The Chicks Never Abandoned Country Music. ‘Taking the Long Way’ Is the Proof — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- The Chicks are releasing a 20th anniversary expanded edition of 'Taking the Long Way' in 2026, adding two previously unreleased tracks — 'Thin Line' and 'Live Wire' — to the Rick Rubin-produced original.
- Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 she was "ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," and the article frames the resulting industry backlash as one of the first high-profile cases of "undemocratic censorship."
- The Chicks changed their name from the Dixie Chicks in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder and the Black Lives Matter uprising, a move the piece ties directly to their post-2003 evolution as a post-genre act.
- 'Taking the Long Way' won a Grammy and features country instrumentation throughout, including the fiddle-driven 'Bitter End,' the twang-propelled 'Silent House,' and the country rocker 'Lubbock or Leave It,' which the article uses to argue the band never abandoned the genre's traditions.
- 'Not Ready to Make Nice' — the album's defiant lead single and what the piece calls "one of the fiercest musical go-to-hells of all time" — is positioned as the album's crown jewel and the clearest record of the band's refusal to apologize.
- The Chicks have continued staging political theater on tour, with Maines cracking jokes about Mitch McConnell, reinforcing the article's framing of the trio as still fighting for what they believe in regardless of cost.
Why it matters: The reissue reframes the 2006 blacklist as vindication: by leaning into the album's fiddle, banjo, and three-part harmonies, the Chicks argue Nashville punished them for their politics, not their sound. That distinction matters for their legacy, because it repositions 'Not Ready to Make Nice' — a song born from censorship — as durable protest art for a new generation that may only know the trio as collaborators with Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
Ask SkimNews
