Dixie Chicks Not Exactly on Top of the World
Left Coast Report, via email | 7-13-03 | James Hirsen
The Dixie Chicks dubbed its tour "Top of the World."
But it appears as if Natalie Maines' antics may be taking a toll on the country group, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The CD "Home" had reached 6 million in sales when, on foreign soil, Maines decided to slam the commander in chief. But in the short time since then, the group's gone from selling 124,000 copies a week to about 15,000.
"Travelin' Soldier," the Chicks' No. 1 country single, exited the charts only two weeks after Maines' jab at Bush. Its version of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" took a similar dive. And after five weeks, the group's most recent single, "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)," remained stuck in the No. 48 spot.
The Left Coast Report sees an object lesson here for celebs. When exercising free speech in a free market, it's important to remember that a free people may freely decide to purchase something else with their money.
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Dixie Chicks still taking their licks
Did quip kill goose that laid gold records?
07/06/2003
By MARIO TARRADELL / The Dallas Morning News
Unlike the name of their current tour, the Dallas-bred Dixie Chicks are hardly on "top of the world."
Ever since March, when lead singer Natalie Maines told a sold-out London audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," the fastest-selling group in country music history has endured the wrath of its once-adoring fans as well as a stifling boycott from country and pop radio.
Has country music had enough of the Dixie Chicks? As the trio embarks on one of the summer's hottest concert tours – 50 dates, almost all of them, including Sunday's show at American Airlines Center in Dallas, sold out – it may seem a strange question.
Charles Fox / Philadelphia Inquirer
The Dixie Chicks - (from left) Emily Robison, Natalie Maines and Martie Maguire - may be at a pivotal career point.
The answer won't come until the band releases its next album. Until then – or until another supergroup comes along – country radio and record company executives will struggle with how to keep the Chicks from abandoning their roost.
"Nobody likes the prospect of losing this act," says Wade Jessen, director of country charts for Billboard magazine. "I don't hear that being tossed around as a possibility."
Home had already sold a whopping 6 million albums when Ms. Maines slammed the president and the CD was six months old, which meant a steady sales deterioration would be no surprise. But sales have plummeted, and the disc's latest single is foundering. The fallout for the Chicks has been considerable:
• In the three months after the remark, the Grammy-winning Home album went from selling 124,000 copies a week to about 15,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Home had been a Top 10 seller since its August release, so its decline was imminent. But such a precipitous sales drop is a direct result of the controversy over the anti-Bush comment.
"Travelin' Soldier," their No. 1 country single before the fateful remark, fell off the charts two weeks later. The Chicks' cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide," first a country hit and then a Top 10 pop staple, also took a fatal dive.
• None of the band's attempts at damage control seems to have had a lasting effect. An in-depth, emotional interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC-TV's Primetime Thursday and a subsequent cover photo on Entertainment Weekly, where the Chicks appeared nude with slurs painted on their bodies, couldn't quell the ire from the naysayers or prompt record sales from the curious. Essentially, they were momentary media events. (The group members declined to be interviewed for this article.)
• Even May's appearance on the Academy of Country Music Awards backfired. They performed the ballad "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)" via satellite from a concert in Austin. But the group lost in the three categories it was nominated in, and the crowd booed when presenter Vince Gill named them as contenders for entertainer of the year.
It didn't help that Ms. Maines wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters F.U.T.K., which was widely interpreted as an expletive toward fellow country artist Toby Keith. Ms. Maines and Mr. Keith have traded barbs since August 2002, when she slammed his patriotic song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)."
• The current single, "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)," released after the ACM performance, is inching up Billboard's country singles chart. It sits at No. 48 after five weeks. For a group whose singles usually hit the Top 10 in a couple of months, that's particularly disappointing. Both "Travelin' Soldier" on the country charts and "Landslide" on the pop and adult contemporary lists took about eight weeks to go Top 10. Home still holds at No. 9 on the country albums chart but slips to No. 89 on the pop albums tally.
• Locally, "The Wolf" KPLX-FM (99.5) has not spun one song from Home since March. The station is playing Chicks music again, but only older hits such as "Wide Open Spaces" and "Cowboy Take Me Away." Music surveys conducted by the station determined that listeners are "burned out" with the tunes from Home and not as much with material from Wide Open Spaces and Fly, according to Paul Williams, program director for the station.
The fuss over Ms. Maines' remarks seems to be dying down, he says. "I think people have moved on. It's out of the news and it's not as big a deal right now."
But the excitement about this band – a trailblazing trio that has sold 28 million albums since 1998 – seems to have ebbed too.
"I don't think there's the passion on each side that there was before," Mr. Williams said. "The best thing to happen here is for them to go away for a while."
On KSCS-FM (96.3), not one of the band's songs, old or new, has aired since March because research indicates "the majority of those listeners do not want to hear the Dixie Chicks," says Ted Stecker, who is operations manager both for KSCS and for a new country station, "The Twister" KMEO-FM (96.7).
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