THE STORY – Explores the 1990s all-female music festival Lilith Fair.
THE CAST – Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Paula Cole, Jewel, Bonnie Raitt, Natalie Merchant, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Brandi Carlile & Olivia Rodrigo
THE TEAM – Ally Pankiw (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 Minutes
In a world where pop music is absolutely chock full of female superstars – from Miley Cyrus to Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, SZA, Billie Eilish, and so, so many more – it’s wild to realize we’re mere decades away from when radio stations were reticent to play two songs fronted by women back-to-back on terrestrial radio. This was the milieu back in the mid-1990s when a Canadian singer/songwriter, along with her management and production team, decided to upend the prevailing wisdom about concert tours and create a female-forward showcase to tour the continent. The result was Lilith Fair, and the stories from those shows, and the reflections of those both on stage and shaped by what they witnessed from being part of the crowd, is the basis for Ally Pankiw’s fine reflection upon this highly influential period of musical exuberance.
Pankiw’s film, “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery,” serves as both a time capsule and a kind of cautionary tale, illustrating the very real risks, both financial and even political, that such an event was forced to navigate. Beyond a simple showcase of a wide variety of talents from all kinds of genres, Lilith Fair proved unequivocally that the prejudices about who would support such a fest, and presuppositions about what constituted a festival audience, were in desperate need of re-evaluation in order to move the industry as a whole, and the culture itself, forward.
Halifax born Sarah McLachlan’s almost evangelical drive to expand her concerts to include a number of fellow female artists was the spark that set Lilith’s fire ablaze, and it’s her tenacity and youthful vigor that’s on full display in the film’s many archival segments. Many of these interviews were conducted by Canada’s Much Music staffers, part of the country’s provincial interest in local success south of the border, but they’re equally indicative of a slightly more progressive view of the endeavor compared to the more cloistered music media. This was made even more manifest during MTV’s golden years, whereby the barriers between genre and even gender were endemic throughout the industry.
Pankiw’s film provides contemporary interviews with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Erykah Badu, Olivia Rodrigo, and Emmylou Harris, each providing a unique perspective about how these series of shows affected them both as artists and fans alike. Others, such as Pat Benatar, provide alternate takes on their own shifting perspectives, illustrating the very real concerns from many of the women themselves that this could see seen not as a celebration but a ghettoization of women, an othering of their talents outside the more mainstream rock festivals that dominated the era.
Fiona Apple, Jewel, Brandi Carlile, Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega, and Indigo Girls all provide their welcome perspectives, though Tracy Chapman, the actual “superstar” on that first stage, is only heard from via contemporaneous clips. She’s one voice that in 2025 would have been an incredible get, and given her re-rise to public consciousness thanks to a country cover of her most famous song and recent Grammy appearance, her story is perhaps the most entwined with the complications derived from wanting to silo specific musical expressions.
The film never wallows in the negative, nor does it shy away from the real obstacles to pulling off the event in the first place. This is a three dimensional look at a complex series of shows, made all the better by the honest and at times self-deprecating comments from those that were there to experience these things live.
Musically the film shines, and the various performances (including the inevitable finale sing-along segments initiated by the ever effusive Indigo Girls) are pretty terrific. Contrast is made with other, more hellacious events such as Woodstock ’99 (itself already well-documented in a number of films), providing a stark contrast in both mood and audience makeup as the fans from that decade fragmented ever further.
In 2025, when there are increasingly few truly universally beloved acts thanks to a major decline in the mechanisms that buttressed monoculture, these differences in tone and style for the festival participants feels almost quaint. Yet the legacy of Lilith continues to this day, with the disparate talents making up the major events from Glastonbury to Coachella indicative of a refusal to abide to now extinct ideas about how many female-fronted songs can be stomached when played back-to-back.
Many of the lessons of Lilith Fair, however, have quickly been forgotten, and the film plays a further role in reminding not only of its successes, but of the way many elements of its courageous stands have been left aside in favor of other considerations. It was on brand for those on the Lilith stage to adhere to a particular set of politics, of course, and given today’s even more fractious divisions, there are still plenty that take even more radical positions. And yet, as the film demonstrates well, there was a real sense of community being built there, one that was as invitational to engage in those outside the bubble as it was celebrating those too often silenced by the loudest of voices.
Whether you attended those shows, had your own musical taste shaped by those that took the stage, or are simply interested in a more detailed look at this impactful period of popular music history, “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery” provides an excellent guide to this most epic of traveling shows. As one of the show’s superstars sings, the question of “who will save your souls if you won’t save your own?” stands to this day. As the organizers, performers, and audiences at these shows demonstrated, it still requires an active act to make change, rather than sitting back and letting the algorithms decide your taste, your politics, and your point of view.
