Dixie Chicks
Three Texans with a fiddle, a banjo, and two diamond albums in two years. Wide Open Spaces and Fly made the Dixie Chicks the biggest group in country, "Goodbye Earl" made murder a sing-along, and then one sentence on a London stage in March 2003 got them pulled from country radio almost overnight.
Sisters Martie and Emily Erwin started the Dixie Chicks in Dallas in 1989 with Laura Lynch and Robin Lynn Macy, busking and working the bluegrass-festival circuit in cowgirl dresses for six years and releasing three albums on their own. The turn came in 1995: Sony signed them, Lynch left, Natalie Maines, who brought what Martie called "a rock and blues influence," took over lead vocals, and the label made them the first new act on its revived Monument imprint. Wide Open Spaces, released in January 1998, sent "There's Your Trouble," the title track, and "You Were Mine" to number one, won the Grammy for Best Country Album, and eventually shipped thirteen million copies. Fly, in 1999, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and also went diamond.
Fly carried "Goodbye Earl," Dennis Linde's black-comedy ballad about two friends who poison an abusive husband's black-eyed peas and leave him "a missing person that nobody missed." An April 2000 Los Angeles Times count found 20 of 149 country stations not playing it, and one San Jose station banned it, held an on-air debate, then reversed itself and donated to a shelter every time the song aired. The video cast Jane Krakowski, Lauren Holly, and Dennis Franz, who had been offered a cop role and answered, "No, no, no. I want to be Earl." It won Video of the Year from both the ACM and the CMA. Maines joked that the label had fretted over the words "mattress dancing" on another track: "'mattress dancing' is out and murder is in!"
On March 10, 2003, nine days before the invasion of Iraq, Maines introduced "Travelin' Soldier" at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire by saying, "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." The Guardian's reviewer printed it and called it "practically punk rock." Back home, Cumulus pulled them from all 42 of its country stations, "Landslide" fell from number 10 to 43 in a week, protesters in Louisiana crushed CDs with a tractor, the band received death threats, and Maines apologized within days, only to take it back in 2006. At that May's ACM Awards their Entertainer of the Year nomination was booed and Maines wore a "FUTK" T-shirt aimed at Toby Keith, who had been displaying a doctored photo of her with Saddam Hussein at his shows.
Taking the Long Way, produced by Rick Rubin in 2006, answered with "Not Ready to Make Nice." Country radio kept both singles out of its top 35, and the album won all five of its Grammys, including Album, Record, and Song of the Year. The band dropped "Dixie" from its name in 2020.
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