Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Building a Herstory Edition Part 1

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History,

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades—literally since Woodstock—female musicians had battled music-industry perceptions that amassing too many of them, on the radio or on the road, was bad for business. And yet, by the ’90s, women were vital to the rise of alt-rock and hip-hop on the charts: from Suzanne Vega to Queen Latifah, Tracy Chapman to Sheryl Crow, Natalie Merchant to Missy Elliott.

Sarah McLachlan harnessed this energy into an all-woman tour she dubbed Lilith Fair. Its string of sellouts from 1997 to ’99 affirmed women’s clout in the decade of grunge-and-gangsta. But the festival was also criticized for its narrow focus and for branding “women’s music” as a genre. More than two decades later, Hit Parade assesses the legacy of Lilith on the charts and on the road—how its performers, attendees and musical descendants are helping to ensure the future is female.

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch and Kevin Bendis.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening AdFree on Amazon Music.
0:03.3	Hey there, hit parade listeners.
0:06.1	This episode was originally released in June 2020, exclusively for Slate Plus listeners.
0:13.9	As of August 2024, it's now available for non-subscribers.
0:19.4	What you're about to hear is part one of this episode.
0:23.4	Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear
0:28.4	every episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only
0:35.4	this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts.
0:40.3	Just go to slate.com slash hit parade plus.
0:44.5	You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives.
0:49.7	Plus, hit parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode
0:56.8	topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hitparade plus. Thanks,
1:05.4	and now please enjoy part one of this hit parade episode.
1:19.6	Music Please enjoy part one of this Hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfe, chart analyst,
1:30.4	pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series. On today's show,
1:36.3	in the early summer of 1997, a team of women mounted a tour that was the first of its kind.
1:45.0	It was a traveling festival that defied conventional wisdom,
1:50.0	the idea that no concert tour should have more than one or two women on the bill.
1:56.0	This tour would be all women and woman-fronted bands.
2:01.0	They called it Lilith Fair.
2:17.4	Lillith Fair, Laird would prove a blockbuster success. The Founded by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLaughlin,
2:21.0	Lilith Fair would prove a blockbuster success, the highest grossing touring festival of the year on its very first run.
	...

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