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 know living in the past is not the answer, but learning from it might be.
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.” It became one of the defining cultural moments of the decade. 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.
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 dresses, undone hair, and messy makeup. 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 more of a requirement than a style. Sex sells. Female musicians know they will be chastised for not doing enough, and their male counterparts won’t. 90s music was about just music. Today, visibility requires constant curation, from stage to audience.
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. Liz Phair’s album “Exile in Guyville” references “Exile on Main Street” not to call out the Stones, but moreso the men who idealize them. The album genuinely conceptualizes a silent female perspective burned in the wake of a rock star’s path. In my eyes, it’s even better than 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 her debut album, Tracy Chapman captures the romantic hopelessness of American culture in forgotten towns, while highlighting the unsung labor and 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 name-drops Frank DiLeo, the music exec who sexually harassed her. The expressive, rage-filled Redemption Day was written after her trip to Bosnia during its devastating genocide, and news reports about the Rwandan genocide.
Across these artists, there is a common denominator: they were not only documenting emotion but also documenting conditions. Their music held personal and political weight at the same time. It’s not 1997 anymore. Lilith Fair most certainly wouldn’t thrive today in the way it did then. The challenge now is not to return to that era, but to carry forward what mattered in it: artistic honesty, community, and resistance. Nostalgia is useful only if it becomes a way of seeing more clearly, not a place to stay.
“Don’t ya know they’re talking about a revolution? It sounds like a whisper.” –Tracy Chapman