“I will definitely change the face of this concert and I’m glad to be a part of breaking some of its traditions,” says Mary J. Blige from New York. As one of the tour’s biggest headliners, the media-crowned Queen of Hip-Hop Soul is booked to play Lilith’s Montreal and Toronto dates. “I can’t wait to experiment on stage because that’s what I know a lot of singers do at Lilith. People can expect me to sing [Led Zeppelin’s] Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven and my hits, too. It’s going to be all-out Mary.”
Blige adds that Lilith’s stage is a place she’ll feel comfortable to express what she calls her “personal politics.” “Women need to be told that they are queens and princesses. It’s our job as leaders in the music industry to be teachers and tell women how they should be treated by men and by themselves. I truly believe that if we save the women, we save the world,” the 39-year-old singer explains. “Listen, if it weren’t for us, there’d be no life. We have wounds, we carry children for nine months, we go through cramps, we suffer through the worst pain that men can’t even imagine. That’s why this concert is so important—if you take away the classroom, nobody’s gonna learn.”
Philadelphia’s 38-year-old Jill Scott agrees with Blige. “When I see Sarah McLachlan sing and chat up Sheryl Crow backstage, of course my own art is going to grow,” says Scott. “Witnessing where all these women are in their varying levels of age, success and talent is knowledge. To see and hear who’s happy, who’s lonely, who has children and what’s missing in their lives is wisdom. Sisterhood is power.”
Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s wishes Lilith could have happened years ago. “Who knows how much farther the Go-Go’s would have gone if Lilith Fair was around when we first started in the late ’70s?” the 51-year-old asks from her home in France. “Back then, it felt like we were the only girls on stage. A lot of the guys around us were a bunch of sexist, violent, drugged-out punks who threw things at us while we played. We could have developed our musicality a lot quicker if we were able to see how other women played. We were usually seen as competition by male groups—not comrades.”
The only thing that comes close to a competition at Lilith is the inclusion of a digital American Idol-esque contest called the Lilith Local Talent Search. For the month of May, local acts from around North America will be able to submit a sample of their best performances for a chance to be on tour with McLachlan and company. This feature isn’t the only newfangled addition to the Lilith legacy. Aside from the occasional Twitter update—which is not written by McLachlan (“I hate Twitter,” she laughs. “It’s banal and turned into a society pager for people with too much time on their hands”), the tour also has a campaign on their Facebook page that allows people to vote on a charity for Lilith to donate to. Recently ticket buyers discovered that a handful of anti-choice organizations were among the charitable options. As soon as the Lilith team was informed, various charities were dismissed from the running.
It isn’t the first time McLachlan has crossed paths with anti-choice groups. “I remember a bunch of pro-lifers came to a press conference at a past Lilith Fair stop and started giving me s–t about why I allowed Planned Parenthood tables and why they couldn’t get a table,” she recalls. “I just said: it’s my festival and I believe in pro-choice.”
As if all the other pressure wasn’t enough, McLachlan has also timed the relaunch of Lilith with her new CD release. Titled The Laws of Illusion (“the title is an oxymoron,” she says), the disc is slated for release on June 15 and is the first collection of freshly penned songs she’s recorded since 2003’s Afterglow. Although she split from husband and ex-drummer Ashwin Sood last year (the former couple share two daughters), she insists the recordings are not indicative of a divorce album.
“I know everybody is going to go, ‘oh that song is about your ex,’ but you know what? It’s not,” she says. Produced by long-time collaborator Pierre Marchand, Laws will address what she refers to as “coming to terms with loss and realizing everything that you thought was true is, in fact, an illusion. I’ve been through a s–t storm and so have some of my friends,” she laughs. “The songs do reflect that.” Dark themes aside, McLachlan swears that no matter what she goes through, she’ll always be a glass-half-full kind of woman. “I’m an eternal optimist with a small degree of cynicism,” she says. “I never want to lose either. One of my favourite lines is: if it doesn’t happen, the world will continue to spin.”
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