Week 6: The Chicks

So this week was supposed to be about the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Rhiannon Giddens, and it was supposed to come out on Saturday. But I've been on deadline for a writing project and I just wasn't able to pull it off. I want to be able to do CCD their proper due, because they're amazing.

So I'm dusting this one off. It was supposed to come a little later, on, but I already have it written up, so I'm not going to make this any later than it already is. So let's talk about The Chicks.

And you can't talk about The Chicks without A: talking about how they dropped "Dixie" from their original name and B: talking about the Iraq War.

Yeah. I know. I thought we could move past it too, but it's integral to The Chicks and any conversation about them, because they are one of the very select, very few actual victims of cancel culture. You can find much more detail about this from other places, but the short version is: The Chicks opposed the Iraq War, opposed Bush sending us into it, and said as much on a concert stage in the UK. And then they were almost immediately dropped from country music radio across the US, and derided by some major heavy hitters in the genre, specifically Toby Keith, who lambasted them for years.

And they never once apologized, because they shouldn't have had to, and now basically everyone fucking agrees with them. Instead, they released an award-winning album following the controversy, and then went on hiatus for the better part of twenty years before coming back with the single best divorce album of all time, Taylor Swift's producer, and a name change.

But let's go back to the beginning. Their real breakout was Wide Open Spaces, both the album and the song, but it's not what I want to highlight from that first album, because to me, it's one of their few sort of sanitized songs. And you know how I feel about sanitized country music by now. But I do still want to stay fairly pop-adjacent, because I think it's an important part of their early career. So There's Your Trouble it is.

On its face, it's a fairly simple song. And honestly, it's a fairly simple song past its face, too. It's a woman seeing her ex with another woman, and she's A: not over him and B: pretty convinced that the new girl doesn't actually love him. It's not their only song in a similar vein, but there's an absolutely infectious quality to the song. It's one of the biggest country earworms I've ever heard, in no small part because Natalie Fucking Maines has such an incredible voice. I'm going to talk a lot about the quality of pure vocal talent in country music, and Maines is right up in that mix. So. Good.

Another one you can't really talk about The Chicks without covering is Goodbye Earl. It's an absolutely absurd song from Fly. And while Wide Open Spaces was the big smash album that put them on the scene, it's equally important to follow on that kind of success. And Fly managed to do that with an absolute powerhouse of songs.

But Goodbye Earl is among the weirdest, maybe in their whole catalog. It's an out-and-out story song, dealing with domestic abuse, because The Chicks have this unique capacity to sing about serious topics in a light, airy, fun way that is just such an interesting juxtaposition. Plus, Goodbye Earl is a song about a pissed woman (In this case, two of them.) doing a crime. And I just cannot stress to you how much that niche is my jam. In this case, they murder the fuck out of Wanda's abusive piece of shit husband...and nobody cares because he's an abusive piece of shit. But it's absolutely the most high energy murder ballad ever put down in a recording studio. A song about killing that you can dance to.

I would love to highlight more songs from Fly, because it's really a powerhouse. Sin Wagon gives Goodbye Earl a run for its money as The Chicks's weirdest song. Some Days You Gotta Dance is a super catchy, positive song. Hole In My Head is a classic "You're not dating my fabulous ass" song. But if I'm only picking one more, then let's bring the mood down, and show that The Chicks are far from a one trick pony. They aren't stuck singing solely about serious things with a poppy beat. Sometimes, they can get downright maudlin, and Cold Day in July is one of the best examples of that.

Well before the big divorce album, this song was an exploration of love gone...not wrong so much as just gone stale. We never find out what happened to end this relationship. We just know that, when they started, it would be a cold day in July before he left her. And apparently, that day's arrived by the time we get to the song. Maines's voice is stunning and heart-shattering. She portrays a woman who doesn't see how she can even carry on. But that doesn't change anything. That doesn't make the relationship better or fix whatever problem they had. It can be a hard song to listen to, but my god is it stellar.

At this point, I'm starting to run out of room in the article, and The Chicks have so many songs worth talking about. This is an absolute crime, but I'm going to gloss over Home entirely. It's an amazing bluegrassy album, and has some absolutely amazing work on it. Their cover of Travelin' Soldier is, for me, better than the original, and as much as I love Stevie Nicks, Landslide gives Fleetwood Mac a run for its money, too. And White Trash Wedding and Long Time Gone are both excellent country songs. Heavy on the instrumentation, which gives Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer, the other two Chicks, a chance to show off their damn impressive skills on dobro, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and guitar. Because, you know, having gorgeous voices wasn't enough.

So why the fuck would I skip an album I clearly think so highly of? Because in the grand scheme of things, Taking the Long Way is a more important album in the narrative of The Chicks. It won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year. It was their last album before cancel culture swallowed them whole. And it had their response to the whole cancellation bullshit...which is the song that won Record and Song of the Year: Not Ready to Make Nice.

I talk about country being raw. Well this is. It's raw and real and unapologetic. As the title suggests, they were not ready to make nice. It's very likely that The Chicks could have stepped back into the good graces of country radio if they'd issued an apology about their comments. People weren't in quite such a patriotic frenzy about the forever war in the Middle East at the point this album came out. They probably would have lost some of their momentum, but gotten back into the Nashville scene.

Instead, they release this absolute fucking banger, laying out their response: you sent us death threats, we're still mad at you, and we're not apologizing, no matter what, because we didn't do anything wrong.

The song also stands on its own as just an intense meditation on pop culture, celebrity, and modern discourse, still relevant today. The instrumentation, the vocals, the production. All of it is on point. It just also has this incredibly important place in the story of The Chicks, so if you're going to listen to them (And MY GOD should you ever listen to The Chicks.), it needs to be included in the mix.

Then, after Taking the Long Way, when the world needed them most, they vanished.

(Nerd points if you get the reference.)

It was 14 years before Gaslighter was released. A lot had happened, to them and to us. Marriages and divorces. Two presidents, with a third coming sooner rather than later. Gay marriage passed as law. It was a different world, and one that was not just ready for The Chicks. I think we needed them, and we specifically needed this album, and the title track Gaslighter.

When this album dropped, Gaslighter was the first single, giving us a taste of what we were in for. And what we were in for was a slick new look, with the same powerful Maines voice leading the charge, but with lots of focus on the vocal harmonies of The Chicks. That's really one of the most significant parts of their sound, and Gaslighter leaned into it, opening in near a capella, three voices singing in harmony.

We didn't know what this song was about, necessarily, when it came out. We wouldn't know that this was a divorce album until the rest of the songs dropped. So there was a lot of speculation on who exactly the gaslighter in question was. And a hell of a lot of people thought it might have been Donald Trump hisownself. The Chicks, who were ashamed of Bush being from Texas, funnily enough did not look kindly upon Donald John Trump. Which honestly, was just great. This band who had been blacklisted for bad-mouthing a Republican president...turned right around and started badmouthing anther Republican president, this time with giant pictures of his face displayed behind them at concerts. Just in case there was doubt about who they hated. They were still not ready to make nice.

Come to find out, Gaslighter is more about Adrian Pasdar, who really wanted to violate the prenup and get 60 grand a month in alimony from Maines, even though he's a successful Hollywood producer. But who the song is actually about is less important than when it was released: 2020. COVID and the election in full swing, we get this song. Another fantastic earworm from The Chicks.

But the entire album ended up being not just an absolutely scathing rebuke of Pasdar (Although it was that. No doubt. Tights on My Boat is just flaying the man, and we stan.), it became a breakup album for Donald Trump. A gaslighter and a liar and a womanzier. This thing we'd been saddled with, and all we wanted was out and away. We are hurting, and we are fed up, and we are done. And I think that specific combination of sound and fury was lightning in a bottle. And that lightning struck hard.

The album is, of course, chock full of powerhouse tracks. March March really should be featured in the article, because it is an incredible protest song with an absolutely chilling music video. Texas Man is very much a return to form, a country love song. And For Her and Young Man are both deeply touching.

I could go on about Gaslighter. I could go on about all their albums. Hell, I could dive way the fuck back to before Natalie Maines was even a member and talk about songs from Thank Heavens for Dale Evans and Little Ol' Cowgirl. But I think this is a good primer on a great band.

So I'll see you Saturday, with that Carolina Chocolate Drops article. Thanks for understanding the deadline issue.