The Chicks

2002

Never mind their deserved mainstream success, the Dixie Chicks are the real country deal and they prove it definitively with Home, their sixth release. They have a natural affinity for close harmony singing and they can flat out play — Martie Maguire works a fine fiddle (she once earned third place in the National Fiddle Championships), her sister Emily Robison owns the banjo, and Natalie Maines contributes sensational, swooping lead vocals that are on par with anyone in country music today. Even their lineage is pure: Maines is the daughter of steel guitar master Lloyd Maines, who adds his legendary touch to several songs on the album, along with some production help. So it’s no surprise that this is such a pure, old-time sounding record, as they play down the contemporary side of their sound that helped make their multi-platinum Wide Open Spaces a crossover hit. Fiddle, steel guitar, sharply picked acoustic guitar, banjo, and their velvety voices dominate Home, and it’s a pleasure to hear the Dixie Chicks take their place in the country music continuum by performing bluegrass, prairie ballads, updated Texas swing, and honky-tonk breakdowns. Split between solid original compositions and some excellent cover choices, Home is all about instinct, feel, and fun, and they leave no doubt that this music lives inside of them. This is arguably their finest, most consistent recording and an inspiration to anyone who thinks that real country music is truly “long time gone.”

1999

It was 1998’s Wide Open Spaces—their first album together as the Dixie Chicks—that made the trio of Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, and Martie Maguire massive stars, able to garner both critical acclaim and enormous sales in one fell swoop. But it was the follow-up the next year that put them on the path to legendary status. Even though Maines would later admit that she now has a hard time listening to Fly (she thought her Southernesque accent was too affected), it's actually now a North Star of modern twang: There's sin, heartbreak, dancing, and a ton of fast-picking banjo. And though the album was embraced by a Nashville that would later shut out the Chicks, it's also a blueprint for how to toy gleefully with the rules—challenging the ways that women of the genre are supposed to behave, how they approach their instruments, and the topics they are supposed to sing about.

Fly boasted a total of eight official charting singles, including the classic modern murder romp "Goodbye Earl," with Maines' voice full of venom that flipped country's vision of femininity on its head, and the gorgeous "Cowboy Take Me Away," anchored in some of the Chicks' most precise harmonies and skillful strings. Shockingly, "Sin Wagon," which finds the Chicks in their spitfire, barn-burning mode, was not one of those eight, yet still managed to secure airplay and go on to be one of the trio's signature songs.

Though the Chicks only wrote a select few of the tracks on Fly, the record is still a mastery of intelligent song selection: "Heartbreak Town," by Darrell Scott, is sung with exquisite emotion by Maines, while Jim Lauderdale and Buddy Miller's "Hole in My Head" is pure country kiss-off with a satisfying dose of cowpunk. But Maines and Robison also show on "Don't Waste Your Heart" that they can write circles around most anyone—a precursor to 2006's Taking the Long Way, which the Chicks entirely co-wrote.

"It's funny how the girls get burned," Maines sings on "Don't Waste Your Heart." That's a loaded line for a band that went on to be banned from country radio for simply expressing their opinions. They may have gotten burned, but Fly proves that the Chicks can absolutely take the heat.

1998

The wild success of Wide Open Spaces turned The Dixie Chicks into superstars. They deliver knockout honky-tonk tunes (“Tonight the Heartache’s on Me”), sweet ballads (“Loving Arms”), and some choice covers, including a sizzling take on Bonnie Raitt’s “Give It Up or Let Me Go.” There’s not a drop of filler—the trio tears it up from start to finish. 

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