Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V Club	(very positive) link
Chicago Tribune
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Entertainment Weekly	B
Los Angeles Times
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
The Village Voice	C−

Surfacing is the fourth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. Released in 1997, it was produced by McLachlan's frequent collaborator, Pierre Marchand. McLachlan set about writing Surfacing in 1996, after two and a half years touring for her previous album, 1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Mentally exhausted, she found it difficult to concentrate on her new album and took six months off in Vancouver. After that she completed the ten songs for the album and went to Marchand's Quebec studio to record.

Surfacing was released in July 1997, coinciding with the start of McLachlan's Lilith Fair tour. The album was a commercial success worldwide, reached the top position on the Canadian RPM 100 Albums chart and number two on the US Billboard 200. Critical reviews were mixed; some of the more positive reviews praised the songwriting, while the album's detractors criticized it as banal and slow. The album spawned two Billboard Hot 100 top-five hits, "Adia" and "Angel", the top-15 hit "Building a Mystery", and the top-30 hit "Sweet Surrender". A radio-only song, "I Love You", was released in 2000.

The album won four Juno Awards including for Album of the Year. "Building a Mystery" was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, while the instrumental-only song "Last Dance" won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

Following the 1993 release of her third album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan spent two and a half years touring. This long period on the road finished in January 1996; she was due to begin work on her fourth album in April of that year, but was mentally exhausted. She later said "When I got off the road, I thought Fumbling was my swan song, [and] I'd never make another record ever again. I couldn't imagine writing another song in my life. I had a huge psychological block for a long time." She spent time working in the studio in Quebec but struggled to produce anything for her new album. At her manager's suggestion, she returned home to Vancouver and took six months off. She said that after this break—and some time spent in therapy—she began to feel more in control of her creativity and started writing material for the album.

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