Updated September 3, 2026 at 3:52 PM CDT
Olivia Rodrigo knew her inaugural Daisy Chain Fields music festival had become what she'd envisioned when she looked out into the audience and saw a woman breastfeeding her baby under a tree.
"I was like, this is exactly what I envisioned it to be," Rodrigo told NPR's Leila Fadel.
After signing with Geffen Records in 2020 and releasing her debut album Sour in 2021, Rodrigo, 23, has risen to become one of pop music's biggest stars — with her topping the charts and building a loyal fanbase through her songs about heartbreak, growing up and the messy emotions in between.
Now, Rodrigo is thinking about how to turn that connection with listeners into something bigger than the songs themselves.
Rodrigo announced Daisy Chain Fields on June 22, and tickets sold out within 30 minutes when they went on sale two days later. Held Aug. 29 in Irvine, Calif., the festival brought together an all-women lineup that included Stevie Nicks, Sarah McLachlan, Chappell Roan and Doechii. All the artists on the festival lineup performed for free, helping the festival raise $20 million for 10 organizations supporting women and girls.
Rodrigo seemed most taken with what happened around the music — little girls and older women dancing together, daughters on their fathers' shoulders, strangers looking after one another.
"The whole thing was just joyful from start to finish," she said.
Joy is a word Rodrigo returns to often when she talks about the festival.
"I think that the people who want to keep us down are really relying on us feeling alone and overwhelmed," she said. "And I think the antidote to that is joy and community."
What has changed — and what hasn't
Daisy Chain Fields builds on the legacy of Lilith Fair, the women-led touring festival co-founded by McLachlan in the 1990s. Rodrigo said McLachlan's generation "broke down so many barriers" for the women who came after them.
Rodrigo could see those generations converging in the Daisy Chain Fields audience, as "Gen-X dads" watched Chappell Roan and little girls screamed "Rebel Girl" during a set by '90s punk band Bikini Kill.
But comparing the era of Lilith Fair with today also offered a less comforting measure of how much has, and hasn't, changed.
"Women in the music industry have come so far," Rodrigo said. "And, we're headlining festivals and so many of the old misogynistic rules of the music industry have changed. But also at the time of Lilith Fair, women had more bodily autonomy in America than they do now."
Rodrigo carried that celebration of women into her own performance, down to the details. She performed "Serena Joy" live for the first time, a track from her new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, which she released in June.
The song takes its name partly from a character in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Rodrigo said she wrote it around "the principle that a threat to one person's human rights is a threat to all of our human rights."
When it came to what Rodrigo wore for the show, she chose a pale pink dress with traditional Palestinian tatreez embroidery, handmade in Ramallah. Rodrigo had seen videos of the women making the dress.
"I loved the story behind it, and it really moved me," she said.
Where the songs come from
Rodrigo has confronted questions about politics and her music before, including when the Trump administration used her song "all-american bitch" in a November 2025 video showing immigration arrests and promoting self-deportation. She made her opposition to the use of her song clear online at the time.
"It was just awful to see a song that I wrote about feeling trapped in a misogynistic box that we put women in — this song being put to these just grotesque, cruel scenes of ICE raids," she said.
Looking back, Rodrigo said she sees the episode as a distraction.
"Picking fights with pop stars is a great distraction," she said. "You know, while they do kind of other really awful, awful things."
For Rodrigo, the political and the personal come from much the same place.
"I consider myself an artist and I think an artist's job is to reflect the world around them and also to be honest about how they're feeling," she said.
Her latest album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, turns to a different vulnerability: what falling deeply in love can do to a person's sense of reason.
Rodrigo says she was "obsessed" with the idea of limerence and how it "sort of drives you totally insane." Her recent read of Annie Ernaux's novel Simple Passion, which follows the story of a woman consumed by an affair, also left Rodrigo musing over the topic of romantic passion.
"It's obviously a great feeling to really fall in love with someone so deeply, but it also kind of makes you lose touch with reality. And I thought that that was a really beautiful sort of concept and something interesting to write about," Rodrigo said.
For someone whose confessional lyrics are dissected by millions, Rodrigo tries not to think about her audience while she writes.
"I really try to write from a place that's just for me," she said. "I love writing songs. And even if nobody heard the songs, I would still write them."
Blocking out those outside voices has gotten easier with age, Rodrigo said. Now, she tries "to tune all that out and put your horse blinders on and just, like, follow your heart."
Perfection isn't her goal, either.
"My motto is always done is better than perfect," Rodrigo said.
With a new album and her debut music festival behind her, Rodrigo is readying for her next artistic pursuit. The North American leg of her Unraveled Tour kicks off Sept. 25 in Hartford, Conn, and will run through February of next year.
And when it comes to Daisy Chain Fields, she's preparing for that too, with her already beginning planning for next year's festival.
Editor's note: Some of the material in this story was not included in the version that aired on Morning Edition. Listen to the interview by clicking the blue button above.
The radio interview was produced by Lilly Quiroz. The digital version was edited by Treye Green.
Copyright 2026 NPR
