ASPCA
Sarah McLachlan is an accomplished singer and songwriter who’s sold more than 40 million albums over the course of her career, but most people probably associate her with her infamous ASPCA commercial more than anything else—and it turns out she’s also not a huge fan of the “awful” spot.
It’s been close to 40 years since Sarah McLachlan dropped her debut album and kicked off a career where she achieved plenty of success in her native Canada as well as the United States with the help of songs including “I Will Remember You” and “Building a Mystery.”
However, there’s one track that stands out among the rest: “Angel,” which ended up near the top of the charts in 1998 and served as the soundtrack to the ad she filmed to help raise money for the ASPCA, which revolves around her reminding viewers the world is filled with animals that are “abused, beaten, or neglected” on a daily basis while driving the point home with the help of eyeless, bandaged, and forlorn dogs and cats.
The ad aired for the first time in 2006 and has helped the organization raise over $30 million for the admirable cause it supports. With that said, it’s also been responsible for instilling a Pavlovian response in countless viewers who rush to change the channel whenever they encounter it.
McLachlan got the chance to reflect on that particular aspect of her legacy during a recent interview with Rolling Stone where she acknowledged she sympathizes with people who do exactly that, saying:
“A friend of mine was on the [ASPCA] board and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this commercial? We’ve never done this before with a celebrity or someone known.’ I love animals, and we thought it might be a cool thing to do, so I did it…
But the music and the visuals…it’s painful. I couldn’t watch it. It was just like, ‘Oh, God is awful’ But it worked like a hot damn. And it’s funny, because I’m a super-happy, super-optimistic person, but that showed me as this sort of quiet, sad person with all my puppies and kittens.
I’ll never forget the director saying, “I just need a little more [makes a sad face] from you.”
She admitted she was more than happy to poke fun at herself with the Super Bowl commercial she filmed for Audi in 2014 as well as another one Busch Light aired during The Big Game in 2013 (she also made a cameo in an episode of Ozark where Jason Bateman’s character hallucinates her going off script and speaking directly to him while watching television).