| Sarah Slean – Looking for Someone Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“I was toying with ‘Shadowland’ ending the album, but there is too much sadness in that song. It almost hurts me to listen to it. I wanted the record to end positively, with hope and C Major! I called in some of my better singing male friends for this - Ron Sexsmith, Noah Mintz, Todd Clark from Pilate, and Royal Wood. It’s a change from having seven of me on backing vocals, and I think it sounds beautiful!” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Shadowland Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“It’s about the redemptive power of love. Everything I have looked for and run around trying to find, all the searching I have done in my life, has always ended in understanding love as the one and only thing. The only thing that moves life, that makes life happen and makes life worthwhile. It is the force of life. I think Love is God, if I may be so bold.” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – So Many Miles Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“It’s another call to arms. A lot of the times in Paris I wondered ‘why do I do this to myself?’ Why do I throw myself into difficult and frightening situations, where a normal person would surely not. Family, friends, a job. Most people hold onto those things because they make you feel good, but at points in my life I’ve deliberately severed myself from those things. That is kind of our human predicament, to always be longing for something. I guess ‘So Many Miles’ is about shaking off feeling bad about that.” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – No Place at All Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“This is also from the exile front, about being out of my element and doubting, s most artists do, taking the path less traveled by. I really fell in love with the 6/8 [a slow waltz tempo] on this record. It seems to serve the song rather than dictate the song.” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Sound of Water / Change Your Mind Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“I see it as an extension of ‘Hopeful Hearts.’ It’s about changing your mind, capital M. Sometimes I would catch myself saying ‘if only this was different,’ but the only thing you can truly change is how you think about everything. Most instances when I was in pain, it was not the circumstance that was to blame, it was how I was looking, receiving, interpreting it. Minds are powerful.” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Notes from the Underground Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“About my Canadian friend in Paris. It felt as if we were two kids against the whole French establishment for the first few months I was there. I felt I needed to pen an ode to my fellow exile. I’d read Dosteovsky’s ‘Notes From The Underground’ too, and I was feeling rather like that madman in his own little apartment scribbling things in a pad and going a bit insane!” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Goodnight Trouble Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“I started that one a long time ago, after just returning from the cabin I’d been living in. A person came into my life I think to show myself to me- to act as a mirror. He was in the same place I was, kind of troubled. We didn’t have and lifelines, any resources and were both sort of at the end of our rope. It was rather a sad relationship but also really helpful. The horns are the wonderful Toronto jazz guys, Richard Underhill and Chris Gale.” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Euphoria Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“I see it as the partner to ‘Get Home’. Pure lust. It was the sort of cheeky ‘I can enjoy this frivolous one night stand too.’ I wanted to take some of that power back, put it in my court. I wrote this on guitar too.” - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Hopeful Hearts Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"I wrote that on the guitar. Actually I wrote a lot of these songs on the guitar, which is half the reason for their musical simplicity. I was often dreaming about archers going into battle, and was painting that a lot. It felt like it was my soul or my unconscious mind trying to tell me to just chill out about the struggles that come in my life — that only struggle produce heroes. If you’re in a dark period, always look at it as something that will squeeze new, unknown greatness out of you. I wanted to write an anthem for this kind of sentiment and that’s when the chorus came to me ["struggle is right, what’s black is white"]. What you think is a low point is actually where you are shining the diamond, smashing it out of the rock." - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – Get Home Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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“This is the most straightforward narrative I think I’ve ever written. This has happened a few times in my life, these sorts of relationships. I wondered why I was on something of a tape loop in that respect. I had all this anger and bitterness and I wanted to close this chapter completely. Instead of writing little songs about these individual let-downs or betrayals, I just wanted to put it in one song and be done with it. Funnily enough, it was like this song was a charm. The moment I wrote it, it was as if I purged this demon and I knew it would never happen again." - Sarah Slean |
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| Sarah Slean – I Know Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Here are some quotes I took off of littleslean.com(before it disappeared) by Sarah on her song: With “I Know” it was just the sort of thing where you read the paper and you read about how many men are hurting other women, and I mean women are very violent too, and I know women are criminals too, but you hear about how violent things can get in a society and how sexually violent they can get. I remember a time when I went to three movies in one week and each one had a rape scene in it and I was like why do people want to see this? Why are we attracted to this sort of hideous violence? The line in this song “Where were you last night” is like, where does that come in to having hope when you see all this sort of stuff around you and you read details of it in the paper. How can you have hope when you see stuff like that? How can you trust other people? How can you begin to have a relationship with a man if you see this around you all the time? It’s like, “I know what you want” Sometimes you start to feel like that. |
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| Sarah McLachlan – Good Enough Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I found an article where this song is mentioned twice by Sarah: http://www.taxi.com/faq/songwriting/mclachlan.html What was the inspiration behind "Good Enough?" A lot of things. That song has been such an amazing experience for me because I've learned so much from it. There's so many different stories that I attach to it now. But it sort of came from, initially really missing my best girlfriend. It started out as fiction, about a couple in which the woman was pretty much alienated by just about everybody, because her husband was really abusive and domineering, which sort of somewhat mirrors my mother and father's relationship. And basically, I am the friend coming in, saying hey, you deserve more than this, why don't you come with me and I'll take care of you. The video that I'm going to do for that song is the first sort of dramatic narrative that I've done. Everything else has been pretty abstract, trying to find a parallel universe to describe it differently. But we're going to have a little girl, a man and woman, and a friend, possibly an imaginary friend. We're going to look at the relationship between the little girl and her friends and also between the mother and the little girl. And there's quite a bit of alienation from the father, who's been behind the scenes the whole time anyway. Are songs an act of discovery for you? Yeah, and sometimes long after the fact. Going back to "Good Enough," one of the things I was focusing on was don't tell me why he's never been good to you, don't tell me why nothing's good enough. For a couple years, every time I'd see my mom, I'd say, you know, you deserve more, you deserve to be happier than you are. Why are you putting up with this? Basically telling her that the only thing she knew sucked. So she never wanted to see me, and I wondered why. I couldn't understand it, then I wrote that song. Around the same time, I tried reverse psychology and didn't hassle her anymore and just accepted that she had accepted. Then she opened up. She completely changed and she started saying, I'm not going to accept this anymore, I'm changing this and this and this. It was fantastic, because I wasn't beating it into her, she was doing it on her own. That song taught me that. I have a lot of emotional attachment to that song. |
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