September 26, 2025
FILM: LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY
DIRECTED BY: ALLY PANKIW
STARRING: SARAH MCLACHLAN, SHERYL CROW, ERYKAH BADU
RATING: 3 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
There is a moment at the start of the new documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery when current pop artist Olivia Rodrigo is being interviewed and she mentions that she’d never heard of Lilith Fair. What?? This is exactly why documentaries like this need to exist. Anyone who followed pop music in the late 1990s knew about this concert series co-founded by Sarah McLachlan. From 1997 through the summer of 1999, these shows were staged all over the U.S. and Canada. As the film explains, this was hugely significant as it featured all female music artists. There had been plenty of other big outdoor festivals before from Woodstock to Live Aid but none of them were completely headlined by women.
Director Ally Pankiw’s film provides a detailed history of the festival featuring footage from the concert stages as well as from behind the scenes. McLachlan is, of course, prominently featured as she discusses the major success of the Fair along with its eventual end. Several other women who performed at the concerts are interviewed including Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Paula Cole, Lisa Loeb, Jewel, Liz Phair, and Bonnie Raitt. Other co-founders and managers also give their accounts of everything that happened in and around the three-year Fair including interactions with fans as well as the media and its various critics.
Notably, the documentary offers some interesting perspectives on the music business and culture of the 90s. Something I didn’t remember from the time but that is mentioned more than once is how radio stations wouldn’t play music from female artists back to back. Perhaps because I was already spinning CDs by many of these artists it hadn’t occurred to me just how sexist and fearful radio programmers were about losing an audience. Similarly, the film explores how women were not on the same concert bill performing back to back prior to this. It seems really silly to think about now but that was part of the culture at the time.
Clearly, based on the success of Lilith Fair, it would go down in history as one of the great concert series ever created. That alone makes the documentary worthy of a watch, just as the film Woodstock is about that festival and Questlove’s Summer of Soul is about the counterpart concert series in late 1960s New York City. But what’s also great about this film is how it showcases what kindred spirits these women were both on stage and off. One of the great performances featured is a duet between McLachlan and Sinead O’Connor of the former’s big hit Angel. There’s other priceless footage like that throughout the film. These women created a sisterhood that appeared to be pretty solid during the festival’s run. We don’t see any in-fighting or rivalries rather a major sense of comradery between them.
It’s also interesting to hear how the festival evolved from primarily featuring white women to the later inclusion of Badu, Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, and others. Fans were positively affected by the shows and the film includes attendees being interviewed at the time and how many of them felt the Fair was a safe place for all types of people.
Of course, there was plenty of backlash and negative media attention by conservative groups as well as protesters and bomb threats. Again, this seems incredibly silly and mean spirited but it happened and the film doesn’t shy away from including some of these darker moments. Still, the documentary is a very uplifting experience to watch and a true testament to the women involved, particularly McLachlan.
While some of the footage used in the film has aged faster than one would think for a Fair that is less than thirty years old, it’s a clear sign of how our various forms of physical media, especially video footage, needs some serious cleaning up and preservation or we will lose documentation of many late 20th Century events such as this one.
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is well-worth seeing for anyone who appreciates the powerful female singers and musicians who carved out a slice of rock history with these concerts. The film is currently streaming on Hulu.
FILM: LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY
DIRECTED BY: ALLY PANKIW
STARRING: SARAH MCLACHLAN, SHERYL CROW, ERYKAH BADU
RATING: 3 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
There is a moment at the start of the new documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery when current pop artist Olivia Rodrigo is being interviewed and she mentions that she’d never heard of Lilith Fair. What?? This is exactly why documentaries like this need to exist. Anyone who followed pop music in the late 1990s knew about this concert series co-founded by Sarah McLachlan. From 1997 through the summer of 1999, these shows were staged all over the U.S. and Canada. As the film explains, this was hugely significant as it featured all female music artists. There had been plenty of other big outdoor festivals before from Woodstock to Live Aid but none of them were completely headlined by women.
Director Ally Pankiw’s film provides a detailed history of the festival featuring footage from the concert stages as well as from behind the scenes. McLachlan is, of course, prominently featured as she discusses the major success of the Fair along with its eventual end. Several other women who performed at the concerts are interviewed including Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Paula Cole, Lisa Loeb, Jewel, Liz Phair, and Bonnie Raitt. Other co-founders and managers also give their accounts of everything that happened in and around the three-year Fair including interactions with fans as well as the media and its various critics.
Notably, the documentary offers some interesting perspectives on the music business and culture of the 90s. Something I didn’t remember from the time but that is mentioned more than once is how radio stations wouldn’t play music from female artists back to back. Perhaps because I was already spinning CDs by many of these artists it hadn’t occurred to me just how sexist and fearful radio programmers were about losing an audience. Similarly, the film explores how women were not on the same concert bill performing back to back prior to this. It seems really silly to think about now but that was part of the culture at the time.
Clearly, based on the success of Lilith Fair, it would go down in history as one of the great concert series ever created. That alone makes the documentary worthy of a watch, just as the film Woodstock is about that festival and Questlove’s Summer of Soul is about the counterpart concert series in late 1960s New York City. But what’s also great about this film is how it showcases what kindred spirits these women were both on stage and off. One of the great performances featured is a duet between McLachlan and Sinead O’Connor of the former’s big hit Angel. There’s other priceless footage like that throughout the film. These women created a sisterhood that appeared to be pretty solid during the festival’s run. We don’t see any in-fighting or rivalries rather a major sense of comradery between them.
It’s also interesting to hear how the festival evolved from primarily featuring white women to the later inclusion of Badu, Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, and others. Fans were positively affected by the shows and the film includes attendees being interviewed at the time and how many of them felt the Fair was a safe place for all types of people.
Of course, there was plenty of backlash and negative media attention by conservative groups as well as protesters and bomb threats. Again, this seems incredibly silly and mean spirited but it happened and the film doesn’t shy away from including some of these darker moments. Still, the documentary is a very uplifting experience to watch and a true testament to the women involved, particularly McLachlan.
While some of the footage used in the film has aged faster than one would think for a Fair that is less than thirty years old, it’s a clear sign of how our various forms of physical media, especially video footage, needs some serious cleaning up and preservation or we will lose documentation of many late 20th Century events such as this one.
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is well-worth seeing for anyone who appreciates the powerful female singers and musicians who carved out a slice of rock history with these concerts. The film is currently streaming on Hulu.