The Dixie Chicks began with a largely bluegrass sound, and released their first album Thank Heavens for Dale Evans (named after the pioneering, multi-talented female performer Dale Evans) on independent label Crystal Clear Sound in 1990. The album included two instrumentals, an indicator from the beginning of the group's strength; Martie had taken third place at the National Fiddle Championships the year before. The Chicks gained some positive notices, winning the best band prize at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and earning opening act spots in support of Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, George Strait, and others, but found no airplay outside of public radio.
In late 1991 the group released the Christmas single "Home on the Radar Range", and followed it in 1992 with their second album, Little Ol' Cowgirl. Steel guitar legend Lloyd Maines played on both of these, foreshadowing a personnel change to come. Some of the album contained a more contemporary country sound. The Chicks made appearances at various events in the Texas and Nashville areas, gaining good critical but sparing commercial success outside of some Dallas area radio airplay.
Robin Lynn Macy left in late 1992, preferring a "purer" bluegrass approach. She remained active in the music scene, joining Sara Hickman and Patty Lege to form the group Domestic Science Club, which issued two albums before disbanding. While still in Dallas, Macy played with an informal group named Round Robin, but she eventually moved to southern Kansas. There, she founded a group called Big Twang, which cut one CD before its band members went their separate ways.
Now a trio, in 1993 the Chicks released their third album, Shouldn't a Told You That, with Lynch acting as the sole lead singer and bluegrass pushed to the background. Despite constant touring, and appearances at higher-profile events such as President Bill Clinton's Inauguration and the national television show CBS This Morning, no hit emerged and a commercial breakthrough eluded them.
Laura Lynch was replaced in 1995 by Natalie Maines, who is the daughter of producer, steel guitar player, and former Chicks session player Lloyd Maines. Around the same time, Sony scouted the Chicks and signed them to their newly revived Monument Records label.
This new lineup consisted of group leader Martie (fiddle, mandolin and vocals), Emily (guitar, dobro, banjo and vocals), and Natalie (lead vocals and in concert, guitar). Natalie had added a strong and distinctive voice to the sisters' musicianship and harmony vocals, and the combination suddenly clicked.
A single "I Can Love You Better" was released in October 1997, this time with major label promotion. It climbed into the Top 10 of the country chart. The album Wide Open Spaces was released in January 1998, and over the space of a year the next three singles from it all hit No. 1 on the country chart: the bouncy "There's Your Trouble", the statement-of-purpose "Wide Open Spaces", and the radio-pleasing ballad "You Were Mine". Wide Open Spaces went on to sell more than 12 million copies, becoming one of the 50 best-selling albums in American history. In the summer of 1999 they served as the opening act for Tim McGraw on a popular concert tour.
The Dixie Chicks proved their hitmaking was no fluke by following it with another smash hit album, Fly, in 2000. Nine singles emerged from it, including country No. 1's "Cowboy Take Me Away" and "Without You". Fly went on to sell 10 million copies, a rare repeat visit to the diamond level of sales. The Chicks also staged the Fly Tour, their first as the headlining act and already now in arenas.
The source of the Dixie Chicks' popularity came from various factors. They wrote or co-wrote about half the songs on these two records, while using outside songwriters for the rest. The group's mixture of bluegrass and mainstream country music appealed to a wide spectrum of record buyers. The group's visual image ranged from pretty to jokey to fiery, which further enhanced their general appeal. Lyrically, the Chicks' ethos struck a resonance with the public: She needs wide open spaces, Room to make her big mistakes.
This romantic, adventurous sense of independence was a major theme of the first two albums featuring Maines as the lead singer; it is strongly evident as well in "Cowboy Take Me Away", another of their signature songs. But the Chicks also delivered gleeful revenge epics such as "Goodbye Earl" (a tale of a woman who murders her abusive husband and gets away with it) or raucous, ribald numbers such as "Sin Wagon" (a concert staple rave-up). Both of these tracks contained thematic elements that caused some radio stations to remove them from their playlists, but the group was consistently unapologetic — foreshadowing the larger controversy yet to come.
The Dixie Chicks debuted their quiet, unadorned song "I Believe in Love" on the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon following the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was a harbinger of a change in musical direction.
The group was involved in a dispute with their record label for two years, and their next album Home was an independent production, produced by Lloyd Maines and released in 2002 after the Chicks and Sony reconciled their differences. For the tracks that came from outside songwriters, the group solicited personal songs that the writers might think "uncommercial". Unlike the two previous records, Home was recorded without drums and is dominated by very-up-tempo bluegrass and pensive ballads. In addition to this "non-commercial" sound, the lyrics of the opening track and first single, "Long Time Gone", explicitly attacked contemporary country music radio, accusing it of ignoring the soul of the genre as exemplified by Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams.
Despite all this, the single rose to #2 on the country chart and started the album off to become a major success; it ended up selling over 6 million copies in the U.S., which might have been still more but for the political controversy to come. "Long Time Gone" also became the Chicks' first top ten hit on the U.S. pop singles chart.
The group's sense of independent spirit was still alive and well in their cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide", which duplicated the top ten country and pop achievements, but in one example of the album's contrast with the past, a key track from Home was a rendering of Patty Griffin's "Top of the World" (for which the subsequent tour was named), which featured a startingly unusual point of view and sought to portray an almost unbearable sense of regret.
Home dominated the 2003 Grammy Awards held on February 23, winning four of them, including Best Country Album. Tickets for the associated Top of the World Tour often sold out within hours.
In September 2005 the Dixie Chicks debuted their song "I Hope" on the Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast telethon following Hurricane Katrina, and subsequently made it available as a digital download single with proceeds to benefit hurricane relief.
The question of how the group's new record would fare commercially attracted intense media interest. A March 27 Associated Press story indicated that country radio reaction was so far mixed, with some major stations playing it, a few avoiding it, and others adopting a wait-and-see attitude. [4]. By April, although still not popular in the United States, the song received more play on country radio in Canada and on a Canadian video television network called Hot AC. However, due to digital sales, the single hit the Billboard Hot 100 at number 28, the week's highest new entry for the week ending May 6, 2006. The following week in nudged up to #23. By May 22, UPI reported that "The first two singles from the album are not getting widespread airplay, Billboard.com reported Monday. The first single,only peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and the second single, 'Everybody Knows', is moving rapidly downward after its peak at No. 48." UPI also reported that program managers for WKIS-FM in Miami and KUBL/KKAT in Salt Lake City had junked the singles due to listener complaints or their own distaste.
The Chicks' new album, entitled Taking the Long Way, was released in stores and online May 22, 2006. The album was produced by Rick Rubin (who had worked with Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, and the Beastie Boys among others) and was publicized to be more rock-intensive than country-oriented. [5] [6] All 14 tracks were co-written by the three Chicks, alongside various other songwriters. The album contained additional tracks that seemed to indirectly reference what the group called "The Incident", and the group remained outwardly defiant. For instance, in the May 29 issue of Time, Maguire said, "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. They limit what you can do." Maines also retracted her earlier apology to Bush, stating, "I apologized for disrespecting the office of the President, but I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever."
Despite minimal airplay, Taking the Long Way debuted at number one on both the U.S. pop albums chart and the U.S. country albums chart, selling 526,000 copies in the first week (the year's second-best such total for any country act) and making it a gold record within its first week. The Chicks became the first female group in chart history to have three albums debut at #1
--Wikipedia
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