“Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery” recalls the success of the woman-led music festival created by singer Sarah McLachlan. McLachlan and documentarian Ally Pankiw talk about the film.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Music festivals are often filled with dudes, dudes and more dudes. In the late ’90s, a group of organizers tried something different – put women first. Industry insiders said, not a chance this will work. But Lilith Fair was a smash.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY”)
INDIGO GIRLS: (Singing) Closer I am to fine, yeah.
FADEL: People flocked to see musicians like the Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu and the main driver of the festival, Sarah McLachlan. There’s a documentary on Hulu right now looking back on what they achieved. It’s called “Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery.” We’ll hear from director Ally Pankiw in a bit. But first, Sarah McLachlan told me what the atmosphere was like in the music industry at the time.
SARAH MCLACHLAN: It was still very male-dominated. There was an attitude that you could not play women back-to-back on the radio, and you certainly couldn’t have them play together on tour. Like, I would go…
FADEL: That’s wild.
MCLACHLAN: …Into radio stations all the time, and they’d say, oh, well, we love your song. But we really can’t add it this week because we added Tracy Chapman, or because we added Jewel, or we added Sinead O’Connor. And I’m like, well, that’s extremely frustrating, to bang up against that all the time.
FADEL: So Lilith Fair comes to be, and you start with just a few shows. And people are kind of telling you, Sarah, this is not going to work. What are you doing?
MCLACHLAN: Well, trouble is we were already doing it, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: And it was working.
MCLACHLAN: It was working, yeah. We did four shows in 1996, kind of a test run. And we sold out, like, 15,000-, 20,000-seat amphitheaters.
FADEL: Let’s hear a clip from the film. This is singer-songwriter Paula Cole.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY”)
PAULA COLE: And we realized, like, this is something that’s much bigger than us or what we even thought it could be. There was magic in the air, and that was the first day of Lilith Fair.
FADEL: Ally, going back to the late ’90s to document what Lilith Fair meant to people – means to people – I mean, why was it important to revisit this moment in time now?
ALLY PANKIW: I think it’s, like, the perfect moment, unfortunately. I think that period of pop culture, like, taught me how to look at myself and how to think about myself as a young woman and as a young gay person. It’s just a blueprint for a better way to do things because there was a gap in the industry. There wasn’t really a lot of safe spaces for women where they could go to a festival or consume live music.
FADEL: Yeah.
PANKIW: And so it was definitely filling a gap – saw a demand and filled it. And, like, that’s just good business.
FADEL: Yeah.
MCLACHLAN: I mean, it was almost kind of an antithesis of the way I was raised, too, which was, you know, don’t go thinking you’re anything special. And, you will fail. Why would you even try? And I’m like…
FADEL: Aww.
MCLACHLAN: And it was all about proving my mother wrong. So, you know, thanks, Mom.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: It worked out. There’s a detail in this film that I didn’t know about. And it was another really heartbreaking moment to watch as a woman, which is how the Grammys treated some of the Lilith Fair artists that swept the awards that night.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY”)
UNIDENTIFIED PRESENTER: And the Grammy goes to Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal.
FADEL: Yet they have this diminishing experience at the Grammys.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY”)
SHAWN COLVIN: But then Paula Cole, Sarah McLachlan and I were asked to share the stage and do this medley instead of each of us being able to play our own songs.
MCLACHLAN: And this is something that happens a lot in the Grammys. They like to do these mashups. But at the time, considering the massiveness of our success, it felt just like once again, we were taking a step backwards and being lumped into this cool category of, oh, just women. The women are going to do a little medley. And yet, you know, R. Kelly and Hanson are – you know, get their own full track.
FADEL: Wow.
MCLACHLAN: And I’m like, really? You know, in some ways, we should have just said, [expletive]. We’re not doing it. But yet they would have just gotten someone else to fill the slot. So we thought, OK, well, this is a minute and 30 seconds that we each get to play to, you know, the biggest audience we’ve probably ever had on national television. But we weren’t that happy about it.
FADEL: Yeah.
PANKIW: It felt a bit, like, punitive. It just felt like after every year of Lilith, it was like, we want to remind you – don’t get too powerful. Don’t get…
MCLACHLAN: Yeah. Don’t think you’re bigger than yourself. Don’t get too excited.
FADEL: Yeah.
MCLACHLAN: Yeah.
FADEL: You oversaw three years in a row of this festival. Why’d you stop?
MCLACHLAN: I stopped because I was utterly exhausted. I had given my whole world to Lilith for three years, so I really wanted to have a bit more of a normal life. So I guess I could say it was selfish. But, you know, I feel like we did what we set out to do and did so much more than that.
FADEL: Do you see anything, Sarah, in the music industry today that’s changed for the better, perhaps because of Lilith Fair?
MCLACHLAN: I mean, I – you know, I’m not going to say it’s because of Lilith Fair, because there’s many things that come into play. But I will say that we definitely changed – we forced the change of attitudes within the industry towards women and towards their commercial viability. I see artists like Taylor Swift in complete control of her career, reaching stratosphere heights and championing women alongside her, people like Brandi Carlile championing women, championing queer artists in ways that we never used to have.
FADEL: I was thinking about Taylor Swift and Beyonce. Like, they literally move markets. Like, I think with Beyonce, all this cowboy attire just sold out. You can’t even get it anywhere because of what she did.
MCLACHLAN: Oh, they change a city’s economy…
FADEL: Yeah.
MCLACHLAN: …Every time they come to their market.
FADEL: It’s amazing.
MCLACHLAN: I mean, it’s amazing.
FADEL: Ally, same question to you.
PANKIW: Yeah. I mean, I see young female artists advocating for themselves in a way that’s like, no, I don’t want to wear that. I don’t want you to force me to wear what I don’t want to wear. I want to work with the director I want to work with. I think that Lilith undeniably made the path easier for us to walk through every door.
FADEL: We’ve been talking about the new documentary “Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery.” That’s now streaming on Hulu. My guests – director Ally Pankiw and the founder of Lilith Fair, Sarah McLachlan. And Sarah has a new album out, by the way. It’s called “Better Broken.” And it’s your first album, I think, in almost a decade, right? Your tenth album.
MCLACHLAN: Yeah, 11 years, actually.
FADEL: 11 years. Thank you both so much.
PANKIW: Thank you.
MCLACHLAN: Thanks so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY”)
MCLACHLAN: (Singing) You’re building a mystery.
(CHEERING)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.npr.org ’
