Songfacts®:

• This song is about the fight for women's rights, which McLachlan felt were under attack in 2025. She's Canadian but has a huge fanbase in America, where the Roe v. Wade ruling that provides the right to abortion was overturned in 2022.
  
  "'One In A Long Line' is really powerful," McLachlan told American Songwriter. "I felt a real deep connection to those words, like a visceral body feeling of singing that song, because I'm feeling it, and we're all living it right now in real time."
• McLachlan wrote the song with Anne Preven, who wrote some songs on Miley Cyrus' 2008 album Breakout but is best known for writing the song "Torn," a huge hit for Natalie Imbruglia in 1997.
  
  Preven came up with the chorus, which was the jumping-off point for the song.
• The song is part of McLachlan's Better Broken album, her first release of original songs since Shine On in 2014. Better Broken was released on September 19, 2025, three days before the documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery – The Untold Story hit streaming services. The documentary introduced a new generation to the groundbreaking Lilith Fair festival, which McLachlan organized in 1997 as a showcase for female singer-songwriters. This was a time when promoters weren't booking two female artists on the same bill, and when radio station program directors wouldn't play two women back-to-back.
• McLachlan's daughters, India and Taja, sing on this track with her. They represent the next generation of women who will take up the fight.
  
  "I want them to have agency and choice over their bodies and what happens to them, as I do for all women," Sarah told Variety. "So that song for me was an opportunity to speak out, and to have my daughters on it was beautiful and amazing."