Sarah McLachlan Felt Misunderstood After ASPCA ‘Angel’ PSA (Exclusive)

Sarah McLachlan reveals she felt misunderstood after her emotional ASPCA commercial was released.

In an interview with PEOPLE, the three-time Grammy winner reflected on the impact of the PSA that she starred in, which featured her 1997 ballad “Angel.”

“I think people have an idea of who I was,” says McLachlan. “Regardless of my playful, happy nature, what was portrayed was somber album covers and dark moody music.”

The “Fallen” musician notes that “it surprises people when they meet me and I’m so happy and light.”

“They assume I’m going to be like Sylvia Plath and reading poetry and drinking wine at midnight with candles and all dark and moody,” she quips. However, that’s not the case.

“I get it all out in my music,” McLachlan says of her more melancholy emotions.

While McLachlan says the PSA is “still painful,” she’s ultimately glad she did it.

“It raised an incredible amount of money for the ASPCA,” she says. “In some ways, [it] brought me to a whole new audience.”

Truthfully, McLachlan loves “to poke fun at myself because I’m not a very serious person at all despite my music.”

“That’s just one element of me,” she says. “It’s created an opportunity for lots of memes and lots of poking fun, and yet it did a lot of good in the world. So, that makes me really happy.”

In June, McLachlan reflected on the ASPCA with Rolling Stone, revealing how it exposed her to “a whole world of fans who are 80 plus.” “The late-night television thing,” she explained, before recalling how she ended up doing the spot.

“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,” McLachlan recalled.

According to the “Building a Mystery” artist, it raised roughly $30 million in one year.

Still, McLachlan has found it challenging to watch over the years.

“I couldn’t watch it. It was just like, ‘Oh, God is awful,'” she said, before adding: “But it worked like a hot damn.”

McLachlan’s new album Better Broken is out Friday, Sept. 19.