If not for her song “Building a Mystery,” many of us may have never gotten to know Sarah McLachlan’s music. And if not for that hit single, the event that shaped how we listen to music in the 21st century would have played out a little differently.
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When McLachlan released “Into the Fire” as a single from her 1991 album Solace, listeners of modern rock stations in the U.S. became familiar with the Canadian singer, songwriter, and musician. It would take another six years for McLachlan to break through to a larger American audience. “Building a Mystery,” the lead single from Surfacing, rose to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would be the first of a string of five consecutive Top 40 hits McLachlan would release over a two-year period. The song’s legacy would be further enhanced four years later.
On October 23, 2001, Apple introduced the iPod to the world. While the integration of digital music onto smartphones eventually made iPods obsolete, they were the go-to music listening device for the decade of the 2000s. “Building a Mystery” played a crucial role in ushering in the digital era of music. Here’s how a song from the compact disc era helped change the way we listen to music.
A Music Library in Your Pocket
While the iPod was the first digital audio player many people bought, it wasn’t the first one available to consumers. The first portable digital audio players, then commonly referred to as MP3 players, were released in 1998. The MPMan, manufactured by SaeHan Information Systems, was only available in South Korea, but Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300 was sold in the U.S. later that year. Early MP3 players such as these held two albums’ worth of music at most, and even when players with a larger capacity became available, they did not achieve anything close to the level of success the iPod would, as they typically were expensive, slow to transfer music files, and poorly designed.
Apple officially began the process of developing the iPod in April 2001. The end result, unveiled six months later, was a small, sleekly-designed (for its time) player. Perhaps the iPod’s simplicity and expanded capacity would have sold itself, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs also made marketing a priority. As he did with other major product rollouts, Jobs demonstrated the iPod in a presentation for the media at Apple’s conference center. His sales pitch focused on the product’s capacity to load music quickly, hold a person’s entire music library in their pocket, and deliver “CD-quality music.”
“Building a Mystery” Built Excitement for the iPod
When it came time to demonstrate the iPod, Jobs began by showing the audience how the menu worked. He navigated his way to a playlist called “Favorites.” At the top of the playlist was “Building a Mystery.” Had Jobs chosen to scroll down his playlist, the first song to be publicly played on an iPod could have been Moby’s “Porcelain” or Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week.” Instead, he clicked on the first song, treating the audience to the first 17 seconds of McLachlan’s hit.
Jobs went on to demonstrate other features, playing snippets of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Could You Be Loved,” Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of Bach’s Prelude, Cello Suite No. 1, The Beatles’ “I Should Have Known Better,” and Southern All Stars’ “Big Wave.” In demonstrating the crossfade feature, he segued the end of The Beatles’ “Carry that Weight” into the intro for “Building a Mystery.” He let the song play well past the intro as he showed how the iPod’s equalizer worked. Jobs’ presentation also included a seven-minute video that featured testimonials from Moby, the late Steve Harwell of Smash Mouth, and Seal.
Though Jobs gave McLachlan a fair amount of airplay during his demonstration, he wasn’t yet done with spreading his apparent love for her music. He gave every attendee an iPod with 20 preloaded albums. Each of those new iPod owners went home with a digital copy of Surfacing. Other preloaded albums included Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Dave Matthews Band’s Crash, Moby’s Play, and The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and Abbey Road.
Crossing the Line into the Digital Era
McLachlan hasn’t notched a Top 40 single since the iPod was introduced, but her music has continued to find fans in the digital era. Since 2001, she has placed four albums in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, including the double-Platinum Afterglow and the Platinum Wintersong. Her signature song “Angel” has received more than 200 million streams on Spotify, and “Building a Mystery” has gained another 34 million streams. McLachlan’s song “The Path of Thorns (Terms)” from her Solace album helped Apple to reach another milestone, as it was the 50 millionth song purchased from the iTunes Store.
Would the iPod not have swept away the CD era if Jobs hit play on Moby or Barenaked Ladies first? Probably not. Still, it’s interesting to think about how that brief snippet of “Building a Mystery” played before a small group at Apple’s conference center could have been the dividing line between two starkly different eras of music listening. Before that, we bought albums and listened to songs on the radio. Soon after, we would largely abandon those media for playlists and streaming services.
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Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
