Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery (dir. Ally Pankiw) — Strictly Soundtracks radio episode

My radio co-hosts and I discussed the lovely documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery on a special two-hour edition of our Joy 94.9 radio show, Strictly Soundtrack, back in March for International Women's Day. Take a listen here with a few additional thoughts below. We had a good show, talking all things Lilith Fair and playing plenty of impeccable tunes. What's my favourite tune from the entire film/era? Listen and find out!

Ally Pankiw's first documentary feature bathes in the soft, calming warmth of nostalgia for an era and its stars. An era that we are three decades removed from and which feels about as far from the current state of music as you could get. On one hand, it's sad that Lilith Fair's era of women singer-songwriters feels like such a distant, if cherished, memory—the music was just so good (as you can hear in the audio above) and the way it opened up an entire generation to new artistic ideas and tuned (or re-tuned) so many ears to new tones and wavelengths was genuinely palpable. Even as a boy at its beginnings (albeit one obsessed with music and the radio), and later a teenager as it marched on more and more into the mainstream, I could recognise how different and captivating it was. It felt like something was cracking open and if I wasn't that way inclined already (I was), it really affirmed me how female voices made me feel even if I didn't always understand the context. On the other hand, we've thankfully moved beyond the, as seen in the documentary, rampant misogyny of the industry (if not quite the fandom) to a place where women are routinely at the forefront of what is new, exciting and popular about modern music. What a Lilith Fair '26 would look like, however, I don't really know without the physical album sales and radio playlists that gave it legitimacy.

But that's a musing for another time...

That nostalgic tact to tracing the story of the Lilith Fair music festival is probably the right choice. I would have liked for Pankiw's film to really borough in on some of the thornier issues given it's 30 years removed, but it's hard to be too pressed by the choice. As such, is about as solid as it could be. I might think that Buffy Childerhose's of-the-moment Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music from 1997 is the better documentary of the Lilith Fair experience, if only for the how it captures in real time the evolution of the event in a more unfiltered way, exuding the '90s out of every pore. Check them both out (the latter is hopefully still on YouTube).

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