From Lilith Fair to Daisy Chain Fields, with edge and charm

Paste Magazine is your source for the best music, movies, TV, comedy, videogames, books, comics, craft beer, politics and more. Discover your favorite albums and films. , Sarah MacLachlan says that she gets asked in 'every interview' whether she plans to bring back Lilith Fair, the music festival she co-founded in the late 90s featuring an exclusively female-fronted lineup. 'We need something like it,' MacLachlan says. 'But it would have to look very different. ' Twenty-seven years after the final Lilith Fair, I arrived at Great Park in Irvine, California, for the inaugural iteration of Lilith Fair's spiritual successor: Daisy Chain Fields, a charity benefit festival featuring an all-female lineup, headlined and curated by Olivia Rodrigo. I can't remember the last time I was this excited upon seeing a music festival lineup. Daisy Chain Fields' bill was an impressively diverse mix in terms of background, genre, and generation. The first Lilith Fair was criticized for being overwhelmingly white and singer-songwriter-oriented, and it course-corrected in the following years to include more artists of color and more rock, rap, soul, and R&B acts. Daisy Chain Fields represented some of the best of today's mainstream and alternative mainstays and up-and-coming new faces in both areas, as well as the Lilith-era innovators without whom none of this would be possible. Within the first couple hours at Daisy Chain, I was charmed by Quiet Light's unexpectedly dramatic ambient pop set accompanied by a duo of pastel-clad ballet dancers, Eli's McBling-campy love letter to 'God, love, and pop music,' and Rachel Chinouriri debuting an unreleased track from her forthcoming sophomore album, which sounded like a cross between fellow Daisy Chain performer Santigold's 'Say Aha' and the Black Eyed Peas' 'Pump It. ' Later in the day, I found myself dead on my feet while my arms spelled out 'H-O-T-T-O-G-O' with the rest of the crowd, because no matter how exhausted I was from running around Great Park in 95-degree-weather, Chappell Roan's sky-sweeping vocal runs are powerful enough to revive anyone, especially when she's rocking ais safe). Watching Doechii rap 'BOILED PEANUTS' and mix it into a sample of Queen Latifah's 'U.N. I.T. Y.' was an unexpected and beautiful Lilith Fair full-circle moment, as was hearing Kim Deal sing 'Saints'—I could only assume that today, the Fair she was referring to was Lilith and the saints in question were the women who made it happen. The Lilith comparisons were warranted, even invited. Rodrigo herself is one of the first voices we hear in the Lilith Fair documentary, saying that 'all favorite artists' had played it. Sarah MacLachlan was the first artist she contacted to take part in Daisy Chain Fields, and in almost every interview ahead of it, Rodrigo has cited Lilith Fair as its main influence. yet, I cannot recommend it enough. It's a beautiful and moving—though at times really tough—watch, a reminder of just how rampant misogyny in the music industry was, and how more than enough of it has persisted well into the 21st century. There's footage of Sheryl Crow getting sexually harassed onstage at Woodstock '99. She cracks jokes about it, as is often the best way to handle that kind of thing, and later states during a press conference, 'I hope it's not representative of our future as a nation or the youth of America. ' These words in particular are hard to hear in hindsight, knowing how little would change and how much would outright regress. Sometimes it's hard for me not to view pop culture feminism with skepticism, in part because I came of age during its mainstream peak—and 'girlboss' being used non-derogatorily and Beyoncé sampling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 'We Should All Be Feminists' speech—and entered adulthood as it was crashing and burning. I turned eighteen just weeks after Trump's first election, shortly before the MeToo movement, which got stripped for parts almost as quickly as it took off. The hope that men would be held accountable for their actions and that women's first-person accounts of surviving sexual and domestic violence flashed in the pan before dissolving into a years-long contest over who could engage with art, literature, music, and film in the most morally pure way, and arguably led to more policing over the ways in which survivors were allowed to talk about their experiences. In the years since, our administration's defunding of essential medical infrastructure has included targeted attacks on abortion, contraception, sex education, and gender affirming care. The men of my generation have grown more politically conservative, and their female counterparts are told that men's right-wing radicalization is somehow the fault of women in STEM and novelty T-shirts that say 'DUMP HIM' and girls who wouldn't just take one for the team and toss the future school shooter a pity fuck. In the tent cities of Gaza and in the ICE detention centers here in the U.S., women are raped, forced to give birth without adequate medical care, and separated from their children, and our taxes help fund all of it. Georgia's state government made Adriana Smith's legally brain-dead corpse carry a fetus to term, yet we're supposed to care about an alleged 'male loneliness epidemic' or put our faith in ribbons and flower crowns and smooth-brained notions of 'reclaiming girlhood' to get us out of the mess we're in? : the lineup was great, the cause is one that I wholeheartedly believe in, and, for the sake of transparency, I'll admit I'm not above using my vocation as a music journalist to get me into places where cool shit is happening. But I think in some ways, this was my attempt at cracking through my own cynicism when it comes to both pop music and gender politics—two things I've been writing about for my entire career because they're both sources of endless fascination and frustration for me. I have been trying to reframe my cynicism. I do still believe that art—music in particular—has a unique ability to affect social and political change in areas where other forms of messaging might fall short. Still, I'm by no means under the impression that artists could fix these world-plaguing issues even if they wanted to—primarily because this is unrealistic, and secondarily because setting out with the goal of writing a song that changes the world more often than not leads to bad, boring art. I'm not depending on Olivia Rodrigo to singlehandedly end the patriarchy. What she can do, however, is throw a damn good festival that makes a difference. Rodrigo is an incredibly talented musician with a great work ethic. I appreciate that, at a time when artists are incentivized to capitalize on trendy, viral hype moments, Rodrigo seems to be forging a more sustainable trajectory of pop stardom and musical longevity, modeled in part after artists whose work has been similarly consistent and enduring. Calling an artist a 'student of the genre' feels cliched and almost backhanded at this point, but I've long admired Rodrigo's practice of studying and giving back to her musical influences. I love that she takes every opportunity she can to introduce her fans to the music that inspires her, whether that's by sharing the stage with Sheryl Crow and David Byrne, featuring Robert Smith on one of her songs, or bringing the Breeders on tour as her support act . I love that this educational, paying-it-forward aspect of her fandom and artistry extends beyond just music: there are definitely young people out there who are reading Annie Ernaux because Rodrigo cited the French author as an influence or learning about Yoko Ono's visual art because Rodrigo chose to feature a grove of Ono's Wish Trees as an interactive installation at Daisy Chain Fields. She's doing another thing that someone of her level of fame and influence should do: being consistently vocal about pressing political issues and putting her money where her mouth is. There were always going to be limits to how radical Daisy Chain could be; after all, GA tickets were a couple hundred at face value and sold through the literal monopoly, Live Nation. Maybe my instinct was to cringe a little bit at the praise showered upon Melinda French Gates—and to Google Gates' net worth to see how much $10 million is really worth to her. Ultimately though, maybe it's more about how much $10 million is worth to the nonprofits it's going to and the people they'll be able to help because of it. Fundraising means getting people with deep pockets to open them up, and Olivia engaging directly with specific organizations and talking publicly about each of their individual missions was integral to making Daisy Chain as authentic and personal as it was. It's so easy for a charitable cause to feel faceless, for festivities to become a distraction. At Daisy Chain, entertainment and social change were intertwined. A few days leading up to the festival, Rodrigo released her first bona fide protest song: a synthy, almost dance-punk number named 'serena joy,' after a female antagonist in Margaret Atwood'sI'd joked to a friend that my Daisy Chain Fields experience felt kind of like the stock Christmas movie plot where the hard-hearted Scrooge has to open his heart and rediscover the true meaning of Christmas, but instead it's a curmudgeonly 27-year-old woman getting back in touch with her preteen self who was first discovering feminism, often through the music that she connected with, music that made her see impending womanhood as something to be invigorated and hopeful about, and women's art in general as something that could make a difference. To quote an excellent essay by Rayne Fisher-Quann that appeared in the official Daisy Chain zine, I wanted to believe that 'a feminism that is critical of power and forgiving of people' was still possible in practice. When I spoke to the organizers tabling for Jhpiego, National Women's Law Center, and Black Mamas Matter Alliance, I thought about how many more women and girls they could help because of Daisy Chain Fields. When Sarah MacLachlan dedicated her Olivia Rodrigo-assisted rendition of 'Angel' to the memory of Dolly Parton, specifically mentioning her philanthropy work, I found myself not putting aside my complicated feelings about celebrity and capitalism entirely, but thinking about the very real impact of Dolly Parton's money going to public health research and education, particularly in the rural South. In a perfect world, ordinary people would get what they need without having to do a song and dance for it; we wouldn't need the philanthropy of the very wealthy and famous. But working within the confines of reality as we know it, there is a tangible difference between a book in a child's hands or a flu shot in their arm and the absence of those things. Sometimes the instances that shook me out of my pessimism were smaller, like a conversation I had with a mom who'd attended Lilith Fair and came to Daisy Chain Fields with her preteen daughter—she was thrilled to catch the Breeders and Garbage, and she gushed about her daughter's cover band. The daughter, smiling but visibly embarrassed by her proud mom, demurred and shyly mentioned that she was excited to see Chappell Roan. I never thought I'd end up seeing Emily's Sassy Lime join Bikini Kill onstage at a music festival curated and headlined by an ex-Disney pop star. Then again, I also never thought I'd see a group of tween girls posing for photos in front of a Jenny Holzer truism. Maybe these were wake-up calls for me to check my own biases, that there were still ways in which I'd failed to internalize my own tough talk about the multifacetedness of girls and women. As much as I worry about countercultural movements getting absorbed into the mainstream, misinterpreted, and politically de-fanged, I'm also aware that a certain amount of exposure is needed for these movements to survive and spread their message. Beggars, unfortunately, cannot be choosers. So if Olivia Rodrigo is helping teach the kids about the Guerrilla Girls, how much does it really matter if it's in an interactive pop-up alongside a Taco Bell brand activation where you can pose for photos inside a giant pink Baja Blast? Hell, I would have posed for a photo in the giant pink Baja Blast too, had the line not been a mile long. On the subject of lines—and I say this with the knowledge that putting together a music festival is a tremendously difficult undertaking and the first year is always a crash test—I don't think the organizers anticipated just how many people they would have to feed . I understand the desire to spotlight bespoke local small businesses, many of them women-owned. Ideologically, that's something I can get behind. However, they weren't equipped to feed as many people as they had to. I spoke with festivalgoers who stood in the sun for up to an hour waiting for food because there was no other option . I'm willing to write this off as a first-year issue to be worked out in future iterations of Daisy Chain Fields, and do not think that Rodrigo herself is in any way to blame for this oversight . Other attractions at Daisy Chain Fields had similarly long lines: the carousel, the Depop and Etsy villages, the LEGO garden, the Micro Rave . I might've checked some of these out if not for the lines and the fact that there was so much music to see, which was, above all else, what I was there for. The staggered schedule meant minimal overlap, but the vast distance between the two stages often made it moot. The festival grounds' 'main drag,' so to speak, was a walkway adorned with notable landmarks in women's history and quotes from history-making women. Between this and the Marigold Stage stretched a meadow dotted with patchworked person-sized pillows, low-to-the-ground flower-shaped platforms, white crocheted umbrellas, and massive faux-flower arrangements springing from the ground—all of which served as both photo-ops and just places to rest. On the other side of Great Park was the Dandelion Stage, near the 'Daisy Chain Reaction' building that housed booths for each of the 10 charitable organizations the festival was benefiting. Above all of it, a bright orange hot air balloon bobbed against the sky, the day's festivities all taking place under the watchful eye of its big white-and-yellow daisy decal. As the sky dimmed around it after Chappell Roan's set, lending the balloon's orange a luminescent gold tinge, I decided to skip out on Not For Radio in order to find a decent spot for the main event. Soon, the lady of the hour arrived, looking angelic in a white sundress and a yellow-and-white ribbon armband and backed by an all-women band, each member wearing a T-shirt of an iconic female musician . —from when the opening strings of the prim and princessy 'drop dead' rose up around her, before she even started singing—that she has It. Rodrigo's command of the stage is undeniable; she knows how to hold back and build to the moments where she's doing anything but. Watching Rodrigo perform is like being personally invited to the party of the coolest girl you know and, despite the fact that everybody who is anybody is in attendance, she's genuinely thrilled that you specifically decided to show up. It's an energy Rodrigo exudes regardless of the musical lane she's in, adapting to guide the audience through various segments of her live set: the bratty pop-punk portion of the evening , segueing into her New Romantic period , and later winding down for a pair of tear-jerking piano ballads . In between, she brought Lilith Fair founder Sarah MacLachlan onstage to sing two duets: a spellbinding rendition of de facto Lilith Fair anthem 'Building a Mystery,' and 'Angel,' which was dedicated to, in MacLachlan's words, 'the OG matriarch, beautiful goddess of country music. ' I'd half expected at least one of Daisy Chain's artists to perform a Dolly Parton song, perhaps a group of them singing 'I Will Always Love You' á la the Lilith Fair 'I Shall Be Released' cover, but Parton's passing was a bit too close to the festival to allow adequate time for setlist changes. One of Rodrigo's guests, Karen O, was unable to make it due to a last-minute emergency, which was a bummer; still, I've no doubt in my mind that we will one day hear Karen and Olivia sing a heartrending rendition of 'Maps' together, and the last-minute replacement certainly did not disappoint. 'I've been keeping a secret from you guys,' Rodrigo teased. 'And there's someone very special here to surprise you…Will you please say hello to Alanis Morissette! ' Rodrigo and Morrissette sang a joyous rendition of 'Ironic'—the perfect lemons-into-lemonade last-minute solution to the lack of Karen O. Also, Morrissette's cheeky lyric change of 'It's like meeting the man of my dreams / And then meeting his beautiful…husband' felt fitting for a duet with the pop star who once bemoaned, ' Speaking of guys—yep, they were there! Daisy Chain boasted an outnumbered and politely spirited contingent of gay guys and girl dads who Rodrigo called upon to sing Dan Nigro's part in the New Wave sparkler 'expectations' in their 'lowest, manliest voices,' 'All my boys at Daisy Chain! I love you, you guys are allies, thanks so much,' she remarked drolly. When she asked the girls to sing the other part of the call-and-response bridge—'our mantra, because we deserve the fucking world,' as Rodrigo put it—'I've got big expectations! / I've got real big expectations! ' standout 'deja vu,' Rodrigo's sort-of closer before the unofficial encore. 'Stevie, Stevie,' she whispered into the mic, as if conjuring our gold dust godmother like Bloody Mary from a bathroom mirror. Moments later, Ms. Nicks walked onstage, hand in hand with Rodrigo, to earth-shaking cheers and took her place at the ribbon-adorned mic stand. Saying that hearing Stevie Nicks and Olivia Rodrigo sing 'Landslide' together made me cry is a totally insufficient descriptor of my reaction to said rendition of 'Landslide. ' If you know me, you know I'll cry at damn near anything. As soon as Nicks opened her mouth, something hit me right in the trachea; it melted out of me in guttural sobs, my tears like avalanches racing down the snow-covered hills before Rodrigo even joined in. For her entire set, she'd appeared so confident. When she began to sing, though, I saw a dent in her fearlessness for the first time. 'Can the child within my heart rise above? ' she asked Nicks, who met her with a soft smile, mouthing the last two words while doing a lifting motion with her hand—a surprisingly intimate gesture of encouragement from one of the most trailblazing women in rock history to her young mentee. To hear these two women separated by a few generations—two women who each, to some degree, make music that embodies the fears, passions, and growing pains of their respective generation—harmonize to the line 'I've been afraid of changing' made me think about how there has always been a lot for young women to fear, whether these fears are specific to womanhood or just parts of being human. As they sang, I thought about Dolly—my immediate reaction to her passing just days earlier was that it hadn't even occurred to me that Dolly Parton. Then that thought jumped to:—a thought that circles my mind more frequently than I'd like and has for as long as I can remember, one that I violently shove away just as often, because to me it's more unfathomable and inevitable than anything else in this world. Not all change is to be feared. A lot has changed for the better between Lilith Fair and Daisy Chain Fields. Sarah MacLachlan founded Lilith Fair in response to an era where festivals refused to book two female-fronted acts as headliners and radio stations wouldn't play two women back to back. In its time, Lilith Fair wasn't cool or widely celebrated—it was a punchline at best and a target at worst. MacLachlan and co. received bomb threats for allowing organizers from Planned Parenthood to table at the Fair; at Daisy Chain Fields, Planned Parenthood stood alongside organizations thatThis material impact obviously outshines the other, more ideological feat—that one of the biggest pop stars in the world could put on an explicitly feminist music festival that is universally critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and—but both still feel like big steps in the right direction, a 'look how far we've come' moment. In order to shake people out of apathy, you've got to give them something to care about. You cannot fight for a better world if you don't believe that it is possible. The best we can hope for is to get bolder over time, keep building the mystery, and believe there is