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Jill Greenberg for TIME
From left:
Maguire, Maines and Robison of the Dixie Chicks. From the
Magazine Cover |
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In the Line of Fire
THEY'VE TAKEN THEIR
HITS, AND NOW THE DIXIE CHICKS
HIT BACK WITH WHAT
MAY BE THE BEST ADULT POP CD
OF THE YEAR.
ER, WILL ANYONE BUY IT?
By JOSH TYRANGIEL,
from Time Magazine on the Web, May 21, 2006
Natalie Maines is one of those people
born middle finger first.
As a high school senior in Lubbock, Texas, she'd skip a class a day in an
attempt to prove that because she never got caught and some Mexican students
did, the system was racist. After Maines joined the Dixie Chicks, and the
Dixie Chicks became the biggest-selling female group in music history -- with
suspiciously little cash to show for it -- she and her bandmates told their
record label, Sony, they were declaring themselves free agents. (In the
high school that is Nashville, this is way worse than skipping class.) Now
that she's truly notorious, having told a London audience in 2003, on the eve of
the Iraq war, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United
States is from Texas," Maines has one regret: the apology she offered
George W. Bush at the onset of her infamy. "I apologized for disrespecting
the office of the President," says Maines. "But I don't feel that way
anymore. I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever."
A sizable chunk of their once adoring audience feels the same way about the
Dixie Chicks. After Maines' pronouncement, which was vigorously seconded
by bandmates Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, the group received death threats
and was banned by thousands of country radio stations, many of which still have
informal bans in place. The Dixie Chicks have mass appeal -- you can't
sell 10 million copies of two of your three albums without engaging lots of
different people -- but country radio is an indispensable part of how they reach
people. Programmers say that even now a heartfelt apology could help set
things right with listeners, but it's not happening. "If people are going
to ask me to apologize based on who I am," says Maines, "I don't know what to do
about that. I can't change who I am."
As proof, the first single from the Dixie Chicks' new album, Taking the Long Way
(out May 23), is called Not Ready to Make Nice. It is, as one country
radio programmer says, "a four-minute f___-you to the format and our listeners.
I like the Chicks, and I won't play it." Few other stations are playing
Not Ready to Make Nice, and while it has done well on iTunes, it's quite
possible that in singing about their anger at people who were already livid with
them and were once their target audience, the Chicks have written their own
ticket to the pop-culture glue factory. "I guess if we really cared, we
wouldn't have released that single first," says Maguire. "That was just
making people mad. But I don't think it was a mistake."
Whether the Dixie Chicks recover their sales luster or not, the choice of single
has turned their album release into a referendum. Taking the Long Way's
existence is designed to thumb its nose at country's intolerance for ideological
hell raising, and buying it or cursing it reveals something about you and your
politics -- or at least your ability to put a grudge above your listening
pleasure. And however you vote, it's tough to deny that by gambling their
careers, three Texas women have the biggest balls in American music.
Over lunch in decidedly uncountry Santa Monica, Calif., where they have lived
part time while recording Long Way, the Dixie Chicks -- in fancy jeans, tank
tops and designer sunglasses -- seem less like provocateurs than busy moms (they
have seven kids in all, ages 1 to 5) amped up by a little free time. In
conversation they are loud and unembarrassable, celebrating their lack of
boundaries in that escalating, I-can-be-more-blunt-than-you way unique to
sisters (which Maguire and Robison are) and women who have shared a tour-bus
bathroom. They eagerly discuss the soullessness of Tom Cruise, the
creepiness of Charlie Sheen and the price-fixing practices of hair colorists.
But sex is the perennial champ, and they are in a constant state of speculation
about which of their kids' nannies is most likely to "get some" on tour this
summer. "We're all married," says Maguire, "so it's not like we're going
to."
One product of their decade together is that the Chicks are loose with pronouns
(they use I and we interchangeably) and agree on almost everything, although the
ways they agree can be revealing. When the conversation turns to childhood
pets and I mention a beloved one-eyed dog, they all make empathetic faces, but
Maguire, 36, gets teary, Robison, 33, laughs at her sister's sensitivity, and
Maines, 31, says she would have poked around the empty socket "just to check it
out." On Iraq, Maguire begins, "The night we sent missiles over ..." while
Maines prefers, "When we bombed the s___ out of ..."
In the days preceding the March 2003 U.S. invasion, the Dixie Chicks were
touring Europe. They don't subscribe to Foreign Affairs, but they are
daily newspaper readers who back up their positions with a solid understanding
of current events. It struck them as natural that in front of a largely
antiwar crowd in London, Maines would preface Travelin' Soldier, an apolitical
ballad about a heartsick Vietnam G.I., with a reference to the world outside the
theater. As Maines spoke, though, Robison admits, "I got hot from my head
to my toes -- just kind of this rush of 'Ohhh, s___.' It wasn't that I
didn't agree with her 100%; it was just, 'Oh, this is going to stir something
up.'"
The celebrity playbook for navigating a scandal is one word long: repent.
But apologies are for lapses of character, not revelations of it, and sensing
that they were being asked to apologize for their beliefs as much as their
timing, the Chicks decided not to back down. "Natalie knows we could have
totally convinced her to apologize," says Maguire. "But the fact is, any
one of us could have said what she said." Their demure response to the
bans and threats -- one of which arrived with the date, time and method of
Maines' planned assassination -- was to appear nude on the cover of
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY with slurs (SADDAM'S ANGELS) scrawled on their naked
bodies. That did not placate the offended. More fans and friends
were lost. Gradually, though, the need for round-the-clock security faded.
Now when they talk about "the Incident," as they unfailingly call it, the Dixie
Chicks try to write it off as an absurdity. Maines has powerful gusts of
indignation and real disdain for a few right-wing websites and talk-show hosts,
but what seems to linger most is disappointment in her pre-controversy self.
"I think I'd gotten too comfortable living my life," she says. "I didn't
know people thought about us a certain way -- that we were Republican and
pro-war."
With George Bush the official piñata of the music
industry (see chart, above) the Dixie Chicks' ordeal should have cooled by now.
"We struggle with that all the time," says Maguire. "Are we picking the
scab of something that's already healed? Because we don't know what people are
thinking." Radio programmers make it their business to know. "They're
still through the floor," says Dale Carter, program director at KFKF in Kansas
City, Mo. "There's a technology called the Dial where listeners react to
songs, and every time we test the Dixie Chicks ..." Carter makes a noise
like a boulder falling from a high cliff. "It's not the music, because
we're playing them the hits they used to love. It's something visceral.
I've never seen anything like it."
The unwillingness of audiences to forgive the band is inseparable from politics.
Market research indicates the average country listener is white, suburban and
leans to the right, and they need not lean too far to file away an insult
against a wartime President. Still, as the President's support has eroded
and growing numbers of Americans (presumably some country-music fans among them)
have come to disapprove of both his performance and the decision to go to war,
shouldn't there be a proportional feeling of forgiveness toward the Dixie
Chicks?
Country Music Television (CMT) has conducted numerous focus groups on the band.
"And they're all a great study in the American psyche," says Brian Philips, the
channel's executive vice president. "What comes up over and over again is,
'It would have been one thing if they'd said it on American soil, but it's the
fact that they said it in Europe that really sets me off!'" There's an
accusation of cowardice in there -- although Maines insists, "I said it there
'cause that's where I was" -- but if the way Philips draws out the syllables in
Europe is to be believed, there's also a more personal grievance, an uneasy
cocktail of resentment and abandonment. As Tim McGraw, one of the few
vocal Democrats in country, and the only major artist who would speak on the
record about the Dixie Chicks, says, "You've got to remember this is a family
skirmish, and it's possible there's more than one thing going on."
Country music has never been particularly classy, which is one of its principal
charms. Less charming is its defensiveness about its station. Unlike
rock fans, most of whom are attracted to the music's integration of styles, some
country fans -- particularly those who call up radio stations in a lather --
take it upon themselves to patrol a wall of genre purity. Elvis Presley
and Johnny Cash got passes because they were sui generis. Not so Buck
Owens, who in 1965, after a few experimental dalliances, took out an
advertisement with a career-saving loyalty oath, "Pledge to Country Music," in
the Music City News, promising, "I Shall Sing No Song That Is Not a Country
Song." Even now, acts that other listeners reflexively think of as
country, from McGraw to Willie Nelson to Shania Twain, are often disparaged for
keeping an eye on the Hot 100, playing noncountry songs or showing a little
navel. The message from hard-core listeners is, Stay behind the wall.
Early in their careers, the Dixie Chicks did, and they were beloved for it.
Maguire and Robison started the group in their teens (Maguire was then at
Southern Methodist University; Robison never finished an application to the Air
Force Academy) with two singers in their 30s before eventually replacing them in
1995 with Maines, a Berklee College of Music dropout who, at the time, was
attending her third college in three years. After a lot of dues paying,
the band took over the country charts. Maines has an immensely powerful
voice, but she's also capable of barometric emotional adjustments; she almost
never oversings and thus sounds great coming out of stereo speakers.
Meanwhile, in a medium that values tradition, Maguire and Robison played the
most traditional country instruments, fiddle and banjo, and played them well.
It didn't hurt either that all three were lookers.
(Abridged)
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