“Possession” by Sarah McLachlan

"Possession" opened Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Sarah McLachlan's 1993 album, and was the first single from it, released in Canada by Nettwerk. McLachlan wrote it alone, and it's a darker, stranger song than its lush surface lets on: she sings from the point of view of a man fixated on a woman, a portrait drawn from the steady stream of fan letters she had been receiving before she wrote it.

Pierre Marchand produced it and played drum machine and keyboards, and he wraps her voice in a slow-building swell of shimmer and dread. Bill Dillon and McLachlan play guitar, David Kershaw adds Hammond organ, Brian Minato plays bass, and Lou Shefano and Ashwin Sood handle the drums; Roman Klun recorded it. The groove pulses rather than pounds, and McLachlan's voice floats above it, sweet on top and unsettling underneath, which is exactly the point.

The song shows up twice on the album: first in its full-band form and then once more, tucked away after the closing song, stripped down to a solo piano version that makes the obsession sound even more intimate. The main recording later landed on the 2008 compilation Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan, and she has released live, alternate and remixed takes on it over the years.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.