Sarah McLachlan’s third album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was her big breakthrough, and its lead single “Possession” became the song that catapulted her to fame while also shedding some emotional baggage. Inspired by romantically obsessed correspondence from stalkers, the track was unlike other songs heard on the radio and brought her to a wider audience.
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Prior to the release of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy in October 1993, the Canadian singer/songwriter had built up a loyal following with the albums Touch (1988) and Solace (1991). They were defined by her special brand of ethereal folk and folk-rock with her angelic vocals and heartfelt lyrics. “Into the Fire” is one of those songs that captured her early fans’ imagination. But McLachlan also drew unwanted attention from a few highly obsessed fans who would write her romantic prose that suggested they felt they were in a relationship with her that clearly didn’t exist. She addressed this unnerving situation in “Possession.”
The Haunting Vibe
The song begins with atmospheric organ and vocals, then kicks into a gentle, mid-tempo quasi-ballad. The song floats along dreamily as the antagonist of the song becomes more subsumed in his own fantasy world, pondering if he can control his impulses. Along with the haunting vibe of the music, the chorus dives into the disturbing fantasy realm of the stalker.
And I would be the one
To hold you down
Kiss you so hard
I’ll take your breath away
And after I’d, wipe away the tears
Just close your eyes, dear
The title “Possession” really refers to two things—the desire of the man to possess the woman he idolizes, and the fact that he is possessed by an abnormal passion for someone he does not even know. One particularly deranged fan, Uwe Vandrei, revealed his identity to her because he tried to sue her for co-songwriting credits after the song came out. He claimed she stole his words for the song, but the point became moot when he committed suicide in fall 1994 before the case went to trial.
Stepping into Their Shoes
In speaking to author Bill DeMain after her third album came out, McLachlan recalled of writing the lyrics: “I tried to put myself into their shoes, into the mind of someone who is so obsessed with another person that they could conceive murdering them. It took me awhile to justify that one. As a woman, living with that fear in the back of your mind every day with the possibility of being raped. And so, it’s kind of weird for me, but then I save myself in the third verse by saying I’d never really act on it, except in my dreams. And maybe that’s putting me into a false sense of reality, but it did help. Not just that, but writing the whole song was kind of a cleansing thing for me, because I had two people in particular who just became incredibly intense with the fantasy world that they created, and demanded that that was reality and we had to be together. And they went to great lengths to make this happen. It became frightening, but it ticked me off that I had to look over my shoulder every time I walked out the door. There was one point where I was told I’d have to have a bodyguard. It was like, screw that, I don’t want to live in fear. It makes me so angry.”
Back in 1997, McLachlan told writer Kathy Silberger that for a time the weird letters and the suicide of one fan affected the way she dealt with people in public, and she stressed that he wasn’t the only one. Even though Vandrei was the only stalker of hers to commit suicide, she said received a lot of letters from other people expressing similarly troubling sentiments.
“So for a while there I looked over my shoulder every time I walked out the door,” McLachlan told Silberger. “Writing the song ‘Possession’ was very therapeutic. It’s funny, because almost every letter I get these days, the writer says, ‘I’m not one of those psycho fans.’ But ever since then I haven’t gotten any letters that were freaky like that, which is great, because I used to get them all the time.”
Perseverance
McLachlan certainly moved forward with her life after that and achieved great success. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy went on to sell 3 million copies domestically, and anyone who saw her more than once on that tour knows that she and her band would often change the arrangements of the songs, which is a rarity. Things spiraled up from there. Her fourth album Surfacing sold 8 million copies, and Afterglow sold 2 million. Globally, she has reportedly sold 40 million albums throughout her career, and she founded the successful, female-centric Lilith Fair festival, which she ran and co-headlined from 1997 to 1999 and was revived once in 2010. The singer/songwriter has also been nominated for 14 Grammy Awards and won three times.
The genesis of “Possession” may have come from a dark cloud, but it was a song that needed to be written and was one that many women could relate to. It remains one of the standouts of McLachlan’s career and certainly one of the most distinct mainstream singles of the ’90s.
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