The growl that powered "Make You a Believer" across Canadian rock radio, and the voice that once told a 22-year-old touring drummer he had what it took, belonged to Sass Jordan. The Juno Award winning singer and longtime Canadian Idol judge died on October 2, 2026, at 63.

A statement posted to her Instagram account on October 3 said she had "peacefully crossed over to the other side" the day before, "surrounded by her loving family," and that she remained in their hearts as "an inimitable force of nature" and "an irreplaceable being of light and joy" (Exclaim).

Jordan was born Sarah Jordan on December 23, 1962, in Birmingham, England, the daughter of a French university professor and an English actress (Universal Music; The Canadian Encyclopedia). She was three when her father took a university professorship and moved the family to Montreal, where she grew up in Westmount and left home at 14 after her parents separated.

She found her way into music as a teenager in a Montreal new wave band called the Pin Ups. "We were kind of doing our own thing because we weren't a typical rock band," she said of those club nights and tours of eastern Canada. She later sang backup for the Montreal pop group the Box before stepping out on her own. Her solo debut, "Tell Somebody," arrived on Atlantic Records on November 18, 1988, and its title track video put her in heavy rotation on MuchMusic almost overnight. "I remember going in two weeks from relative obscurity to being recognized as the girl in the video," she said of the change. The song carried her to the Juno Award for Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989.

She released "Racine" on May 31, 1992, the best-selling album of her career, and Billboard marked the year by naming her its top female rock artist. That same year, she lent her voice to Joe Cocker on "Trust in Me," a duet included on the soundtrack to "The Bodyguard," one of the best-selling soundtrack albums ever made (Guitar Player).

Her next album, "Rats," came out on March 1, 1994, and through these years she opened arena shows for Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Van Halen. The drummer on that tour was 22 years old: Taylor Hawkins, years before he joined the Foo Fighters. "Sass taught me how to be in a rock and roll band and gave me my first rock and roll check," Hawkins said of his time with her. A show the band played at New York's South Street Seaport that year stayed unreleased for nearly three decades.

Hawkins carried that start all the way to the Foo Fighters, and on July 9, 2015, Jordan joined the band onstage in Toronto to sing "Stay With Me." Dave Grohl introduced her to the crowd that night by crediting her directly: "If it weren't for Sass Jordan, Taylor Hawkins wouldn't be in Foo Fighters." After Hawkins died in 2022, Jordan finally released that 1994 Seaport recording as the album "Live in New York Ninety-Four." "As we hit the milestone that marks one year since Taylor left us, I wanted to do something to honor his memory, a recognition and appreciation for his glorious, big, beautiful energy, which lives on through this recording and in all of our hearts," she said.

Jordan's range went beyond music. In 2001 she spent five months in New York playing Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway production "Love, Janis," a part she called "the most terrifying, horrifying thing I've done in my life." She later appeared in Toronto and Winnipeg stagings of "The Vagina Monologues" and made guest appearances on NBC's "Sisters" and CTV's "Corner Gas." In 2003 she sang at Toronto's SARS benefit concert at Downsview Park, opening for the Rolling Stones before a crowd estimated at close to half a million. That same year she joined the judges' panel of CTV's "Canadian Idol," the only woman alongside Jake Gold, Zack Werner and Farley Flex, a seat she held for all six seasons through 2008. "Six years solid of laughing my ass off, it was awesome," she said of the run.

By then she had settled in Ontario with her husband, the musician Derek Sharp, who later fronted the Guess Who and who produced her 2009 album "From Dusk 'til Dawn." In 2012, the Royal Canadian Air Force named her Honorary Colonel of 417 Combat Support Squadron at 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta, after she had already toured to Canadian Forces Station Alert to entertain troops over Christmas 2010. "It's difficult to describe the job that these people do because they are the most dedicated, amazing human beings," she said of the squadron (Government of Canada).

She kept recording and touring long after the radio hits slowed, marking the 25th anniversary of "Racine" with the 2017 tour "Racine Revisited" and later joining David Bowie's own alumni band on the 2019 tour "A Bowie Celebration." She released the blues album "Rebel Moon Blues" in 2020 and "Bitches Blues" in 2022, her final studio album.

On July 8, 2026, she returned to Peterborough Musicfest for a third time, taking the Del Crary Park stage at 8 p.m. Less than three months later, on October 2, she died at 63, survived by her husband, Derek Sharp, their daughter Stella Jordan-Sharp, her stepdaughter Brianne Sharp, and her brother Daniel Jordan.

Jordan's catalogue runs from "Tell Somebody" through "Bitches Blues," eleven studio albums deep, anchored by the Juno trophy she won before she turned thirty and by a duet with Joe Cocker that rode "The Bodyguard" soundtrack into tens of millions of homes. For six seasons she was the only woman judging the next generation of Canadian singers on national television, and for one stretch of rock and roll history she was the bandleader who handed a young Taylor Hawkins his first paycheque, then gave his memory a record three decades later. The albums stay in print. The Del Crary Park stage she filled in July stands exactly where she left it.