Songfacts®:

• Mystery can be seductive, but if you build it on a bed of artifice, it can be just plain silly. In this song, Sarah McLachlan describes the kind of person who might be trying a bit too hard to be special. Sandals in the snow? OK. But living in a church and sleeping with voodoo dolls? That's a bit much.
  
  "The song is merely about people trying to create really interesting facades for themselves," McLachlan explained in Rocket magazine. "It's about that on a deep level, but also on a light level it's a playful song - beautiful, f--ked-up people. It's about me! About all my friends!"
• McLachlan wrote this song with her producer, Pierre Marchand, who was also her co-writer on "Adia."
• "Building A Mystery" was the first single from Sarah McLachlan's fourth album, Surfacing, released in July 1997 soon after she launched the Lilith Fair. Jewel, Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple and other prominent female singer-songwriters joined McLachlan on the tour, which sold out most dates and garnered lots of media coverage.
  
  Before the tour, McLachlan was pretty popular in her native Canada but had just a modest following in America. Her previous album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, was released in 1993 and included the minor hit "Possession." She made another chart appearance in 1995 with the single "I Will Remember You," but that song didn't take off until 1999 when she put out a live version.
  
  As Lilith Fair marched forward, "Building A Mystery" climbed the charts and earned radio play thanks in part to McLachlan's efforts to call out the sexism in the industry - some stations wouldn't play female artists back-to-back. In October, when the tour was over, the song reached its chart peak of #13 in America. Singles from Surfacing album trickled out from there, with "Sweet Surrender" reaching #28 in February 1998, and "Adia" coming in at #3 that August while the second Lilith Fair was on the road.
• Matt Mahurin directed the music video, which is appropriately mysterious, showing the wayfaring stranger along with lots of tight shots of McLachlan. It got a lot of airplay on Canada's MuchMusic and America's VH1.
• McLachlan won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for this song. Two years later, she won the same award for the live version of "I Will Remember You."
  
  "Building A Mystery" also won the Juno Award (Canada's Grammys) for Single Of The Year.
• Surprisingly, this is Sarah McLachlan's only #1 hit in her native Canada. It held the top spot for eight weeks, longer than any other song in 1997.