1997 was a great year for music. It was also a great year for women in music—and, not unrelatedly, the year that Lilith Fair, the groundbreaking women-only music festival founded by Sarah McLachlan, was born.
For many older millennials, the festival remains a formative event—whether or not they attended it themselves. Yet as time has passed, Lilith Fair’s origin story and legacy have been slowly erased from the popular consciousness.
To correct that, a new documentary, Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery – The Untold Story, out now on Hulu, is connecting the dots for a new generation of music fans almost 30 years later. Directed by Ally Pankiw and based on Vanity Fair’s 2019 oral history of Lilith Fair, it is the second documentary about the festival, after 2001’s Lilith on Top detailed its third and final tour in 1999.
“To do another documentary was a surprise to me,” McLachlan tells me on a recent video call. “I was sold on it after realizing that there was this massive resurgence, this desire for it, but also a desire by the new generation to understand what it was.”
Building a Mystery opens with a montage of TikToks made by young women just discovering the festival, followed by an appearance from the 22-year-old singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo. “All of my favorite artists had played at this event—Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Jewel,” she says. “I was in disbelief I’d never heard about it before.”
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