Afterglow
Studio album by Sarah McLachlan
Released	4 November 2003 (2003-11-04)
Recorded	August 2002 – 2003
Genre	Pop
Length	40:11
Label	Nettwerk (Canada) Arista (United States)
Producer	Pierre Marchand
Sarah McLachlan chronology
Remixed (2001) Afterglow (2003) Afterglow Live (2004)
Singles from Afterglow
"Fallen" Released: 22 September 2003 "Stupid" Released: 31 May 2004 "World on Fire" Released: 14 June 2004

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	55/100[1]
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[2]
Blender	[3]
E! Online	B−[4]
Entertainment Weekly	B−[5]
Mojo	[4]
Q Magazine	[4]
Rolling Stone	[6]
Slant Magazine	[7]
Stylus Magazine	(F)[8]

Afterglow is the fifth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. Released on 4 November 2003, on Nettwerk in Canada and 4 November 2003, on Arista Records in the United States, it was her first album of new material in six years, after the success of Surfacing and the Lilith Fair festival.

Unlike past albums where she went to an isolated cottage to write the songs, she wrote the songs for Afterglow in her family home mainly before the birth of her child. She wrote the songs entirely on piano, which was also a departure from her previous albums which she wrote on guitar. Longtime collaborator Pierre Marchand produced the album. McLachlan wrote eight of the 10 songs herself and co-wrote the other two with Marchand.

The song "Answer" was featured in the 2007 movie The Brave One. It has also been used in television commercials for the ASPCA, with McLachlan appearing in person.

Critical reception

Afterglow was met with "mixed or average" reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 55 based on 11 reviews.^[1]

Commercial performance and award nominations

Afterglow was released on 4 November 2003, and was a success in North America, reaching number two on the Billboard 200, topping the Canadian Albums Chart and selling 361,000 copies in its first week of release.^[9] It reached #33 in the UK (McLachlan's biggest success there thus far) and the top 50 in Australia in 2004. The first single, "Fallen", reached the top ten on the Adult Top 40 Billboard charts and a remix reached top ten in the United States dance charts. A second single, "Stupid" was released in March 2004.

McLachlan was nominated in five Juno Award categories in Canada, including Album of the Year and Pop Album of the Year for Afterglow, and Songwriter of the Year for the songs on the album. The awards were announced on 4 April 2004. The album was also nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Pop Vocal Album field in 2005.

Although not as successful as Surfacing, Afterglow has sold over 2.3 million copies in the US (as of November 2004) and went two times platinum.^[10] Worldwide, the album has sold more than four million copies (as of October 2006).^[11]

Track listing

Personnel

• Sarah McLachlan – vocals, electric guitar, piano, Rhodes piano, keyboards
• Sean Ashby – guitar
• Michel Pepin – guitar
• Pete Caigan – engineering
• Michael Chaves – guitar
• Jim Creeggan – acoustic bass
• Yanick Daunais – engineering
• Bill Dillon – guitar, guitorgan, church organ
• Yves Desrosiers – guitar
• Kharen Hill – photography
• Brian Hogue – engineering
• Ethan Johns – guitar
• Jorane – cello, background vocals, vocal treatments
• Mark Jowett – guitar
• David Kershaw – Hammond organ
• Daryl Johnson – bass guitar
• Tony Levin – bass guitar
• Roman Klun – engineering
• Bob Ludwig – mastering
• Pierre Marchand – guitar, bass guitar, piano, keyboards, synthesizer bass, production, engineering, mixing
• Jerry Marotta – percussion
• John Oliviera – engineering
• Chis Potter – engineering, mixing
• Ashwin Sood – drums, percussion, loops, keyboard bass
• Linda Strawberry – engineering

Charts

Certifications and sales