Olivia Rodrigo, Brandi Carlile Are Proving Women Can Lead Festivals

A few years ago, Oliva Rodrigo invited Brandi Carlile out for coffee. They were in Los Angeles at the same time, and Rodrigo wanted to talk to Carlile, who has hosted her own all-woman festival Girls Just Wanna Weekend since 2019, about how she could impact gender equity on lineups and the road.

“It was like a blind date,” Carlile tells Rolling Stone, who was moved by Rodrigo’s commitment to debunk the pervasive industry myths that women don’t sell tickets as well as men, shouldn’t be booked back-to-back, and are unable to headline a festival — let alone populate an entire bill. Carlile had a feeling, she recalls, that Rodrigo was going to go far beyond just talk. “I remember clocking it and going, ‘Yep, she’s the one.’ I knew she wanted to do more with her rise and fame than just empower herself.”

Carlile was right: In June, Rodrigo announced her inaugural festival, Daisy Chain Fields, taking place Aug. 29 in Irvine, California. Inspired by Sarah McLachlan’s original all-female festival Lilith Fair and events like Carlile’s, its lineup comprises entirely women from across multiple generations: McLachlan herself, Chappell Roan, Bikini Kill, Stevie Nicks, Mitski, Doechii, and more. Just as remarkably, all profits will go to organizations “dedicated to advancing and advocating for women and girls.” The festival sold out instantly during a presale.

“I think there’s this rhetoric that girls are supposed to be competing against each other for the top spot, or that there’s only this many resources for everyone,” Rodrigo said during an interview with Good Morning America. “I think it’s an experience like Lilith Fair and hopefully Daisy Chain that will show us that we’re all way stronger when we come together and support one another.”

Compounded with a new report from Luminate that shows how Gen Z women are outpacing men when it comes to concert ticket sales, it raises the question: Is the concert industry finally willing to permanently invest in women-focused festivals and audiences? Festivals like Daisy Chain Fields, Girls Just Wanna Weekend, and other heavily female lineups this summer are proving they should.

“These all-female festivals like Daisy Chain Fields and Girls Just Wanna Weekend are delivering a clear, data-backed rebuttal to the outdated myth that women artists can’t reliably sell tickets or headline profitably,” says Leslie Fram of FEMco, a female-focused music consulting firm. “They demonstrate that all-women lineups aren’t just viable, but they can be highly successful when curated with care. The myth was always more inertia and bias than market reality. Events like these are accelerating its retirement.”

That myth — the adage that tours and festivals featuring all, or even primarily women, aren’t good business — has been around long before the days of Lilith Fair. It’s part of the premise that motivated McLachlan to launch her event in 1996, an endeavor recently recounted in the excellent documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery – The Untold Story. McLachlan was sick of hearing how the idea of two women on a lineup was viewed as too financially risky, and founded Lilith to prove that women could headline festivals, sell concert tickets, and align with one another beyond competition — as well as make a profit. In the year it launched, Lilith ended up being the highest grossing tour of the season.

Old misogyny dies hard, however. Carlile remembers a time earlier in her career when she was bumped from a bill with another woman because “they wanted a male-fronted guitar band instead of me.” Girls Just Wanna Weekend, which runs as a multi-day destination festival each January in Mexico, was founded to prove that if women were willing to travel all the way to Mexico and spend several thousand dollars to see her event, wouldn’t they do the same for an all-female lineup in their hometown’s rock club or arena? Daisy Chain Fields, with its instant sell-out, has done the same.

“Girls Just Wanna Weekend was something that’s been done in the sense of diorama,” Carlile says. “It’s been done in a controlled space for the purpose of visibility, so that other people can see that it works.”

Daisy Chain Fields serves this for a new generation who have grown up with female superstars like Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé, but still have been fed festival lineups overrun by men. Rodrigo’s fest is slated to arrive during a summer that includes female-dominant lineups at festivals like All Things Go, Newport Folk Festival, and Lollapalooza (which boasts a high percentage of woman headliners, if not equity across the board). Each is making the case that booking women on a lineup isn’t just morally sound, it’s good business.

All Things Go started intentionally booking more equitably in 2018, when Lizzy Plapinger, a.k.a. the artist LPX, curated a lineup with Maggie Rogers that featured almost entirely women headliners, and has continued to do so ever since. It’s now grown from 10,000 attendees in two days in 2018 to 130,000 across eight festival dates in three markets. This year, all three of their dates are well over half female and gender non-conforming artists, with the New York edition of the festival coming in at 95.7 percent women, according to data provided by the organization Book More Women. (Carlile is headlining two out of the three dates.)

“This is deeply personal for me as a queer female artist who came up in the early 2010s, touring festivals and stages around the world where I was often the only woman, or one of a very small handful, on the bill,” says Plapinger, who still curates the festival. “That’s limiting not just for audiences, but for artists too.”

Plapinger echoes Carlile’s sentiments that visibility isn’t about ticking boxes. “Representation isn’t just symbolic, and it isn’t only about fairness,” she says. “It’s meaningful when audiences spend a weekend in community surrounded by women, queer, and nonbinary artists leading, creating, headlining, and commanding a stage, because it quietly recalibrates what feels normal, possible, and within reach.”

Research backs up this idea, too. Luminate’s data shows that “women consistently outpace men in both past and future concert attendance,” particularly when it comes to Gen Z. For years, women have consistently defined the touring market, with Swift and Beyoncé as industry leaders. Still, it hasn’t translated into all-female lineups.

“The data gives the industry every reason to move with confidence,” says Thayer Lavielle of the Collective, the women-focused advocacy and advisory business at the Team, whose recent study, Her Frequency, charted how influential and impactful female concertgoers are on the market. “64 percent of women globally identify as live music fans, and more than half spend $100-plus beyond admission at each event. Even more compelling, 86 precent say they are open to spending more when the experience feels seamless, immersive, and rewarding. Women-led events are not just an equity opportunity, they are a significant audience and growth opportunity.”

It all points to the same end: “A gender diverse lineup can move tickets,” says Abbey Carbonneau, founder of Book More Women. “[These festivals] are providing large-scale examples to challenge the assumption that women and nonbinary artists are risky headliners or niche products. They’re demonstrating that audiences are excited to support lineups centered on women when they’re actually given the opportunity.”

At this year’s Newport Folk, whose Friday main stage headliners were almost entirely female, it’s all about looking past not just the myths, but moving beyond the pull of the algorithm toward intentional curation based on artist discovery and community building. “I’ve sat in on other people’s programming calls and it’s literally, ‘How many followers do they have on Instagram?” Newport Folk executive producer Jay Sweet says. “A lot of times they’re looking at artists, especially female artists, in terms of being able to bring in ticket buyers based on followers, not their music.”

Not everyone is optimistic that the lessons will be lasting, however. “The bitches get one shot every 20 years,” a female source in the industry tells Rolling Stone, punctuating her quip with a sarcastic laugh. Their point is not that women shouldn’t be dominating festivals — it’s that despite the evidence proving how marketable a female-driven lineup like Lilith Fair, Daisy Chain Fields, and Girls Just Wanna Weekend can be, the biases embedded in the industry prevail. In 2025, according to Book More Women, the percentage of women overall at the nine major festivals, including Coachella, Governors Ball, and ACL Fest, was still just shy of 22 percent (though it was the best year when it came to headlining spots since the organization started tracking in 2018).

“I do think the temperature in the industry is shifting, and the success of female artist-forward festivals, tours, and lineups is becoming harder and harder to ignore,” Plapinger says. “That said, I don’t think you can ever take progress for granted. The only thing that creates lasting change is continuing to walk the walk by building stages, festivals, and spaces that champion female voices. It’s never a one-and-done situation.”

Carlile, unfortunately, can’t make it to Daisy Chain Fields: She’s headlining her own arena show in Nashville on the same night. But she’s excited to see the impact of Rodrigo’s fest.

“These young women holding onto the top of the mountain in this concert space is fucking brilliant,” she says. “It’s so amazing to be seeing that right now and raising young girls and going, ‘Oh God, may it last. May it last.’”