy and she just doesn’t know how to be. She’s very untrusting, I think.

You’ve done a rap duet with Darryl McDaniels from Run-D.M.C.
We shot a video for “Cat’s in the Cradle” last month. My involvement is I sing the chorus, as it is. He raps in the verses. It works really well together.

Is there a genre you wouldn’t attempt?
No, I’m game for anything. I won’t scream because that’s just damaging for the voice. Hard, death-metal rock – I might be out of my league there.