May 15, 2006

Dixie Chicks - Not Ready to Make Amends

Three years ago, the Dixie Chicks were rising stars in country music. Their concerts were sold out; they were nominated in many categories in the Country Music Awards; and they were just about to hit the big time.

Then they made a disastrous mistake: on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, lead singer Natalie Maines insulted President Bush during a concert in London, saying that she was "ashamed" that President Bush was from her home state of Texas.

I really don't care what she feels about the president ("thinks" is too strong a word); Toby Keith (a lifelong conservative, yellow-dog Democrat) was also opposed to the Iraq war, and I'm sure several other country stars; it was a controversial war, then and especially now. But Keith rightly recognized that he was not a political pundit, he was a singer and songwriter. Maines -- like many rockers and Hollywood celebrities -- mistook fame for intelligence.

From the business point of view, her "offhand" remark was an incredibly stupid thing to say. It's not just saying she is against the war; she said she was "ashamed" of a president who is, on the whole, very well regarded by the country-music fans as a man from the heartland, a man doing his best as he sees it to keep the country safe. Even when they disagree with his decisions, they don't feel "ashamed" that George W. Bush is the president.

And they especially hate it when celebrities go to foreign countries and run down America.

If I were their publicist, I would have been pulling my hair out. On the verge of your huge breakthrough, why go out of your way to insult your fan base? Why didn't they just "shut up and sing," as Laura Ingraham put it in her book of that title?

As surprising as it is, the Chicks honestly never had any idea who their fan base was... or rather, used to be. In a recent CBS 60 minutes segment, Martie Maguire, another member of the group, described their audience as she saw it:

"When I looked out in the audience, I didn't see rednecks," Maquire says with a chuckle. "I saw a more progressive crowd."

"Progressive," of course, means leftist. So Maguire, at least, and probably the other Chicks, thought that they were playing to a huge audience of left-leaning country-music fans. Now, there's perceptiveness for you!

There are some leftist country music performers, notably feminist PETA activist K.D. Lang (who quit country in a blaze of glory, with a couple of hit songs on her CD Ingenue, only to fizzle out as a "torch singer"); paranoid conspiracy theorist and outspoken Sandinista supporter Kris Kristofferson (though he's not particularly current and was never a star as a performer); and the perennial Willie Nelson, who is always current but is having a resurgence right now. Country has always been more tolerant than it was given credit for; but the fans draw the limit at America-bashing... which includes saying snide things about the president just as we're about to go to war.

The best leftist country stars, like Nelson, are more circumspect in their criticism: they don't deny being liberals or leftists, but they also don't shove it down our throats. In fact, I think Kristofferson's big mouth may well have played a roll in his inability ever to achieve the sort of success as a singer that he did as a songwriter for others, and Lang's campaign with PETA against eating meat certainly damaged what until then had been a fantastic country career; it was that reaction against her that caused her to quit country and try to become a pop star, to very little success.

I think Maines, Maguire, and Emily Robison fell into the same trap as Kristofferson and Lang: underestimating the tolerance of the country-music community. They assumed that conservatives couldn't possibly tolerate a person having contrary politics... and therefore the only explanation for the Chicks' success (or that of Kristofferson and Lang) was that country fans were not "rednecks" at all but really "progressives" who agreed with their nutty opinions.

I think the Chicks were genuinely shocked that when they smeared Bush from a London studio, the entire country-music fanbase didn't rise up and cheer them on. Just like all their lefty friends in the rock and roll world did.

Instead, while the fanbase was tolerant enough of someone's politics when he more or less kept it to himself, they were not "progressive" enough to appreciate Maines' smarmy comment in London on the eve of war. The Chicks were shut out from many country radio stations; they received not a single CMA award; and their record sales plummeted, even when a few liberals, who had never listened to a country song in their lives, rushed out to show solidarity and buy the Dixie Chicks' debut CD.

It also didn't help when the Chicks started whining publicly that people loudly objecting to Maines' political statement were violating her "free speech rights."

They have not released a new CD for three years now, though one is going to be released later this month. Maines claims -- not that I really believe it -- she's been receiving "death threats" from angry former fans.

(Have you ever noticed that every leftist who gets in trouble immediately plays the death-threat card? We're supposed to believe that whenever a liberal says something amazingly stupid, angering his former fans, that within days, some right-wing clearing house immediately issues a form-letter death threat.)

So are they now sorry for what Natalie Maines said? Did they learn from their mistakes? Judge for yourself:

Their new CD, called "Taking the Long Way" chronicles all the things that have happened to them, but if you were expecting something just soft and maternal, guess again. One song in particular, a single released six weeks ago, sums up their current state of mind. It’s called "Not Ready to Make Nice."

The song is powerful and unrepentant. The anger isn’t directed at the war or the president — or at their many fans who deserted them. It’s about the hatred, and narrow-minded intolerance they encountered for expressing an opinion.

In other words, it's all about them.

They still don't get it, and neither does CBS. They cannot think of any other reason than "hatred and narrow-minded intolerance" that people might object to them crossing over to England, just before their own country goes to war, and sucking up to the anti-American element there (and in the United States).

Maquire says she is not trying to say the country music audience is mostly rednecks. "But over the years, and especially, since country music's turned into this redneck theme, it's become kind of a negative," she says. "I think for a while, a lot of artists were doing a lot of great things. It was that were broadening the audience. So that country was cool. Because I always thought it was cool. So it makes me sad that it's kind of reverted back to a place that I'm not that proud of. And this is coming from a true country fan. I can't listen to the radio right now."

Trying to sort through this sentence -- I think she tortured the syntax until it screamed for mercy -- Maguire seems to be trying to say that country music used to be broad-based and progressive, but then after 9/11, it suddenly became shamefully pro-America. This is the weirdest reading of the field that I've ever read. The only thing I can think is that Maguire thinks country music used to be socialist because it embraced Woody Guthrie, and that it used to be lesbian (and vegetarian) because it embraced K.D. Lang.

But now, all of a sudden, and for no reason at all, it has become conservative and pro-America -- because it embraces Toby Keith and spurns the Dixie Chicks. (Of course, it's also anti-cancer, because it embraces Rascal Flatts, and it's all in favor of everybody dying -- you know, that whole Brad Paisley, "When I Get Where I'm Going" thing; and actually, it is redneck, because there's always Gretchen Wilson!)

This is an amazingly dumb way to think about a field that has always been more quintessentially American than any other native form of music, including Blues and rock; but if you read the interview, it's obvious that when God was handing out brains, the Chicks were back in the Grievance line getting seconds and thirds.

With this kind or rhetoric, no wonder their songs have not been selling well.

The song ["Not Ready to Make Nice"] fizzled on the charts — yet it's one of most downloaded country songs on the Internet.

"Well, how do you explain the fact that it's No. 37 on the charts and No. 1 in downloads? on iTunes," Kroft asked Maines.

Hm... possibly because most country fans probably don't listen on iPods -- not yet. When they do, we'll see that disparity disappear: such songs will be dogs both in the stores and also via download. Here is a sample of the lyrics:

"Self indulgence" is the phrase that pops immediately to mind. Like "Mother Sheehan," the Chicks see themselves as brave martyrs in the mold of Martin Luther King and John Lennon. (And notice how they very subtlely conflate Laura Ingraham with whomever sent the death threats... if anyone did. Laura's book must have violated their free-speech rights, just like the fan protests.)

Another possible explanation for iPod downloads but no CD-single sales: many might have wanted to see whether the Chicks were ready to make amends with country fans, but they didn't want to pay a bunch of money to find out.

Wise decision... because the Dixie Chicks are not ready for anything, making nice or otherwise. Not only don't they know their own audience, they don't know their country. In both senses of the word.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, May 15, 2006, at the time of 2:37 PM

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In my posts Not Ready to Make Amends and Maines Vs. Texas, I talked about the Dixie Chicks' new campaign strategy as left-wing victims. I predicted that their strategy would fail; country fans are never going to embrace the chicks... [Read More]

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