Life in 2026 moves incredibly fast. The mere concept of being in “2026” feels futuristic. While aspects of this new age are exciting, some feel downright dystopian. There have been more technological advances in the past decade than in the entire century before. Millions of working Americans cannot afford their necessities while others have anything they want at the click of a button. Far-right extremism rises globally. AI erodes our intelligence, trust, and creativity. It’s hard living in times like these, especially because there’s never been “times like these” before. That’s exactly why the comfort of nostalgia is at an all-time high. We yearn for life when the internet was just a global village. When we trusted each other and engaged with our communities. When we made our own art for expression, not profit. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of nostalgia quite a bit lately, but I know living in the past isn’t productive. It’s learning from it that matters.
Like many people around the world, I’m fascinated by 20th-century American culture. It’s why I only buy vintage, read archived magazines and newspapers, and listen to songs older than me. I could spend hours diving into these little pockets of history. I’ve found that media, especially music, is a direct snapshot into the cultural zeitgeist of its moment. So, when my mother mentioned a music festival she attended in 1998, I was hooked.
In the late 90s, Sara McLachlan was told the unwritten rule among radio stations: don’t play female artists back-to-back, or people will tune out. Determined to prove them wrong, she began the groundbreaking all-female music festival: “Lilith Fair.” The festival was revolutionary. It served as the perfect capstone for the 90s and the women who shaped it. Artists like Cowboy Junkies, Fiona Apple, and Sinéad O’Connor performed genre-bending blends of folk, pop, r&b and alt-rock. The diversity in sound highlighted that “women’s music” wasn’t a genre to be lumped together. Openly lesbian band Indigo Girls sang alongside the most popular songstresses of the time. In a time when queer women were often belittled, Lilith Fair offered a place for everyone to be free.
Even if remastered in 4k, it’s easy to tell Lilith Fair’s footage is decades old. These women were performing in off-the-rack clothes, undone hair, and messy makeup. They were known for their talent, not their looks (or parents!). Singer Nastalie Merchant often performed (controversially) with unshaven armpits. Of course, the musicians of the 90s were still beautiful. It was the kind of authentic beauty that you see in yourself or your best friend. Yes, we love the glamorous costumes and showmanship of stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift. Yet sometimes it feels like a requirement rather than a preference. Hollywood knows that sex sells. Female musicians know they will be chastised for not doing enough, and their male counterparts won’t. But there was a time when music was about just music. Making a connection, not a circus. I asked my mom if she had any pictures from Lillith Fair, but, of course, she did not. It just wasn’t mainstream at that time. Maybe that ties into why there was less scrutiny about looking and acting perfect. Today, you go to a concert, and EVERYONE, including the audience, is performing.
The ladies of the 90s transformed the new wave, punk, and goth wave of the previous decade with a female perspective. The “Riot grrrl” wave was all about adding a radical feminist outlook to punk rock. Hole’s 1994 album “Live Through This” expressed Courtney Love’s struggle with motherhood, her marriage, and life in the public eye. While personal to her, the poetic album feels like a commentary on life as a woman and ended up resonating with millions. To this day, misogynist airheads still claim her then-husband Kurt Cobain wrote the album, adding another layer of irony to her plight. The second wave of riot grrl moved from punk to a softer sound. Liz Phair was the talk of the town when she released her album “Exile in Guyville”. Each song served as a response to tracks from the rolling stone’s album “Exile on Main Street”. The concept wasn’t calling out the Stones, but moreso the men who idealize them and the silent female perspective burned in the wake of a rock star’s path. The album was a genius concept with perfect execution. Phair responded to tracks like “rocks off” with biting, darkly sarcastic songs like “f** and run”. In my eyes, it’s lyrically and melodiously an improvement on the source material.
For all the lilting romantic ballads of the 90s, female artists were also writing about the chaos unfolding around them. 1000 Maniac’s haunting track, “I’m not the man,” describes the disturbing yet all too real racially charged death sentence of an innocent black man. In a 1989 interview about the album, lead singer and writer Natalie Merchant said that as a professional communicator,“I feel it is my responsibility to write about the many social issues that affect our daily lives. There are so many situations around the world that need to be addressed. I feel it’s important to make people aware. That’s the least I can do as a public figure.”
The late 90s music renaissance also gave us Tracy Chapman. Chapman is best known for the song “Fast Car,” but the entire album that stems from it is an essential listen. She describes not only what life is like in America when you’re poor, but how being a black woman complicates that dynamic even more. She captures the romantic hopelessness of American culture in forgotten towns, while highlighting the unpaid care work of women and the struggles of black women in an unequal society.
Sheryl Crow is notorious for her many catchy, delightfully West Coast radio hits, but her lesser-known songs are pure gold. On the sultry track “What I Can Do For You,” Crow sings from the point of view of a sleazy music producer. In “The NaNa Song,” she even name-drops Frank DiLeo, the music exec who sexually harassed her. Decades before the Me Too era, when repercussions were severe for women who spoke up, going after one of the industry’s titans (Michael Jackson’s former manager) was incredibly bad*ss. My personal favorite of Crow’s discography is Redemption Day. The expressive, rage-filled ballad was written after her trip to Bosnia during its devastating genocide, and news reports about the Rwandan genocide. Redemption Day expresses Crow’s anger at American politicians’ apathy towards all this suffering and their uninhibited greed.
It’s inspiring to see what these young female artists accomplished, but seeing how relevant their songs remain shows a lack of progress in our society. We still have race, gender, and sexuality oppression. We’re still facing tyranny, injustice, and feeling helpless in the wake of immense suffering. It might feel like we’ve made no progress, but that is because we stopped fighting. Freedom and liberty are something to be constantly defended, so now is the time to channel that inner riot grrrl and get angry.
Lilith Fair and the 90s themselves proved women could indeed draw a crowd. The festival sold millions of tickets and opened doors for more female-fronted and queer acts today. Festival Alumni Eryka BaduQueen Latifah, and Jill Scott went on to create “Sugar Water,” another women-led music fest focused on Black women’s empowerment. It’s not 1997 anymore. Lilith Fair most certainly wouldn’t thrive today in the way it did then. We’ve lost a lot of the human connection we had. But before we tuck away completely in that safe space nostalgia, maybe we can bring some of that into today’s world. Things have changed, but some of them for the better. We are living in a unique decade, but we can still learn from our foremothers and keep fighting for change.
“Don’t ya know they’re talking about a revolution? It sounds like a whisper.” –Tracy Chapman