Ticket sales for Olivia Rodrigo's inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival brought in $10 million for its ten nonprofit partners before a single performer took the stage. Then philanthropist Melinda French Gates doubled it. By the end of Saturday night, the one-day event at Great Park in Irvine, California had directed $20 million toward organizations dedicated to advancing the lives of women and girls.
According to Billboard, Rodrigo announced the $10 million figure at a press conference the day before the festival, on Friday, Aug. 28. The nonprofit partners include Baby2Baby, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, Center for Reproductive Rights, FreeFrom, Jhpiego, Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Institute for Reproductive Health, National Women's Law Center, and Planned Parenthood. French Gates made her announcement from the stage during Rodrigo's headlining set.
Rodrigo had been planning the festival for years. Two months before the event, she wrote on Instagram: "Truly never felt more excited to share a piece of news with you all. I've had a dream of doing this festival for years and I am so ecstatic it's finally coming true!!" She cited Lilith Fair, the iconic all-women traveling festival of the late 1990s, as a direct inspiration, and said that Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan was one of the first people she called while organizing it.
McLachlan ultimately did more than offer advice. She joined Rodrigo onstage during the headlining set, and the two duetted on McLachlan's "Building a Mystery" and then her song "Angel," which they dedicated to Dolly Parton, who died on Aug. 25 at the age of 80. Rolling Stone reported that McLachlan described Parton as "the O.G. matriarch, beautiful goddess" and "the biggest philanthropist" of country music.
The evening also produced an unplanned highlight. Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O had to withdraw from the festival due to a personal matter. Rodrigo told the crowd herself before revealing who would fill in. "The bad news is Karen O is not able to make it tonight, she was one of the first people who said yes to Daisy Chain but she has a personal matter that requires her to be elsewhere," Rodrigo said. Alanis Morissette then walked out. The two performed "Ironic," from Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, and partway through, they reworked one of the song's most familiar lines, changing "beautiful wife" to "beautiful husband." Billboard noted the rewrite landed as a pointed nod to the festival's all-women, queer-inclusive bill, which also featured Chappell Roan and Doechii.
It was a full-circle moment for Rodrigo, who has long credited Jagged Little Pill as a cornerstone of her own songwriting. She and Morissette first met in 2021, when both appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone for its Musicians on Musicians issue. "I remember having my mind blown when I was 13," Rodrigo told Morissette in that interview. "I was in the car with my parents listening to Jagged Little Pill. I remember hearing 'Perfect,' and I was like, 'Oh, my God.' I told my music teacher a couple days after: 'You can write songs like that?' I just looked at music and songwriting in a completely different way."
Stevie Nicks closed out the guest appearances. She and Rodrigo performed "Landslide" together, trading verses while dancing. Nicks addressed the crowd directly about the younger artist. "She reminds me of me, when I was her age a hundred years ago," Nicks said. "And I'm somewhat awestruck that she could do all this. Because it's so hard, you have no idea, putting this together with all of these people. And she's done it, with this grace."
The festival arrived at a career peak for Rodrigo. Her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in June with 485,000 equivalent album units, the biggest week of her career and the largest week of 2026 for any solo artist. Lead single "drop dead" opened at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, her fourth chart-topping debut. According to Billboard, she became just the second artist ever, after Beyoncé, to send each of her first three studio albums to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 while landing at least one Hot 100 leader from each.
At the end of her set, Rodrigo confirmed the festival will return. As she told the crowd: "see you next year!" Her Unraveled Tour is set to launch in the coming weeks.
