{"id":874372,"date":"2026-08-30T23:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T23:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874372\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T23:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T23:28:09","slug":"daisy-chain-fields-review-olivia-rodrigos-women-led-festival-is-electric-amid-extreme-heat-olivia-rodrigo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874372\/","title":{"rendered":"Daisy Chain Fields review \u2013 Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s women-led festival is electric amid extreme heat | Olivia Rodrigo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after singing the closing notes of her indie pop gem LES Artistes on Saturday afternoon, Santigold<\/a> gazes out at the sweat-laced crowd at the Daisy Chain Fields<\/a> festival \u2013 a benefit concert hosted by Olivia Rodrigo<\/a> for charities focused on women and girls \u2013 in disbelief. \u201cI can\u2019t believe she pulled this shit off!\u201d Santigold cries into the microphone, beaming.<\/p>\n

The inaugural festival, in Irvine, California\u2019s Great Park, has drawn in 45,000 people to see artists as varied as the legendary punk agitators Bikini Kill<\/a>, kicky pop phenom Chappell Roan<\/a> and kinetic superstar rapper Doechii<\/a>, all of whom agreed to perform for free; Rodrigo herself closes out the night with a career-spanning setlist and starry guest appearances. The festival raised $10m to be distributed evenly among 10 non-profits, including Baby2Baby, which distributes supplies to children and parents in need, and the National Women\u2019s Law Center. Later that night, Melinda French Gates<\/a> joins Rodrigo on stage and matches the fundraising, bringing the donated total to $20m.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Rodrigo is an anomaly in the pop music world. She has gone beyond sharing uncontroversial onstage platitudes and worked toward actionable change at a moment when Donald Trump\u2019s government is actively stripping away rights from disabled people, women, people of color and LGBTQ+ citizens in the US. Her festival drew on protest movements of decades past, particularly the scrappy activism that punctuated punk rock circles such as riot grrrl and the landmark touring women\u2019s festival Lilith Fair, reflected at once in its programming, the presence of non-profit partners on the ground and in its aesthetic language. With activist buttons decorating both stages, a printed zine available at the merch table with a suggested donation and a curated show about global musical protest movements at the park\u2019s in-house art gallery, the festival recalls the floral burst of the 60s revival that punctuated the 90s, with a decidedly gen-Z twist.<\/p>\n

Chloe De St Aubin of Die Spitz performs at Daisy Chain Fields. Photograph: Monica Schipper\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The festival shimmers with muscular performances. Save for a few technical hiccups that plague 90s rock stalwarts Garbage<\/a>\u2019s set in the evening, the shows on both of the festival\u2019s two stages go smoothly and are thoughtfully spaced to ensure no clashes. Daisy Chain Fields boasts perhaps some of the clearest sound I\u2019ve ever heard at an outdoor festival: the Austin punk band Die Spitz\u2019s chugging riffs resound like gut punches, and Mitski<\/a>\u2019s crystalline vocals are sonorous and full. Rodrigo\u2019s vision for the festival \u2013 she wanted it to feel like a place women and girls could kick back and listen to music together on a lackadaisical afternoon outdoors \u2013 manifests in the umbrellas, large beanbags and couches arranged under fringed lampshades in the vast park.<\/p>\n

Rodrigo also takes great pains to position the festival as a place of radical dreaming. She invites visitors to jot down their hopes on small white cards and tether them to branches, a recreation of Yoko Ono<\/a>\u2019s Wish Tree. The walk from the Marigold Stage to the larger Dandelion Stage features stripes on the gravel that nods to galvanizing efforts of women including Shirley Chisholm and Gwendolyn Brooks. And a new piece by the graphic artist Jenny Holzer<\/a> emblazoned on a wall urges attendees to mine scraps of joy within the ongoing fight for survival.<\/p>\n

Doechii performs at Daisy Chain Fields. Photograph: Gilbert Flores\/Variety\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But the festival\u2019s advocacy efforts and thoughtful conceptual approach are somewhat blunted by how ill-prepared it seems for the elements. The organizers couldn\u2019t have predicted an unseasonal bout of humidity in typically dry southern California, nor that temperatures would creep into the mid-90s. But basic resources seem somewhat scant for a sold-out crowd. One festival employee told KTLA<\/a> earlier this week that they were concerned that the festival wasn\u2019t prepared to supply a crowd of this size with adequate resources given the sweltering weather, and reportedly brought it up to the festival\u2019s promoters (C3 Presents, a subsidiary of Live Nation, put on the show along with the city of Irvine and PSQ Productions, the company that manages the park\u2019s amphitheater shows).<\/p>\n

Throughout the hottest parts of the day, five free refillable water stations strewn throughout the festival grounds have long lines and, as some people reported online<\/a>, so do the medical tents. The queue to buy food stretches for an hour or longer. Compounding the heat issue is a lack of shaded areas on site, as well as the festival\u2019s strict policies that do not allow attendees to bring in non-aerosol sunscreen bottles over 3.4oz or umbrellas.<\/p>\n

Still, attendees make do amid the sweltering temperatures to enjoy the music while taking care of one another. Jostling happens seldomly; when people need to scoot past someone, they politely ask as much. During one heat-dazed instance in the late afternoon, I accidentally leave my wallet on top of a grassy hill; when I sprint back to find it, it is still there, not a dollar missing. The festival seems to encourage a sense of unselfconsciousness \u2013 a rarity at a time when younger people have expressed fear of expressing themselves fully, lest they be embarrassed by someone capturing an unflattering video of them and uploading it online<\/a>. Friends scream-sing to Roan\u2019s Hot to Go!, do interpretive dances to the woozy set of Not For Radio, play patty-cake sitting underneath trees and dole out friendship bracelets in a state of reverie.<\/p>\n

Olivia Rodrigo performs on Saturday at Daisy Chain Fields in Irvine, California. Photograph: John Salangsang\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The day\u2019s emotive peak, though, arrives at the end with Rodrigo\u2019s headlining set. She runs through an array of songs, including buoyant renditions of Bad Idea Right?, a song about the mental gymnastics of meeting up with an ex, and Good 4 U, with vocals more biting than on the studio version. Hewing to the lineage of Lilith Fair, and directly acknowledging the artists who came before her, Rodrigo brings out Sarah McLachlan<\/a> \u2013 who had organized the successful 90s festival at a time when songs by women musicians could not be played back to back on the radio, due to their supposed commercial nonviability \u2013 for a resplendent duet of Building a Mystery. The rapt crowd swells with heartache during the pair\u2019s bare-bones Angel, dedicated to the late Dolly Parton<\/a>, sways to Rodrigo\u2019s rendition of Landslide alongside Stevie Nicks<\/a>, and joyously yells along to Ironic with Alanis Morissette<\/a>, a surprise addition to the bill after Karen O<\/a> canceled due to a last-minute personal matter.<\/p>\n

Shortly before she waves goodbye (perhaps just a farewell for now?), Rodrigo urges the crowd during her ripper All-American Bitch to think of something that infuriates them and scream along together. The crowd bellows in unison in a wail that stretches on and on. It seems aimed at a world that seems to be going backwards, a world that makes the seething songs of Garbage<\/a>, Bikini Kill and other performers at the festival \u2013 penned decades ago \u2013 upsettingly prescient, a world where so much more needs to be done and where a concert is a call for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after singing the closing notes of her indie pop gem LES Artistes on Saturday afternoon, Santigold gazes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-874372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}