Sarah McLachlan has a new interview with Lena Dunham’s Lenny Newsletter. Unlike past Lenny interviews conducted by Dunham in which she participates, with often questionable results, this one was by a journalist named Judy Berman, and it’s fascinating. McLachlan has so many interesting, cogent things to say about sexism in her industry, founding Lilith fair, politics and the future of music. She’s 48 now and she just sounds smart and wise. I can’t do justice to this interview so if you’re a late 80s/90s girl like me and came of age listening to McLachlan’s music you may want to read the full piece. These are the parts I liked the best, but it was hard to choose.

JB: You started Lilith Fair a few years later, in 1997. The festival was another form of activism. What convinced you it needed to happen?

SM: The original desire was simply: “I want to go out on tour this summer. I don’t want to bear all the weight of a tour by myself. There’s a lot of summer concerts out there, and they’re all male-dominated. Yet there’s this wealth of amazing music being made by women. So, why don’t we just go do it ourselves?” We had a bunch of promoters saying, “You can’t do that. You can’t put two women on the same bill. People won’t come.” That was the fire for me, because I was like, “Well, excuse me, I’ve actually had a bunch of women open up for me and people did come, and that’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to prove you wrong.” By God, we did.

It made me realize, Wow! The music industry still is really sexist. Because my label gave me complete freedom, didn’t tell me what to wear, or how to cut my hair, or “Can you open up those top two buttons on your shirt, please?” I naïvely went along, thinking there was no sexism in the music industry. Then Lilith happened, and there was wall after wall after wall of men saying, “Why do you hate men?” I’m like, “What does celebrating women have to do with hating men?” I said, “That says a lot more about you than anything else.”

JB: In 2016, we’re still arguing about whether you can elevate women without hating men.

SM: I think you can, but there’s always going to be people who feel emasculated by that. Over the past 50 or 60 years, women have gone from being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen to CEOs of corporations and presidents of countries — which is amazing, but it’s a massive, seismic shift in culture. There’s been very little work done to help men come around to that. They have thousands of years of caveman dominance in their genes. That’s a hard shift, to go from “I’m in charge” to “Oh, I’m supposed to stay home and change diapers, and you’re going to run the company?”

I see a lot of young men who really are egalitarian, and I think that’s because mothers and fathers are teaching their children that this is how it should be. But it takes many generations for that change to penetrate. Look at Trump. Look at the bigots and the racists and the hatred that was simmering underneath the surface. He’s given them all a voice. As much as I’m horrified by Trump, it’s good that he’s done this because it’s brought everything to a boil. We need to talk about that and try and fix it.

JB: You brought back Lilith in 2010 but ended the festival for good the next year. At the time, you said that too much had changed for Lilith to survive. What did you mean by that?

SM: A lot of the women who came to Lilith in college or in their 20s now had children and mortgages and weren’t keen on spending $150 to stand in a hot field all day when they would have to pay for child care. There’s also a lot more music being made by women now. Some of it’s great and some of it’s shit, but that’s the way it’s always been.

People ask me almost every day, “Will you bring Lilith back?” Honestly, I think the only way Lilith could come back and be successful is if someone of this generation championed it. Nobody cares about me anymore. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way — I just mean I had my moment in the sun, and it was beautiful, but I don’t have the same power that I used to have. In order to pull something like Lilith off, you have to have power, and you also have to have the need and the desire. A lot of the women who are really successful now have created their own platform and they’re selling out arenas on their own. They don’t need Lilith.

[From Lenny]

I was at Lilith Fair in 1998 at Jones Beach and I’ve seen McLachlan perform several times. She’s incredibly talented and I don’t know whether to feel respect or sadness for the fact that she doesn’t think she has the clout now to pull off another Lilith Fair-type event. Is she underestimating herself or is that just reality? It’s true her fans are old now and I can’t remember the last time I went to a music event, but I have friends my age who still do and who would support her. McLachlan also told Berman that she has “a charmed life” and is “so grateful I still get to do this.”

As for what she’s saying about Trump bringing out the racists and bigots – yes. I think he’s also made it more socially acceptable to bitch about inclusion and diversity as if these very basic measures threaten white people’s place in society. This “anti-PC” movement is troubling. Unlike McLaughan I don’t think this needed to come to a head. I think racism should be stigmatized and called out for what it is. These hateful beliefs did not need a sniffling orange voice.

Incidentally, McLachlan is promoting her upcoming second Christmas album, which is mildly sad to me. I’m sure it will be lovely and festive, I just shudder when I hear about artists from my youth releasing Christmas albums. (I’m thinking of Billy Idol in particular.)

This photo makes me wish I was Canadian. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

photos credit: FameFlynet and Getty