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You could distill the ambition of most music festivals down to one thing: vibes. But Olivia Rodrigo’s debut Daisy Chain Fields festival set out with a very clear mission: to bring together women in music to show how joy, community and creativity can enact change. And with a fantastic, era-spanning day of female-fronted acts and $20 million raised for nonprofits, Daisy Chain absolutely crushed its goals in ways that other first-time fests could only dream about.
Both founder and headliner, Rodrigo led an uplifting, music-filled day at Irvine’s Great Park, which also boasted the likes of Chappell Roan, Doechii, Garbage, Bikini Kill and Mitski, among others. And if Rodrigo’s “see you next year” sendoff holds true, there’ll be plenty more to come—though hopefully without a historically humid heat wave or the traffic woes that come from a marooned park in a master-planned Orange County city-suburb, but more on both of those in a bit.
Daisy Chain truly felt like a moment, particularly Rodrigo’s performance, a cathartic and energized set that drew heavily from you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. “I feel like I’m dreaming,” she said early on in the set. “You guys, this is the best day of my fucking life.”
And it only got better with some very special duets: notorious tearjerker “Angel” with Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan, dedicated to the late Dolly Parton; a surprise rendition of “Ironic” with Alanis Morissette, who appeared after Karen O had to pull out due to a personal matter; and an evening-ending performance of “Landslide” with Stevie Nicks.
All of the acts on the lineup agreed to forgo payment, which helped Daisy Chain raise $10 million for nonprofits advocating for women and girls, including Baby2Baby, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, the Center for Reproductive Rights, FreeFrom, Jhpiego, Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Institute for Reproductive Health, the National Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood. And before Rodrigo’s headlining set, she brought philanthropist Melinda French Gates on stage to announce that number had been doubled to $20 million.
That dollar figure is remarkably meaningful, but so too was the messaging all across the grounds, with an entire hangar dedicated to nonprofit presences. Before each set, the jumbo screens cycled through QR codes leading to each organization’s website, and the bold, oversized buttons that brilliantly adorned the stage meant that you couldn’t photograph a set without boosting the beliefs core to the festival: to stand up for reproductive rights, to trust domestic violence survivors and to support justice for all, regardless of race or gender.
The push to turn anger into action permeated performances—Garbage’s Shirley Manson punctuated alt-rock classics with reminders that “there is power in the galvanization of women all over the world” and that “[women] have power, let’s fucking use it.”
But Manson also reminded the crowd to “enjoy your fucking weird self tonight”—because, ultimately, this was overwhelmingly a joyous gathering, for both the performers and the attendees. There was a communal sense of joy that consistently rippled through the crowd, contagiously heightened by watching other people experience joy.
“This is the best place ever, I want to live here,” I heard one attendee say.
And why wouldn’t you want to live in a place where, within a couple of hours, you could catch the Breeders play “Cannonball” and Chappell Roan lead the crowd in the “Hot to Go!” dance? (For what it’s worth, I’ve also never been to a festival quite as courteous, where people willingly kept viewing area walkways open without being chased away by a glow-wand–wielding staff member.)
While musically things were pretty perfect, the rest of the fest wasn’t always a paradise. The heat—brutal in the afternoon, bearable by 6pm and borderline comfortable by 7pm—certainly isn’t Daisy Chain’s fault. But Southern California’s recent spell of hot weather tested the fest’s patchy shade and lengthy food lines (if only the overabundance of bars could’ve made way for more food vendors), and the atypical humidity even caught the attention of native Floridian Doechii (who took to the stage covered in hot pink body paint for the occasion).
As far as the schedule, the lack of overlapping sets was admirable; on paper, no act had to compete with another. But when you have stars with the gravitational pull of Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo playing the final two sets of the night on the main Dandelion Stage, tons of dedicated fans opt to park themselves at that one stage for the entire day. That’s not uncommon at fests, but given this one only had two stages, it meant the smaller Marigold Stage almost always felt thinly attended—which was great news if you wanted an up-close view for Garbage or Not for Radio.
And then there’s the venue itself. There are aspects of the Great Park that are actually perfectly suited for a festival: the carousel and balloon are remarkably photogenic, the weather is usually slightly cooler than inland L.A. locations and there are even some actual, brick-and-mortar bathrooms. But this is also—ahem—a daisy chain of soccer fields isolated in an area surrounded by under-construction housing developments and office parks.
Getting in was easy enough, but getting 45,000 people out of a park with limited access roads was a nightmare. The park-and-ride shuttles promised less traffic thanks to access to otherwise closed roads; I can’t comment firsthand on how those went as the shuttle reserved for media left from a slightly different area. That spot overlapped with one of the on-site parking lots, and it took 40 minutes to move only a couple of hundred feet and reach the street. Posts on social media report taking upwards of two hours to escape the parking and rideshare areas. You probably would’ve been better off walking… but to where exactly? Irvine’s Amtrak and Metrolink station sits only about 1.25 miles as the crow flies from the festival entrance, but the tangle of freeways and office parks plus Great Park’s past as a marine base turns that into a circuitous nearly-four-mile walk. (An under-construction underpass near the train station will soon shave at least a mile off of this.)
The Greater Los Angeles area is lousy when it comes to how major entertainment venues are incorporated into their surrounding environments; you’ll need to head all the way down to San Diego before you find a stadium or sizable park that’s within walking distance of public transit and a dense downtown area where you’d actually want to linger pre- or post-event. (L.A. State Historic Park was the closest to this ideal for a few years; its renovation, though much-appreciated, meaningfully decreased festival capacity and rules it out for events of this size.) Here’s hoping Santa Monica’s upcoming Ocean Way festival, which has opted for zero on-site parking, has this all figured out.
Sure, it was a sour note to end the night, but that certainly doesn’t dull the euphoria of everything leading up to it. Daisy Chain Fields was hatched with a meaningful aim, and it put together an experience—and significant women-supporting initiative—that more than lived up to those aspirations. As Rodrigo said in the lead up to the “I’ve got big expectations” refrain in “expectations,” “It’s our mantra because we deserve the fucking world right?”
