Brandi Carlile's annual Girls Just Wanna Weekend gathering in Mexico is a haven for women and anyone who appreciates women. The festival lineup consists entirely of female or femme-fronted acts, alongside an audience that skews more than 90% female or nonbinary.

Comedian Kristen Key spoke to the festival's audience on the final night: “No offense to guys — I know there’s, like, three and a half guys here.” Carlile's eternal right-hand guys, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, account for two of those three and a half.

The festival provides a chance for female music-lovers to spend four days in the sun, in a microcosmic reflection of how women artists are currently dominating the popular music landscape. The 2025 bill included stars Shania Twain, Maren Morris and Muna along with perennial favorites Brandy Clark and Lucius and the rising talents Brittney Spencer, Jensen McRae, Allison Ponthier, Tish Melton and SistaStrings.

The festival is a place where people can come and be their whole entire selves, with all of their feelings, all of their anxiety, all of their fear, and all of their sadness. Attendees can take the heaviness of the things they have witnessed in the last year into this place and break it apart in tiny pieces and hand a little bit of it to each and every one of us to help you bear that burden.

On the first night, only Brandy Clark got through her set before lightning approached from off-shore, forcing an evacuation of the main stage area and finally, after two and a half hours, word that Carlile’s main headlining set would not take place at all that night. It was the only force-majeure moment of the weekend.

The festival host did subsequently squeeze in two previously unscheduled performances, one being an acoustic show by the poolside the following afternoon, and then a late-night re-do of her planned headlining show, squeezed in after Muna on Saturday night. It was there that Carlile got to start her principal performance with the song she chose to pay tribute to those affected by the devastating wildfires that took place the previous week in the L.A. area: a pitch-perfect cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Goin’ to California.”

Carlile's lovefest was mutual. Twain stuck around the following night and talked about her love for Carlile’s song “Right on Time.” Later, Twain was out in the stands to watch the headlining set, and after — as a result of the preceding conversation — the singer dedicated “Right on Time” to Twain. Shania exulted and sang along before catching my eye and shouting, “Isn’t that so fucking great?”

Twain’s perhaps surprising love of spontaneity extended to asking Maren Morris to join her on stage, too, for a nearly impromptu “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”

Few of the sets during the festival proceeded without at least one collab. Morris had two guests out for hers — Brittney Spencer for “My Church,” and then Muna’s Katie Galvin to recreate their recent recorded collaboration, “Push Me Over.” The song playfully addresses bi-curiosity.

Morris also went candid in her set, in a far less lighthearted way, with another song from her recent EP, “This Is How a Woman Leaves,” a dramatic ballad addressing her marital split.

Another artist playing the festival that has a new record in the offing is Lucius, who plan to release a couple of new tracks in a couple weeks followed by a full album in the spring. It’ll be self-titled, with frontwomen Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig explaining their decision to self-produce as a band, after Carlile produced their previous effort. “We’ve kind of come back together as a band to make this record, just the four of us, and we’re all feeling really good about it.”

Other artists shared what makes the festival special to them. Wolfe mentions the “hugely lesbian” audience, even though there is a significant contingent of straight women such as themselves. Brandy Clark is one of those that thinks there is room for more men to come than presently do, although she hardly has any complaints about the chemistry that currently allows gay women to feel a comfort they might not at home.

“I think the word will get out that Girls Just Wanna Weekend is more than just for women,” Clark said. “I love that it’s all women on the bill, though, because you don’t see that… For me, I’ve never felt oppressed because of being gay. I never have felt that. But the first year that I was here, I was playing at the pool stage, and I looked out and I saw a sea of mes. And I got really overwhelmed, because it’s the first time in my adult life that I had felt like I was in the majority.”

Jensen McRae, a very gay-friendly artist, saw the demographic as this: “Everyone who’s here really, really loves music and is very, very into feeling their feelings.”

Ruby Amanfu said her association with the hosts goes back to opening for Carlile on tour nearly 10 years ago, then being asked to play the inaugural festival in 2019. “I’ll never forget Brandi whispering in my ear on the last night of that first festival, ‘I don’t ever wanna do this without you.’ I’ve never forgotten what she said, and neither has she,” Amanfu said.

Amanfu’s “Zombie” had strong competition as the highlight of ‘90s night — and maybe of the entire festival — from Carlile’s opening 10-minute-plus rendition of Celine Dion and Jim Steinman’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”

An example for the family-friendly tone of the festival was set by how much Carlile’s own immediate and extended family took part in the proceedings. On ‘90s night, her wife (and now manager) Catherine was in full demonstrative flair as one of the wanna-be Spice Girls, alongside some of her visiting friends from Britain. Her sister, Tiffany, sang “Strawberry Wine.” Her brother, Jay, took an even bigger role, and not just as a member of the ersatz boy band that provided some of the few male lead vocals of the festival. Jay Carlile, who recently toured as a member of Wynonna Judd’s band (at Brandi’s suggestion), is the main driver (literally) of the Carlile Family Band, a folk-bluegrass outfit which has his 17-year-old daughter Caroline as lead singer and son Jay-J, 15, as primary multi-instrumentalist. The family group released a debut EP this month, and won over the pool crowd with an impressive afternoon set. Meanwhile, Phil Hanseroth’s daughter Jo broke out as one of the winning guest performers at the “Brandi-oke” afternoon that is a festival highlight each year.

For many returning attendees, attending GJWW is not so much about attending summer camp in the winter — although there is undeniably that — as it is a family reunion.

Carlile is mindful of fan feedback as she looks toward the next year’s festival. She is happy to be partnered with 100x, which is in its second year of producing the festival.

The host is sensitive to the idea that a weekend in Mexico may seem classist for someone who speaks to and for the disenfranchised.

“Most of any money I would make from the festival goes into rooms for all of my friends and past artists and the family of past artists that want to keep coming back,” Carlile says, in saying it’s not a big profit-maker for her or the performing artists. As for the audience, “I would like to see it get to a place where there are elements of it that are more affordable.”

As for gender demographics, “we joke about it being (all) gay” — Carlile did, after all, praise Twain from the stage as the newly crowned “queen of the lesbians!” — “but it’s really for everyone,” she says.

One thing that won’t shift, obviously, is the fact that you will only hear women singing at the festival, barring a cameo fluke here and there. If it takes marginalizing the presence of men just a little to arrive to arrive at what may already be the world’s most holistically immersive and impressive music festival, then so be it.

Carlile’s commitment to inclusivity also includes looking out for the other kind of straight people — the ones who are walking the line on their sobriety. That oft-expressed care for the non-drinkers in the crowd has to be, if not a major music festival first, then something close to it.

During her main headlining set, Carlile noted that she loves tequila, but that she is mindful of those who cannot touch it, and that they should feel welcomed and supported, whether it’s through the mocktails available at all the bar stations or the AA-style “Friends of Bill” daily meetings for sober attendees. Then she sang “That Wasn’t Me,” a touching ballad she wrote after her father gave up drinking for good.

Even Lucius’ Jess Wolfe, as a new mother, participated in all that poolside pouring again this year. “It’s pretty epic. But I mean, it’s pretty disgusting,” she admits. It’s maybe a sign of GJJW’s pervasive sense of conscience that she can laugh about harboring some slight reservations. “I’m pouring tequila into people’s mouths, going, ‘Don’t do this to yourself!’”