If you look at the lineup of any major music festival today, you’ll see plenty of female headliners. But until the 90s, it just wasn’t that way.

Back then, concert promoters and radio stations had a largely rumoured unwritten rule, that stated that you couldn’t play two female artists back to back, because they thought the audience would get bored.

Vancouver’s own Sarah McLachlan was told exactly that when she wanted a female opener for her tour. Instead of taking the “no”, she went and built Lilith Fair, an all female touring festival that started right here in Vancouver. The very first test show happened in Vancouver at the Pacific Coliseum in 1996, and it was so successful that it launched the full tour that would change music history.

At its peak, Lilith Fair was moving millions of tickets and featuring everyone from Sheryl Crow to Missy Elliott. By the time the tour hit UBC Thunderbird Stadium in 1997 and 1999, it wasn’t just a concert. Rather, it was a cultural shift. It proved that the higher ups within the musical industry were too worried about actually loving what they had told countless artists what they couldn’t do.

Sarah McLachlan is a Vancouver icon who used that platform to raise over $10 million for women’s charities. Even when the festival was revived in 2010, she brought it back to Ambleside Park in West Vancouver for a massive Canada Day show.

Despite the undeniable effect it had on the culture, the event’s 2010 revival hit a financial wall. Ticket prices were high, and the world had moved on from the “all women” novelty. Even Sarah was honest about the failure, later telling The Globe and Mail, 

“In 12 years, women have changed a lot… and that was not taken into consideration, which I blame myself for.”

In a way I feel that by the 2010 show not working, showed the undeniable progression women in the music industry have made. I know that may sound weird to you, but Sarah’s goal was to have women be respected and I feel she helped prove that. So much so that when she wanted to continue the festival it didn’t work, because the thought of an all women show was no longer progressive, rather normal. And I think that’s a victory.