This weekend in 95-degree heat in southern California, girls made flower crowns and beaded bracelets, dads hoisted their daughters on their shoulders to watch their favorite artists above the crowd, and 45,000 people of all ages gathered for a music festival that felt mainstream—and that was its magic.
Olivia Rodrigo pulled off the first Daisy Chain Fields, a festival featuring a lineup of all women—Chappell Roan, Mitski, the bands Garbage and Bikini Kill, Doechii, special guests Alanis Morisette and Stevie Nicks, and Rodrigo herself. The 23-year-old pop star was inspired by Lilith Fair, a festival of all women musicians founded by Sarah McLachlan that took place from 1997 to 1999, before Rodrigo was born.
But McLachlan, who was also a special guest on Saturday, started Lilith Fair with something to prove. At the time, music industry gatekeepers wouldn’t allow two women to headline the same tour and wouldn’t even play two female artists back-to-back on the radio, so convinced were they that listeners would change the station.
By the time Lilith Fair ended its run in the late ’90s, it had unfairly become something of a punchline. But it had changed those practices, so much so that today it’s hard to imagine they ever existed. Truly, imagine a pop radio station refusing to play Taylor Swift and Beyoncé back-to-back—it’s inconceivable.
