Life’s A Ball for Sarah McLachlan

"I'm just addicted to mirror balls," Sarah McLachlan says, explaining the title of her new live album, Mirrorball. "There is something about singing under a mirror ball when it's going and the lights are down and that thing's moving on its axis . . ."

The 14-song Mirrorball - recorded over 35 shows on McLachlan's 1998 spring tour in support of the Grammy-winning, six-million-selling album Surfacing - finds the Canadian songstress and Lilith Fair founder revisiting favorite tunes like "Angel," "Building A Mystery," "Adia," "Possession" and "I Will Remember You" in new arrangements that spotlight the artist's growing confidence as a live performer and her band's fluency.

McLachlan admits that she chose to release a live disc at this point in her career in order to allow herself some creative breathing space before her next studio effort. "I definitely need some time in between records," she admits. "I'm probably going to take a year off, if not more . . . Because of this, I might lose some of my band members. I think I have a really incredible and tight band. The main reason is wanting to document that and capture some of that great energy."

McLachlan feels that Mirrorball sums up the first decade of her musical career, while giving her space to launch her next musical and personal phase. "I'm 31 now and I would like to have children fairly soon," she says. "It's something that I am so excited by, and I'm excited by what I'm going to write because of it and how it's going to change my life and how it's going to make me grow as a human being."

Those personal changes relate to McLachlan's reasons for ending the successful - and influential - all-female Lilith Fair after its third tour in 1999. As she recently told Time magazine, "It's incredibly rewarding to be part of something that is gaining women recognition, but it's also a huge amount of work."

She says that she'd be uncomfortable with the potentially lucrative idea of selling off the Lilith Fair franchise to someone else. "If I didn't have control, I'd lose my mind," she admitted to Elle magazine, "because I have a very particular vision and my name is associated so strongly with Lilith. Someone should start something new."