Lilith Fair doc explores how it changed the music industry and gave women a voice
Lilith Fair doc explores how it changed the music industry and gave women a voiceMelissa Ruggieri
USA TODAYThe premise of Lilith Fair was simple: make women musicians matter.In the late-’90s, with radio programmers refusing to play songs from female artists in succession and concert promoters reluctant to have more than one woman on a bill, Sarah McLachlan took the reins and changed the music industry.The history of the groundbreaking festival, which sold out amphitheaters nationwide for three consecutive summers with lineups including Sheryl Crow, The Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt, Liz Phair, Paula Cole, Suzanne Vega and Erykah Badu, receives its rightful hosannas in a new documentary.”Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery – The Untold Story,” directed by Ally Pankiw (“Black Mirror,” “The Great”) and with Diane Sawyer as an executive producer, premieres Sunday, Sept. 21, on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.Revisiting the 1997-1999 period of her life brought, “a lot of joy, a lot of nostalgia, maybe a tiny bit of PTSD,” McLachlan tells USA TODAY in a phone interview from New York. “It’s like, oh, man, you gloss over some of the more challenging bits when you have almost 30 years distance from it.”The documentary, which clocks in at just over 90 minutes, combs through 600 hours of footage and includes current-day interviews with many of the players to remind of the triumphs and obstacles McLachlan and the festival’s promoters battled.Lilith Fair brought bomb threats and Grammy AwardsJoyful accomplishments – album sales among the lineup skyrocketed, Grammy Awards were suddenly a reality, upstarts including Mya and Dido received an immense career boost – were often neutralized by attacks on the essence of the festival.The inclusion of Planned Parenthood tents prompted protests outside venues, including a bomb threat in Atlanta (the “scariest moment” of the tours, McLachlan says); jokes about the perceived crunchy granola chicks-strumming-acoustic-guitars aesthetic turned the fest into a punchline; and the documented violence and “toxic male culture” at Woodstock ’99 seemed a direct reaction to slay the benevolent vibe cultivated at Lilith Fair.”It was something I found myself having to defend every day on some level,” McLachlan, 57, says of the repeated questioning about why or how an all-female festival could succeed. “I never understood it. Why would celebrating women be so challenging?”Lilith Fair’s commitment to diversityThe documentary doesn’t evade the issues the event experienced, particularly in its infancy.The greatest challenge for the inaugural year of Lilith Fair – named for Lilith, who in Jewish lore was the first wife of Adam who refused to “surrender her strength” – was getting promoters on board.Tour co-founder Marty Diamond says in the film they needed a strong co-headliner to share the marquee with McLachlan and worked hard to land Tracy Chapman, a “musical anomaly in the best way possible.”Despite Chapman’s inclusion, the festival was criticized for its lack of diversity, prompting McLachlan to reevaluate for the second year. Meshell Ndegeocello, Queen Latifah and Badu joined the 1998 lineup, as well as Missy Elliott, playing her first-ever live dates and arriving to the venue from a hitchhiked ride after her tour bus broke down.The exposure was unquestionable. “My welcome into the industry was by Sarah McLachlan and Bonnie Raitt,” says Badu in the documentary. “I know (playing the festival) expanded my audience greatly.”The enduring influence of Lilith FairThe effect of Lilith Fair on careers and culture was evident in the moment.But the festival also produced life-changing experiences for artists-in-the-making.Brandi Carlile recalls in the film how attending the show at The Gorge in her native Washington as a young gay woman and seeing The Indigo Girls perform was “the glue that held the emotion together for those women” on stage affected her worldview.Olivia Rodrigo represents the appreciation Gen Z has for the era and says the “women songwriters of the ’90s are my Northern Star.”In the film, McLachlan pointedly notes that an attempt at a Lilith reboot in 2010 “did not succeed.”Now, she says, she’s still asked repeatedly when and if she’ll bring the festival back.”I think it would need to be a new idea and created by someone up and coming in the industry now,” she says, pointing out that women such as Taylor Swift – who frequently taps female musicians to open for her – and Carlile – with her Girls Just Wanna annual festival – are fostering the same sentiment as Lilith. “My dream would be to have Taylor, Beyoncé, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, but they’re selling out stadiums on their own, they don’t need it.”But McLachlan is still proud of the industry recalibrations that Lilith Fair produced.”Certainly the idea that women couldn’t be played back to back on radio or be together on a bill no longer exists,” she says. “We changed the face of the industry in that sense. 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