“I’m happy to be a part of it. I’m happy to offer any advice if I can if I’m asked. But the younger generation needs to carry it forward now.” Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage |
Lilith Fair was born out of a desire that came from being in a weird, lonely job. Sarah McLachlan, having an epiphany about how poorly female musicians were treated in the 1990s, took it upon herself to create a festival where they could share the same stage together and prove their collective power in the industry — with a bonus being that “a lot of us have truck-driver mouths, and we’re able to have a really good time without pretense or preciousness or hierarchy.” The traveling music festival had three successful iterations in 1997, 1998, and 1999, and its history and legacy is documented in Hulu’s Emmy-eligible film, Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery. (McLachlan is joined by a dream blunt rotation of feminists including Sheryl Crow, the Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt, and Olivia Rodrigo.) But an attempt to recapture that magic by reviving the festival in 2010 was a failure, which McLachlan believes is enough evidence to prove it would be a relic of a bygone era if it were attempted in 2026.
“I think it would be very threatening to a large demographic,” she says. “It would be very enticing to a large demographic too, but it’s an incredibly polarizing world right now. One could argue that’s all the more reason to do it, but that wasn’t the reason to do it in the first place.” If Lilith Fair somehow returned from its mythological grave, McLachlan is emphatic that a new torchbearer would have to do the work to make it happen. But will anyone take her up on the challenge? |
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