25 years on, Lilith Fair is a reminder of how one woman's radical idea changed music

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/05/ [login to see] /25-years-on-lilith-fair-is-a-reminder-of-how-one-womans-radical-idea-changed-mus
It was July 5th 1997: Opening night of the groundbreaking all-female music festival Lilith Fair.

The lineup featured a who's who of female alternative musicians of the moment: Sheryl Crow, Jewel, The Indigo Girls, Lisa Loeb, Fiona Apple, Shawn Colvin, Tracy Chapman, Natalie Merchant and more.

Lilith Fair was the culmination of a year of work by its founder, a Canadian singer-songwriter. Sarah McLachlan had been told by music and concert industry executives that putting more than one woman back-to-back on a lineup or radio playlist wouldn't sell.

"Like, I'd walk in and do an interview and they said, 'Well, we'd love to add this song but we can't add you this week because we had a Tori Amos or because we added Tracy Chapman or because we added Sinéad O'Connor,'" she recalls. "And it was extremely frustrating. So the beginning of this was just born out of a desire to come together as a community. And it became this — we're going to break down some barriers. We're going to prove these guys wrong."