Sarah McLachlan “Building a Mystery” charted

Building a Mystery Sarah McLachlan

Writer(s): Sarah McLachlan, Pierre Marchand (see lyrics here) Released: August 19, 1997 First Charted: July 5, 1997 Peak: 13 BB, 12 RR, 28 AC, 4 A40, 110 AA, 3 MR, 18 CN, 97 AU, 10 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 16.3 video, 38.59 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Sarah McLachlan was born in 1968 in Nova Scotia, Canada. She started music at an early age, playing the ukulele when she was four and later studying classical guitar, classical piano, and voice at the Maritime Conservatory of Music. She fronted the band October Game while still in high school. After their first concert McLachlan was offeed a recording contract with Nettwerk, a Vancouver-based independent record label. WK She wouldn’t sign with them until two years later after finishing high school and a year of school at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design at the insistence of her parents. WK She released her first album, Touch, in 1988. It peaked at #132 on the Billboard album chart and eventually went gold. Her follow-up album, 1991’s Solace, also achieved gold status in the United States and again dented the lower regions of the Billboard album chart (#167). Three singles charted in her native Canada where the album reached #20 and sold 200,000 copies. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan’s third album, peaked at #50 and sold three million copies. McLachlan’s next album, Surfacing, was a blockbuster, reaching #2 in the United States and selling 16 million copies worldwide. The album was released as Lilith Fair, a female-artist-driven festival launched by McLachlan, hit the road. “Before this mega-success, it was possible to dismiss Sarah McLachlan as another Enya-influenced peddler of vague mystic allegories. Surfacing changed that. It established the Canadian singer and songwriter as a master of the moody confessional and the soft-focus ethereal atmosphere who knew to put enough backbeat in her tunes to get them on the radio.” TM “There are several fine songs on the album, including the single ‘Building a Mystery.’” AM The album generated a pair of top-five Billboard Hot 100 hits in “Adia” and “Angel,” but it was the album’s first single, “Building a Mystery,” that gave McLachlan her first top-40 Billboard hit and first #1 in Canada. “It might take a couple of spins to pick up on the derision in …her sketch of a lost soul caught up in New Age quackery.” TM The song won a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Resources: AM AllMusic.com album review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Pages 490-1. WK Wikipedia page for Surfacing Related Links: First posted 1/12/2025.

 

Alanis Morissette released “Ironic”

Ironic Alanis Morissette

Writer(s): Alanis Morissette, Glen Ballard (see lyrics here) Released: February 27, 1996 First Charted: January 6, 1996 Peak: 4 US, 3 CB, 14 RR, 28 AC, 5 A40, 7 AA, 18 AR, 13 MR, 11 UK, 16 CN, 3 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 0.6 US, 0.66 UK, 1.72 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 1.0 radio, 298.52 video, 512.62 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Alanis Morissette was a minor pop star in her native Canada in the early ‘90s, but exploded worldwide with her third album, Jagged Little Pill. She “first caught the attention of rock audiences in summer 1995 with the release of the furious, vengeful ‘You Oughta Know’” TB but Alanis “needed something gentler and more melodic to facilitate her mainstream breakthrough. ‘Ironic was just the ticket.” TB “Ironic” was the third single from the album – and the third song for Alanis to top the alternative rock chart. It was one of five songs from the album to top the Canadian charts and her highest charting on the Billboard Hot 100. It won the Juno Award for Single of the Year and was nominated for Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Short Form Music Video. It was also nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards, winning three of them. The iconic video features Alanis driving through a winter landscape with three passengers – all played by Alanis. The song garnered attention for the misuse of the word “ironic.” The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the oppositie of that expressed by the words used,” WK which meant situations described in the song such as “rain on your wedding day” and “a traffic jam when you’re already late” weren’t irony, but bad luck. In a 2008 interview with The London Times, Alanis said “the dictionary now says [irony is also] a coincidence and bad luck – not that I don’t deserve a little slap on the writst for malapropism. I always tell people that I’m the smartest stupid person you’ll ever meet.” SF The song’s co-writer, Glen Ballard, explained that he has a degree in English and knew their examples of irony weren’t “technically right, but I think it’s wonderful that everybody sort of jumped in on it and wanted to really define it as a literary term.” SF Salon.com’s Michael Reid Roberts defended the song as using situational irony, in which “the state of affairs…that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects.” WK Ultimately, the song – whether or not it is technically accurate in its portrayals of irony – is an observation that “life has a funny…way of helping us out – in spite of all the bad stuff that we have to go through.” SF Resources: SF Songfacts TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 270. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 2/3/2021; last updated 1/18/2025.

Alannah Myles hit #1 with “Black Velvet”

Black Velvet Allanah Myles

Writer(s): David Tyson, Christopher Ward (see lyrics here) Released: July 1989 First Charted: December 9, 1989 Peak: 12 BB, 12 CB, 11 GR, 2 RR, 7 AC, 12 AR, 2 UK, 10 CN, 3 AU, 2 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 0.5 US, 0.6 UK, 2.54 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 4.0 radio, 47.5 video, 288.35 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Myles was born Alannah Byles in Toronto, Canada, in 1958. She started performing solo gigs in Ontario at age 18. She met songwriter and recording artist Christopher Ward and formed a band with his help. In 1987, she signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records. With help from Ward and producer David Tyson, Myles recorded her self-titled debut album, which was released in 1989. It became the first album in Canada certified for sales over a million and went on to become the top-selling album in Canadian history. RC It has reportedly sold six million copies internationally. The album produced three top-30 singles in Canada. The most successful was “Black Velvet,” which #1 hit in the U.S. and sold a million copies in Canada. SF The song won a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and the Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys) for Song of the Year. The song is an ode to Elvis Presley; the title references popular black velvet paintings of “The King.” As music historian Steve Sullivan says, they “all stand in the shadow of ‘Black Velvet.’” SS Wad was inspired to write the song by the 10th anniversary of Elvis’ death. As a VJ for Much Music, a Canadian video television channel, he was sent to cover the event in Memphis. He explained that he and a camera operator were “on a tour bus with 40 Elvis fanatics…I came to understand what the incredible passion was that these people had for this man.” FB Interestingly, the song never mentions Elvis, but a detailed breakdown of the lyrics from Songfacts.com explains references to Jimmie Rodgers, his adoring female fans, his famous hip swivel, his first recordings at Sun Studios in Memphis, the song “Love Me Tender,” and his sudden death in 1977. SF He finished it with Tyson and they presented it to Myles. She thought the song was so good that it would be given to another artist and she wouldn’t get a chance to record it. FB Of course, she did record it and hers is the definitive version. Sullivan said, “Her powerful vocal (which becomes spine-tingling by the final verses) matches the richly atmospheric mood of the song; sultrym steamy as a summer day in Memphis; settling into a slow, intoxicating blues-rock groove.” SS It was one of the three songs on the demo she pitched to Atlantic which got her signed to the label. Resources: FB Fred Bronson (2007). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (4th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 753. RC Rod Couch (2015). The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955-2015. Pages 226-7. SF Songfacts SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Page 720. Related Links: First posted 1/12/2025.