Getting over the Dixie Chicks

A strange thing happened over the weekend. The radio station I was listening to in the car played Cowboy Take Me Away, and I didn't change stations.

The Dixie Chicks were the hottest thing in Country Music. It's some time ago, so it's easy to forget just how big they were:

1998 - Wide Open Spaces: 12x Platinum
1999 - Fly: 10x Platinum
2002 - Home: 6x Platinum

Or look at #1, #2, and #3 songs:

1998 - There's Your Trouble: #1
1998 - Wide Open Spaces: #1
1998 - You Were Mine: #1
1999 - Ready To Run: #2
1999 - Cowboy Take Me Away: #1
2000 - Without You: #1
2001 - If I Fall You're Going Down With Me: #3
2002 - Long Time Gone: #2
2002 - Landslide: #2
2003 - Travelin' Soldier: #1

When the song came on the radio, I remembered why I used to like them. I also thought about the whole kerfuffle with foreign audiences, Toby Keith, and Natalie Maines' inability to shut up. As Ron White would put it:

She had the right to remain silent, but lacked the ability.

I can only imagine the panic at the record label as the group imploded, and the goose that laid golden eggs laid, well, a goose egg. The record execs knew that in 1998, the Dixie Chicks sold more CDs that all other country artists combined.

I was one of the folks that got heartily sick of them. First, there was the sucking up to a foreign audience during a time of crisis. But whatever, that would have blown over. But Natalie Maines simply couldn't let it go, for example in the 2003 Der Spiegel interview ("We don't feel a part of the country scene any longer ...").

I feel for the record execs, who must have bled trying to do damage control. They understood what the Chicks seemed not to: there is a song played every day of the year on every Country radio station in the land: The Star Spangled Banner.

That was the Chick's market, and the Chicks didn't want any part of it. It was obvious, and is the reason I stopped listening. It's like GM in the 1970s, making cars nobody wants, just because they can. Bad Marketing.

Eventually, the Chicks seem to have figured this out. As Maines' said in 2006: "I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don't want those kinds of fans.

I think this is why I listened to the song. Natalie, your wish is granted - you've burned your career to the ground, good luck with your new fans. It was fun, back in the day.