60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Goodbye Earl”—The Chicks

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

Rob is back to dive into the empowering anthem that is “Goodbye Earl,” along with the impact of the Chicks and other women in country music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Amanda Shires Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An Instagram post gets an unexpected boost. A TikTok catches in the algorithm. Sometimes that's all it takes to launch someone into internet fame. But then what? This blew up is a new podcast documentary that reveals how social media stardom is made. It's a different kind of fame. That's not always as glamorous as it looks. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Alyssa Boresnak.

You can listen to This Blue Up on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So there's this book I haven't read called The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker came out in 2004. Throughout history, all stories, all folktales, all myths, all novels, all movies can be broken down into seven basic plots. Book is 728 pages long. The Guardian called it a hefty tone that was peculiar, repetitive, near Barmy, and occasionally rather good. end quote. Barmy is basically British crazy. So in this post intro, right after saying that Jaws and Beowulf have basically the same plot, Christopher writes about a hidden universal language, a nucleus of situations and figures which are the very stuff from which stories are made. He also says, there are indeed a small

number of plots which are so fundamental to the way we tell stories that it is virtually impossible for any storyteller ever entirely to break away from them. End quote. This dude also talks about Carl Jung a lot. Youngian archetypes. I feel like we could have kept Young out of it. I read the intro. I skimmed the intro.

Here are the seven basic plots. This is not a spoiler. They're listed on the book cover. So much for basic marketing strategies. The seven basic plots are as follows. Overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest,

Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Couple notes here, Christopher. First of all, comedy and tragedy are quite broad as plot categories in my Snide, layman, non-Youngian analysis, and second of all, you missed one. There are, in fact, eight basic plots. The book got seven of them. That's impressive. Don't be sad.

Seven out of eight, ain't bad. Eight basic plots. which form the universal language fundamental to the way we tell stories. The eight plots are as follows. Overcoming the monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyager Return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth, and handsome army veteran with a shaky southern accent goes home to his pregnant wife in Alabama. They slow dance in a bar, but three letcherous drunk assholes jump them in the parking lot,

and he kills one of the assholes with a single punch to the face and gets seven to ten years in prison for manslaughter because his body is a deadly weapon. He does his time. He does pull-ups. He does handstand push-ups. He learns Spanish and origami. He befriends a kindly diabetic prison librarian. His daughter's born.

He writes his daughter letters. He gets parole. He's going home. They put him on a plane. A plane chock full of charismatic and irredeemable convicts. Serial killers. Psychopaths. Every creep and freak in the universe.

The convicts kill a bunch of the guards and take over the plane. Helicopters, sandstorms, bombs, comedy, tragedy, various brawls and shooting. out and macho one-liners and giant fireballs. I dated this girl in college. I told her that my life's aspiration was to walk slowly away from a giant fireball, like in the movies, like, and I'm just casually strolling away, not turning back or acknowledging the giant fireball in any way, just staring down the camera, ultra badass. That was my goal in life. And she goes, maybe at your high school reunion. That's the funniest thing she ever said to me. The handsome guy's got a

bunny, a stuffed bunny for his daughter. The bunny is a metaphor, but also not at all. A metaphor is just a bunny. One of the psychopaths fucks with a bunny. Definitely the hero kills that guy. More brawls and shootouts and giant fireballs. Holy shit. A flying convertible dangling on a rope protruding from

the cargo hold of the plane just smashed into an air traffic control tower. The plane eventually crash lands on the Las Las Vegas strip. The flaming wreckage comes to rest in the Sands Casino, I believe, and then motorcycle and fire truck chase. The biggest bad guys handcuffed to a fire truck ladder and he gets flung through the glass of a casino skyway, dropped through some sparking electric wires, and then dumped on some sort of hydraulic

trash compactor pile driver situation, which crushes his head, just a McGruber-ass death. I'm not going to check, but I think I've used that phrase before, but I'm using it again. And so then our handsome, per old superhero, tearfully reunited. with his wife and gives his daughter the Stuff Bunny and also this song is playing. How do I live? That's the eighth basic plot, punctuated by Trisha Yearwood's version of How Do I Live? It's a callback in the Bonehead 1997 classic film, Conair. It's the song, Our Hero, Nicholas Cage, and his pregnant wife, Monica Potter, are dancing to in the bar at the beginning of the movie right before he punches the guy in the face to death.

Yet, how do I Live's reappearance here over the end credits following like two hours of super macho, giant fireball, trash compactor head smashing business. This song's presence in this movie is spectacularly incongruous. I saw Con Air in the theater in 1997 and everyone in the joint busted out laughing the moment how do I live started playing the second time. baffled but appreciative laughter, incongruous, spectacular.

How Do I Live? Was Written by permanently Oscar-nominated songwriter Diane Warren. Trisha Yearwood's version was nominated for Best Original Song at the 1998 Oscars, but lost,

to my heart, will go on. Celine Dion Titanic. 13 Diane Warren's has been nominated for an Oscar and she's never won. Diane should have won that next year in 1999 for I

don't want to miss a thing. Aerosmith. Armageddon. Less incongruous combination of song and movie that time. Equally spectacular, though. It'd be rude of me not to let Trisha hit the high note.

That's a rad climactic high note, but it's not the best part of the song. Here's the part where Trisha Yearwood casually walks away from a giant fireball. That's my shit. That's an incredible string of words. My favorite country is.

music moments tend to be complete thoughts, complete sentences, pristine and self-contained, melodic and emotional statements. Bonus points of that complete sentence is also the song title. Lots of other great Trisha Yearwood songs with moments like that. This one, for example. This is the first line of Trisha Yearwood's first single, 1991's She's In Love with the Boy, which also happens to be her first. number one country hit. Let me assure you that the video for this song features several shots of chickens. Tricia Earwood was born in Monticello, Georgia and moved to Nashville in her early 20s. She's in love with the boys, the touching story of Katie and Tommy. Smalltown teenagers,

it's not the same Tommy from the docks and Bon Jovi's living on a prayer. That's another Tommy, who fall in love despite Katie's father's vehement disapproval. Pre-chorus. He ain't worth a list. Not bad as self-contained emotional statements go, but Katie don't give a shit. Chorus! Speaking of country music shit, that's my shit. I love country songs where the first few verses are parents vehemently disapproving of the behavior of young people, but then in the last verse, the parents realized that they used to be

the vehemently disapproved of young people. Just a wholesome and delightful generational loop there. I'm absolutely serious. So now here, the last pre-chorus is. Katie's mom, sassing Katie's disapproving dad about how dumb and disapproved of he was when he was a teenager. All right, get ready for the giant fireball. It's subtler this time, but still giant. So the key word Trisha sings here is honey. Just an ocean of charisma and empathy. Just a whole separate, fantastic number one country song baked into the word honey. There, just tremendous.

Trisha Yearwood's got a bluesy, smoky voice. You know that song Black Velvet by Alana Miles, late 80s? Black Velvet in that little boy smile. Great vaguely pornographic karaoke song. Trisha Yearwood should cover that song. I just Googled Trisha Yearwood Black Velvet, and I got her recipe for Red Velvet Cake, her version of the Armadillo Cake from Steel Magnolias.

It looks great. Trisha's self-title 1991 debut album is great. Her 1992 divorce album, Hearts in Armor, is great. You got Don Henley skulking around as he does. Her 1993 album, The Song, Remembers When. I have a sense memory of seeing that album cover a lot in mid-90s mall record stores. It's Trisha posing with some sunflowers, but she's sort of glaring at you over the sunflowers, as if to say these ain't going to cut it.

You did seven years in prison for Manslor. You brought me sunflowers. I'd rather have the bunny. By 1997, Trisha Earwoods and her early. early 30s and she's already a huge country star loading up her first greatest hits album when she's brought in to sing the second version of How Do I Live? Because the producers of the transcendent bonehead action movie Conair have some concerns about the first version of the song. Their primary concern is that the lady who sings the first version is 14 years old. How can Leanne Rhymes,

Teenage Country Superstar possibly convey the depth and maturity and hard-fought adult wisdom that animates the why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box movie? She can't. How could she? So Diane Warren writes, How Do I Live for Conair? And she wants Teenage Country Superstar Leanne Rhymes

to sing it, and Leanne does. But Conair's producers balk at a 14-year-old singing their big climactic giant fireball song. So here comes Trisha Yearwood and both versions of How Do I Live are released to radio on the same day, May 23rd, 1997.

And Tricia's version is an Oscar-nominated smash on country radio, and Leanne's version is a bizarrely colossal pop chart blockbuster that sets a record by spending 25 weeks in the top five of the Hot 100. And that's without ever hitting number one. Curse you, Elton John's Princess Die-themed version of Candle in the Wid.

And both Leanne's version and Trisha's version are nominated for best female vocal performance at the 1998 Grammys. The first time two versions of the same song are up for the same Grammy Award. And Leanne Rhymes performs the song during the Grammy ceremony. But immediately after Leanne's performance, Trisha's version wins. And I'm sorry, but that's hilarious. That is a pure, undistilled, 200-proof Grammy moment. I love it. So listen. This is a famous country music story, right? Country music controversy. And you dig into it at all and it's clearly the sordid tale of underhanded record label and movie studio dimwits farting around while two different radiant country superstars are trying to just mind their own respective business and sing a great song. But both Leanne and Trisha have repeatedly said that they really hated it when radio stations would like play their versions back to back and then get people to call.

in and vote for which one was better. They were mortified by that idea of gamifying this, of turning this into like a celebrity boxing match or something. So let's not do anything like that. But out of respect, I do think we let Leanne either hit the high note or sing the line. I'm going with the line. Fantastic. You know the most outrageous part of the How Do I Live saga? What's truly unbelievable about this now? You know how we know that this story takes place in 1997 and not, say, 2022 because in 2022, you're not allowed to play women back to back on country radio. Chorus! That Earl had to die.

My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 77th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week, we are discussing Goodbye Earl by the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks from their 1999 album Fly. So listen. I've written at this point, it feels like hundreds. of cute little blogs complaining about how hostile modern country radio is to female artists. Women get like 10% of country radio plays.

If that, it's cartoon supervillain shit. If cartoon supervillains owned country radio stations, which apparently they do. And I've read what feels like thousands of impassioned and exasperated articles and books about this. And this he-man women haters vibe in country radio now is so entrenched that it's a terrible cliche. So much so that complaining about or even mentioning the cliche, is itself a cliche at this point. Plus the guy, that radio expert, knucklehead, who said that women were the tomatoes and the country radio salad, men were the lettuce and thus should be the majority of the salad, and women should be sprinkled in sparingly like tomatoes. Just a mystifying image. This is the debacle otherwise known as

Tomato Gate. He said that in 2015. I've read 8 billion articles about it, and I still haven't processed the men as lettuce concept. But nonetheless, this moment, late 90s country music, at least in imperfect retrospect, is held up now as a glorious and bountiful Garden of Eden type paradise for female country superstars such that two of those superstars could have a colossal hit with two different versions of the same song. So think Adam and Eve before Adam got a backwards baseball cap and hooked up with Nelly and bought a comically oversized pickup truck he couldn't see over the hood of.

and started singing exclusively about his barefoot, ripped blue jean beauty queen, while Eve got kicked off the radio and banished to the much tinier garden of Americana. Don't let me fixate on this. I know you can't stop me now, but maybe if you hit the 15 seconds back button a whole bunch of times, it will reverse the rotation of the earth and prevent me from ever having said any of that. If we accept the imperfect notion of the late 90s as this halcyon era for the Leanne, and Trishas and Faths and Shanayas and Deannas and Shellies and Rebas of the world, then Goodbye Earl is.

If not the proverbial apex mountain of this era, then at least it's tremendously important as a moment when the chicks, to use a very 2022 phrase, chose violence. Goodbye Earl does not have an outrageous, inflated con air type double-digit body count. No, but a body count of one is a great start when Earl is the one.

The malevolent glee of this chorus, man, whenever I write this chorus out, I instinctively add an exclamation point to every line of this chorus. Goodbye Earl is a murder ballad, all the more chilling for it's not being a ballad, and also for its relentless and almost disturbing aura of silliness.

It's infectious. The full Chicks saga spanning roughly 1990 to the present day, primarily the late 90s and beyond superstar chicks lineup of Natalie, mains on lead vocals, Emily Strayer, as she's now known, on banjo and various other stringed instruments, and Emily's sister Marty McGuire, as she's now known on fiddle and so forth, this saga exemplifies seven of the eight basic plots, namely overcoming the monster

rags to riches, the quest, voyage, and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. Today, we will mostly sidestep the tragedy and rebirth portions of this saga. And if you don't have any idea what I might be referring to, awesome. Mostly, we'll start. with the overcoming the monster plot. In the early Chick Saga, of course, the monster is embodied by the stuffy, venal, unimaginative, chauvinist,

artistically and emotionally bankrupt, timid, soulless, cheese-dicked nincompoops of music row. Can we listen to just a little more Leanne Rhymes first, though? You mind? I didn't think you'd mind. Leanne Rimes,

native of Jackson, Mississippi was 13 years old. when her Blockbuster Curb Records debut album Blue catapulted her to invasive stardom in 1996. Her dad, generally her parents seem pretty supportive, her dad threw her demo tape of the song Blue in the Trash because he thought it sucked, but Leanne fished it back out of the trash and added the yodel.

Personally, I think a 13-year-old who can sing the word blue like that can handle the emotional complexities of Conair. Dig the yodeling, man. And this song's called Cattle Call. There's a great wacky scene in the 1998 book, Dreaming Out Loud, Garth Brooks, Winona Judd, Wade Hayes, and the changing face of Nashville by the reporter Bruce Filer, where Bruce is in the back of a limo with 14-year-old Leanne Rhymes,

heading to the Country Music Association Awards, the CMAs, with an entertainment tonight reporter in tow, and Leanne's parents sometimes jogging alongside the limo like Secret Service agents. And Leanne's talking about how she's modeling her career after Reba McIntyre. And Leanne's mom,

generally her parents seem pretty supportive, is making benign but age inappropriate remarks about her daughter's attractiveness. And Leanne argues with her mom about whether or not she can have a boyfriend. And Leanne surprises Bruce, the reporter,

by using hardcore music industry jargon like E.P.K. And rack jobber. Rackjobbers help put CDs and shit in grocery stores etc. Get a hold of yourself. And Leanne just says, I love to do this, but it's basically like a job to me. I'm around adults all the time. That's basically who all my friends are. I have no friends, my age. Then Leanne gets to the CMAs and loses something called the Horizon Award.

It's Best New Artist, basically, to a guy named Brian White, but don't worry. In 96, she won the actual Best New Artist Grammy, and she'll win the Horizon Award at next year's CMAs, even if she loses female vocalist of the year to Trisha Yearwood, and Blue loses album of the year to George Strait, all of which gives you some idea of the delightful and terrifying, personal and professional chaos

a 14-year-old can unleash when she can yodel like this. Talking to the rad journalist and author Marissa Moss in 2021 for Rolling Stone, Leanne Rhyme, said, there's a way that country music places women on this pedestal. Like I was this otherworldly

angel child, the way people perceive me. And anything outside of that, any kind of humanity or sexuality or rowdiness or just being a woman would never have been welcomed in country music. End quote. Hot like wasabi when I bus rhymes. Big like Leanne rhymes because I'm all about value. Sorry. How do I live made Leanne rhymes even more bonkers famous and she continued to put out great albums and do startling and fantastic work. She can sing the hell out of Patsy Klein for one thing. But she also dealt with tabloid invasiveness, industry-type legal battles, including with her father, the usual proverbial bullshit rumors that she was difficult to work with. And finally, a full-blown infidelity scandal in 2009.

She had an affair with the married actor Eddie Sibbrian after they met on the set of a lifetime movie. Leanne and Eddie both divorced their spouses and are still happily married, by the way, but they were both denounced by the tabloids at the time. And Leanne especially for violating her public oath to be an otherworldly angel child forever. In Marissa Moss's great 2022 book, Her Country, How the Women of Country Music became the success they were never supposed to be, Marissa talks about what a massive influence Leanne Rhymes specifically was on some of the biggest country stars today,

namely Mickey Guyton, Marin Morris, and noted Texan teenage yodling champion Casey Musgraves. But Marissa also writes that after the affair, the industry had also expelled Leanne Rhymes completely. And she never quite recovered from it. Never had another big country hit. Marissa observes that at least one massive broke country dude had a very ugly public affair and kept right on racking up number one hits. In that Rolling Stone interview, actually, Leanne says, I was talking to my therapist the other day, and she went back and watched videos of me around 15. We were talking about the fine line I was walking,

playing the role that everyone expected of me and didn't want me to grow out of, but at the same time trying to find a way to express myself. It's something that I'm still challenged with to fully step into my sexuality. To be honest, my affair and Eddie was my real torch to everything. It was unconscious, but unconsciously chosen

for a reason. End quote. My other favorite song on the blue album is called One Way Ticket because I can. Speaking of yet more country music shit, that's my shit, I love upbeat country music songs where the song's message unambiguously is,

I'm getting the fuck out of here. She meant it in 1996, and I imagine she really meant it in 2009. This need Leanne Rhymes felt as a preteen country star to fulfill this otherworldly angel child image to, quote, play the game of good girl

and to shut my mouth and sing, end quote, that's what she said. That's Leanne Rimes saying that. There was a very specific teenage country superstar that Leanne's various industry handlers did not want her to end. emulate. Leanne says, I always heard no one wanted another Tanya Tucker. Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

It's hindsight, of course, but my brain even now refuses to process the fact that this is 13-year-old Tanya Tucker on her 1972 debut album Delta Dawn. I hope she'll take it as a tremendous compliment when I say, that it sounds as if she's singing this whole album directly into a pack of cigarettes. That's a good line, the hot day in January. There's a song on this record called, If You Touch Me, You've Got to Love Me. That's a great song, title. If you touch me, parentheses, you've got to love me. No shit is more my shit than an amusing

parenthetical in a song title. Tanya Tucker did some living over the next 20 odd years. You could say euphemistically. Illicit tabloid romance. Medium illicit album covers, the cover of TNT from 1978 is a good time. The microphone cable. Drugs, rehab, long fallow periods, pink hair. Outlaw shit. That's the gig when your gig is big shot country music star, is my understanding. The gig is saying shit to Rolling Stone like, if somebody pinches my ass, I'll knock this shit out of them. I got no problems with that. End quote. Tanya Tucker was 60 when she said that. She also said that her least favorite word was comeback. Fair enough. By the early 90s, Tanya had lived through some shit and was known for singing beautifully about having lived through some shit. shit. This is a 1991 ballot called Two Sparrows and a Hurricane, which is a stupendous way to describe

the slow, lifelong progression of two young people in love. It appears on an album called Can't Run from Yourself. It also appears in that 1994 four CD box set that perhaps as a teenager, you bought your mom and your dad if you really love them. You know what else is my shit? Country songs were the last verse. is a subtle but profound rewrite of the first verse. So two sparrows in a hurricane,

which does not name it's two young lovers, but call them Katie and Tommy if you want. The first verse starts like this. She's 15, and he's barely driving a car. But then they keep getting older as they remain in love, right? And then the last verse starts like this.

She's 83. And that giant, wet, honking sound you hear is me, obtrusively blowing my nose through tears, like a trombonist walking through a car wash, my glasses are all fogged up. It gets to me this song. It's romantic.

It's bittersweet. It's emotional. That's the gig. Making people emotional if you're a big shot country star is my understanding. The first Dixie Chick's album came out in 1990, and they sure has held it in sound like they aspired to be Big Shot tabloid limousine,

Grammy-winning action movie country stars. And who can blame them? Harmony yodeling is also my shit. As it turns out, the chicks formed in Dallas, Texas in the late 80s. Your first chicks lineup consists of Robin Lynn Macy, former math teacher on guitar and most often lead vocals,

Laura Lynch on bass, Marty or Martha Irwin on fiddle and so forth, and Marty's younger sister, Emily Irwin, on banjo and so forth. Irwin is their maiden name Marty and Emily are basically still teenagers at this point. The chicks all sing slash yodo harmony quite well. Don't you agree?

The first chick's album is called Thank Heavens for Dale Evans. Dale Evans, of course, being the actress and singer, who is part of a superstar duo with singing cowboy Roy Rogers, her husband of like 50 years. Dale Evans, the queen of the west. Marty, talking to Dallas Life magazine about the chicks in 1992, she says, it's an acoustic, nostalgic Western cowgirl sound. Not that every song has to be happy trails, but as a way to categorize it,

cowgirl music. End quote. Marty, as the song, Thank Heavens for Dale Evans makes clear, can fucking shred. Her younger sister, Emily, can fucking shred as well on banjo, as we see here on a song called Who Will Be the Next One? The first three chicks albums are very much a YouTube situation, if you'd like to conveniently listen to them now, which I do very much encourage. They're quite splendid.

We're talking like YouTube videos where the video is just a bright blue background with no copyright intended in all caps with 10 exclamation points. I did count them. This is known in legal circles as the 10 exclamation point defense as a bulletproof strategy. The defense rests. Let's scrounge up some actual video, shall we? Dig Laura Lynch, the bassist, singing lead on a song called West Texas Wind. This is fairly rare video from.

footage of the original Chicks Quartet playing West Texas Wind on an early 90s classic country TV show called American Music Shop. We're talking big hair and cowboy boots, though perhaps not in the quantity or volume size volume that you're picturing right now. This is back when the band used to sell t-shirts that read Dixie Chicks, the rooster crows, but the hen delivers. Excellent t-shirt. This version of West Texas Wind is much slower than the one on Thank Heavens for Day 11, so I had to break up the chorus. I'm sorry. Like if you even want to read about this band's prehistory, it's mostly like an Angel Fire era early internet situation.

People typing up old newspaper articles on bright blue website backgrounds, a lot of intense font decisions. I'm not complaining. I'm into it. It harmonizes excellently with a whole throwback, nostalgic cowgirl music vibe. It's reductive to say that this version of the band doesn't want to get famous. The Dixie Chicks are clearly trying to make it

in the music business. I don't even know I added scare quotes to that, but they're also, in their earliest iteration, a bluegrass band. This is not a group gunning for Garth Brooks or Reba McIntyre or Randy Travis or any of the other biggest Nashville hitmakers of the early 90s. Furthermore, if you think I'm going to get suckered in any kind of real country music debate, uh, no way, dude. I don't know what you take me for. I have a good idea actually at this point of what you take me for, and it's my own fault. But nonetheless, forget it. The second. The second. chick's album from 1992 is called a little old cowgirl

Marty in that Dallas Life magazine article she says I hope our fans won't be disappointed it's got drums on every track it's no longer bluegrass but we have to make a living and you can't do that playing bluegrass end quote I am weirdly charmed

by the notion that anybody could hear this record as a sellout move that's a song called A Road is just a road written by Mary Chapin Carpenter no copyright intended. Alas, this will be Robin Lynn Macy's last album. With the band,

she lives in Kansas now and still teaches and still plays bluegrass. The Dallas Observer interviewed her in 2019 and observed that she left the chicks and continued her career with her bluegrass purity intact. Pretty much the only thing Robin herself had to say about her departure was,

roots matter. End quote. All right. The third and final pre-supernova chicks record released in 1993 and now featuring bassist Laura Lynch on lead vocals alongside Marty and Emily is called Shouldn't A Told You That. And at this point, we're shredding with just a smidge more pop star charisma, perhaps. I'm only human. I shouldn't have told him that. But yeah, I'm pleased to report that we're definitely still shredding.

Alas, this will be Laura Lynch's last album with the band. The Texas newspaper, The Plainview Herald interviewed her in 2003. the chicks were in the news. And Laura wouldn't talk about why she left. She said everyone in the band agreed not to talk about it. But she finally reminisced about her time with the pre-famed chicks, wearing cowgirl skirts and touring in a busted pink Winnebago and charging $400 for a five-hour gig.

She says, We knew we would suffer if we played anything top 40 country. So we played things from people 70 or 80 years old. We wanted to be radio friendly. we just didn't know how yet end quote she also says we were plugging along doing our thing and boom people were hiring us for bigger venues we needed a bigger sound so we hired lloyd she means lloyd mainz steel guitar legend songwriter producer in austin texas icom lloyd maines lloyd starts working with the chicks on this bigger sound but there's also the matter of lloyd's daughter natalie maines a 21-year-old singer

and songwriter and guitarist who'd gotten a full vocal scholarship to the Berkeley College of Music but dropped out. Next thing you know, Natalie Mains is the new lead singer of the Dixie Chicks and Laura Lynch is out. Don't feel too terrible for Laura though. In 1997, Laura married an old family friend who'd recently won $26.8 million in the lottery. That's a hell of an exit strategy. At $400 bucks a pop, the early chicks would have had to play $67,000 five-hour games. gigs to scrounge up that kind of cash. If they played two five-hour gigs a day, they could get it done in just a touch over 90 years. If I did any of that math wrong, I don't want to hear about it. The chicks used to mail out a physical newsletter called Chick-Chat to all their fans,

the Angel Fire era internet person who retyped all these newsletters. I'm imagining that work was extra charming and gratifying. So here's an excerpt from a 1996 edition of Chick-Chat. Howdy y'all? I just wanted to say thank you. you to all the fans who have so graciously welcomed me as the new chick in the coop. Since last fall, I have been having a great time. Everything is so new and exciting, and I hope to meet all of you down the road. Until then, Natalie. Natalie is gunning for Garth Brooks.

Should we read anything into the fact that the first song on the first chick's record with Natalie Mainz is called I Can Love You Better, and mostly consists of Natalie cheerfully talking up her superiority to the other girl. Nah, it's a love song. A road is just a road and a feeling is just a feeling. And anyway, as the philosopher Kid Rock once observed, it ain't bragging, motherfucker, if you back it up. When's the last time you looked at the cover

of the 1998 Chick's album Wide Open Spaces, which served as the chick's major label debut and sold more than 10 million copies in America? The cover's just Natalie and Marty and Emily walking down the street from left or right. But Marty and Emily are beaming with a sunny and sisterly aura. Thrill Deve finally made it in the music business. Whereas Natalie is lagging just one step behind them.

If this was like a family photo, your mom would be super pissed that Natalie's ruined the cemetery. And also she's dressed in semi-formal all-black, which makes her blonde hair pop. And she's smiling, but there's more of an elusive, mischievous aspect to Natalie's smile. She looks like a goth, walking home from an unsuccessful job interview. you who decided to photobomb a sister act country duo's album cover. It's fantastic. I feel like the wide open spaces cover conveys a lot of valuable information about the volatile chemistry of this new chicks lineup. Also, Natalie Mainz can sing like this. That song's called Loving Arms. I picture Natalie's voice is this lethal, bladed weapon like a samurai sword or a chainsaw,

cleanly chopping large antique pieces of furniture in half with a single swoop the couch doesn't even feel it, but you do. There is nothing remarkable, lyrically, about these lines from this other weepy ballad. You were mine, but I stopped dead in my tracks every time she sings them anyway. Took out all the pictures of our wedding day. It was the time of love and laughter. Happy ever after. It's reductive maybe to say that when you're a big shot country star, the whole gig is infusing simple ideas and stock phrases and even cliches with fresh pathos and energy.

But it's a lot of the gig, is my understanding. Wide open spaces sounds bright and booming and colossal, the way top 40 country albums at least aspire to sound. But every other aspect of the chick's massive upgrade here pales in comparison to the plain spoken and extra colossal phenomenon that is Natalie's voice. And what I always hear is Natalie's mischievous and volatile relatability. And that voice is why this, in a super low-key and sneaky way, is a phenomenal first line for a blockbuster country song. Who doesn't know what I'm talking about? Who's never left home? Who's never struck out?

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about? Every country song, every song ever should begin like this, with the singer going, this is relatable. right she doesn't mean struck out on the baseball failure sense of course no what natalie's saying here is we're getting the fuck out of here as a fun bonus wide open spaces is the platonic ideal of a parents

realizing they used to be young people in the last verse song i'm not even joking even a little bit get a load of the galaxy's worth of pathos natalie infuses into the phrase check the oil as her folks drive away her dad yells check the oil mom stares out the window and says

I'm leaving my girl Check the oil Her dad yells check the oil With a little catch in his throat Or at least in her throat That's my shit It's always the moms who make the crucial Poetic Realization

In the climactic parents realize They used to be young people verse She said it didn't seem Like that long ago when she stood there and let her on 10 million copies sold in America Everyone knew what she was talking about

My theory is that wide open spaces With such a massive success Because the most raucous songs Have Titles that sound like Auto Mechanic Shop Talk Let Her Rip There's Your Trouble Tonight, The Heartache's On Me

Not so much that last one But that song's dope too You know my favorite though On this record It's a gloriously pristine and self-contained melodic and emotional statement that also serves as the song title. Well, close enough.

Am I the only one who's ever felt this way? Am I the only one, parentheses, who's ever felt this way? Close parentheses. Bonus points for the amusing parenthetical. Bonus, bonus points for the reverse echo of who doesn't know what I'm talking about. This record kicks ass.

The chicks ass. The chicks are famous now. are like Faith Hill famous now. Who doesn't know what Faith Hill's talking about even if you maybe can't define the words centrifugal or pronounce it? And maybe you would have mispronounced it had you not heard Faith Hill pronounce it correctly first. I'm not correcting that. I had this whole Pulitzer Prize winning scheme where I was going to compare all the famous country singers' voices to various types of alcohol, right? Tricia Yearwood is red wine. Faith Hill is Rose. Tanya Tucker's gasoline, et cetera, just a truly fantastic bit, honestly.

And then I was walking down the street and Loretta Lynn from heaven. Rest in peace. Loretta Lynn clonked me on the head from heaven with like a heavenly ashtray, like a very heavy celestial, unbreakable glass ashtray, like doong. And I was like, all right, all right. This kiss is a banger. The keyword Faith Hill sings here is, of course, ah, six million copies. of Faith Hill's 1998 album Faith sold in America.

I guess it's more accurate to say Faith Hill is a little over halfway toward being Dixie Chicks famous. Her 1999 banger, Brees got her even closer. I went to see Faith Hill and Tim McGraw in 2000 on their first big arena tour. And my only concrete memory from the show is Faith Hill, just doing a slow and steady victory lap around every inch of the stage during the super extended outro to breathe while everyone's wildly a plightly.

and the electric guitar is going burner-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-for like 20 minutes. I know this moment didn't last 20 minutes, but it felt like it lasted 20 minutes, and it deserved to. I cherish this concert memory for how corny and sentimental and overwrought it is. Just as I cherish my corny and sentimental and overwrought reaction to late 90s country songs when I hear them now, you want another gloriously pristine and self-contained melodic and emotional statement. dig this 1997 Leanne Womack song called The Fool. She's having a Jolene type, Don't Take My Man, Conversation with a lady at the bar.

I almost said that the full title of the song should be, I'm The Fool, who's in love with the fool, who's still in love with you, but that had ruined the song. Dude, that's a terrible title. That's why Leanne Womack's in charge. I guess being self-conscious about how corny and sentimental I get about it is the safest way to cherish this whole late 90s,

Halcyon era. Marissa Moss in her book, her country, she writes, country music looks back on this period of the late 1990s and into the very early 2000s as its golden era for women, but also, depending on who you ask, as a blip in the trends or a tidal wave that was cut short by sinister intentions, end quote. The reason we talk about this golden era now is because it ended. Abruptly, severely. Eras are defined by their boundaries, and it's not glib or over. ought to say that 9-11, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, might be a big part of the reason the golden era for women ended. Marissa's book is especially great when it talks about country radio's instant terrified reaction to 9-11. She says that suddenly overnight, country radio wanted comfort and coddling and patriotism and nationalism.

Country radio is on wartime footing now and may never not be on wartime footing again. And gargantuan Reba McIntyre or Faith Hill ballads didn't cut it on a wartime country station. Now we want Alan Jackson singing earnestly about not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran. Now we want Toby Keith doing Toby Keith shit. I said we weren't talking about any of this and we're not. I only say any of this to underscore how miraculous it was that in 1999 the chicks one year later put out fly, their second straight diamond selling album, 10 million plus copies sold in America.

These are cartoon superhero numbers. These numbers are impossible to wrap your head around now. Not just relative to the full chick's arc, but relative to anyone or anything. As a bonus on fly, the song Sinwagon includes the phrase, Mattress Dancing. Did she really just say mattress dancing on the radio?

Sinwagon is also an excellent reminder, should you require one, that Marty and Emily are still fucking shredding. I can't say that I blame this chick's lineup for more or less confining all previous chicks lineups to the shadowy realm of vinyl rips on YouTube and Angel Fireass websites. The chemistry, the ecstasy, the ferocity of these three selling tens of millions of copies of their first two back-to-back records. I get why they're fine with you thinking that Natalie and Marley and Marlowe. Marty and Emily have been together for 20 years. They sound like it. On fly, they sound like it on gargantuan ballads. Two, this is a song about a guy leaving after saying he wouldn't leave.

I can't tell you what this song's called yet, but it's very slow and we have to break it up. Sorry, it'll be worth it. I promise. See, I told you. That's a good line. The Cold Day in July line. Dig that line. Neither of those songs, though, are The song on the Fly record.

Of course, the song. on the fly record is without precedent. Though of course that's not quite true either. So, she runs back down the hallway and through the bedroom door.

She reaches for the pistol kept in the treasuredrobe. So, precedent. Here then is a live version of the semi-infamous third verse to the 1991 Garthbrook smash The Thunder Rolls.

Garthbrooks, who by the way has been married to Tricia Yearwood for 17 years and whose catalog is not on Spotify. The Thunder Rolls. If we take the lyrics literally as strictly about infidelity, about a wife discovering or finally confirming

her husband's infidelity and what she intends to do about it. Tells a lady in the mirror he won't do this again because tonight will be the last time she'll wonder where he's been. But so the infamous original video for the Thunder Rolls is a very stormy and shaky and quick cutting in early 90s affair,

and Garth in a wig plays the philandering husband. And we see this confrontation between husband and wife, but he raises his hand to her and pushes her down. And there's this visceral and very upsetting scuffle while their little daughter looks on from the stairs. And he turns menacingly toward the daughter. And that's when the wife reaches for the gun in the drawer. And then the gun fires. and then a tree branch

smashes through a window, and 20 seconds later, we see the wife with a black eye lighting a candle. CMT, country music television banned this video,

unsurprisingly, even though women's shelters and even some country radio stations lobbied for it for shining light on an issue not often illuminated in the learier

and safer and more lower-k-C conservative corners of country music. Okay, precedence. This, too. Well, she seemed all right by dawn, though she looked a little... Martina McBride, 1993.

Songs called Independence Day from her album, The Way That I Am. This song, in my humble opinion, is absolutely a classic. From the Line by Dawn's Early Light Forward. There's no getting around what this song's about. Martina's narrating from an eight-year-old's perspective, the kid watching from the stairs, let's say, this time in the third verse, the woman doesn't bother with any gun in a drawer. There is not a trace of whimsy in this song, even malevolent, ironic, strategically off-putting whimsy. But the massive, triumphal, all-American arena rock grandeur of the chorus will be enjoying in a second does punctuate and exacerbate the crushing sadness of the line here about the song. the county home.

That's brutal. This song is brutal, unambiguously. That massive, triumphal, All-American Arena rock chorus, though. This wasn't quite a number one country hit. Martina has quite a few of those. But Independence Day won some CMA awards, including for the video,

and makes quite a few best country song ever type lists now. Maybe you feel almost uncomfortable how electrifying this chorus is in like a fist pumping Springsteenian sense. That discomfort is a feature, not a bug. My dad texted me a few years back

out of the blue. He says, did you see the version on Facebook of Pat Benatar singing Independence Day? Thought of you. It's so cool. That's what he tested me.

He texted me like once a month, maybe. If you're like me, you don't get music recommendations from your dad every day. So you drop whatever you're doing and take this seriously. This is from that dope

CMT show Crossroads where they put a country star and a non-country star together for crossover hijinks. Katie Perry and Casey Musgraves is the definitive crossroad episode I'd say. But yeah,

this is one of those moments where Martina McBride who can bell with the best of them. She just gratefully lowers her mic and lets Pat Cook. Precedence. It's time once again to let freedom ring,

to let the guilty pay, to bring on the day of reckoning. We just got to get through the first couple verses first. Goodbye Earl was written by the established Nashville songwriter Dennis Lynn. He'd written for Garth Brooks. He'd written for Joe Diffy. Before that, he'd written for

Elvis Presley. And the first thing to say clearly is that the first couple verses of this song are unrelentingly brutal. Martina McBride singing, Daddy left the proof on her cheek, is not ambiguous or relenting. But the steely effervescence here.

The pitch black comic tone of Goodbye Earl is a truly startling and discomforting thing. That's not a mistake here either. It all comes down to the zeal, the lethal twang Natalie lays on the words intensive care. And then there's the matter of the Goodbye Earl video. When's the last time you watched the Goodbye Earl video, which is a dance party? which takes place mostly in blinding sunlight, garish primary colors, the chicks all with beaming smiles and close-up,

this cavorting pack of delighted civilians, including kids bopping around behind them in the hospital room. I am not a horror person. Surprise. So ain't no way I'm watching that movie Midsamar, or however you pronounce that, but this is the cruel sunshine vibe

I'm picturing when I read about that movie on Wikipedia. Jane Krakowski plays Wanda, the abused woman. And I would venture to say that Jane Krikowski's eye injury makeup in the Goodbye Earl video is by design the single most upsetting

image ever broadcast on CMT, or for that matter, VH1 or MTV. In part because she's smiling. Dennis Franz plays Earl as like a zombie corpse for part of the time, and he's playing Earl for kooky black comedy, like a sketch comedy

stooge who also briefly grabs the camera and violently shakes it as though the camera is his wife. I like tiered up almost watching this video just now, certainly not because it's funny and not because it's trying to be jump scare horror movie upsetting or maudlin or melodramatic. It was just like my baffled reaction to a piece of blockbuster pop art so tonally dense and horrifying, but also goofy, but also deadly serious. This video is as close to truly shocking as I think a nationally distributed music video is ever going to get. See, now I'm reading YouTube comments, right?

Which is extra dangerous and ill-advised in this context, I suppose. But this woman points out that one of the first lines in the song, Goodbye Earl is framed as two childhood girlfriends, Marianne and Wanda. Lauren Holly plays Marianne. And they grow up and to some extent go their separate ways. And Wanda marries Earl. But then Wanda calls her old friend for help. And the line goes, right away, Marianne flew in from Atlanta on a red-eye midnight flight.

That's the moment in the video where Jane Krakowski's hospital eye makeup appears. And this woman in the YouTube comments just goes, I have heard this song hundreds of times for close to two decades. And that line still brings me to tears every time. Yeah, this lady on YouTube just convinced me that that's the most important line in the song. How's that for a late-breaking revelation? Goodbye Earl, of course, was never a song about Earl, but it's not just about Earl's wife either.

It's about Earl's wife and the friend who comes to her aid. The point of the song is that somebody helps her. The moment in the video where the chicks and the actors and all the extras are smiling at the camera and dancing, and the camera rises up far above them as they wave at it, I am genuinely impressed by how rattled I am by this video. So Wanda serves Earl, poisoned black-eyed peas, and he dies, and Wanda and Marianne dumped the body. A missing person who nobody missed at all, as the song goes. Country Radio did play this song, somewhat, somewhat grudgingly, somewhat cautiously, somewhat controversially.

There's a San Jose Mercury News article from March 2000 about the San Jose Country Radio Station, K-R-T-Y-F-M, which had like some sort of radio town hall call-in show symposium on whether goodbye or was fit for public consumption. Think of the children and so forth. One caller said, you have to be a certain age to see an R movie. There are all these kids whose parents don't talk to them about sex and drugs and crime. They are the ones out killing people. You have to have some kind of censorship to control what kids do, end quote. Other people said it was a goofy fantasy. One guy said nobody would like the song if it were a man killing a woman and the song was called Goodbye Earline. Thank you for your input, sir. Et cetera. I don't know. how productive this was, ultimately, but the article does note that in the fly liner notes,

the chicks do write of this song, The Dixie Chicks do not advocate premeditated murder, but love getting even, end quote. That's a pretty good line, too. Sometimes radio stations that played Goodbye Earl, they'd also promote on the air a 24-hour domestic abuse hotline. For all the occasionally inane chatter, this song inspired, my chatter included perhaps, that's an awful lot of potential good for a pop song to put into the world. That's an awfully important life-changing, if not life-saving message. If you're in a terrible position like Wanda, there's people who can help. If you know someone like Wanda, help them. Maybe not like the friend in the song helps, but, you know, okay. Like I said, let's skip the tragedy and skip the rebirth. In conclusion,

the best chick's album is called Home from 2003. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. It's not pure bluegrass, obviously, but the roots show and the roots matter. Leave it at that. My favorite song used to be the one called A Home, some weepy ballot action, but lately I'm going with Travel and Soldier. Just trust me that if you're into country music for final verse revelations, this is as exquisitely devastating as it gets. This song does not describe a victory, but the song is, as art, and as a force for compassion and empathy and moral good in the world, victorious. The chicks excel at victories like that, and those are the victories that last, because nobody's cheering for the giant fireball, really. They're cheering for the unblinking women who casually walk away from it. Our guests today, we're absolutely thrilled to welcome Amanda Shire's, singer-songwriter, and fiddle. player. Her latest solo album is called Take It Like a Man. She's also a member of country music supergroup The High Women. Amanda, it's an honor. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

Of course. Amanda, I was reading this book, Her Country, that came out recently, and it says that I believe you once got fired from your job at a deli for taking time off to go see the chicks on tour. And so I was wondering, how is this show? Fantastic. I saved up a lot of money in went to see them and down on the floor, like the floor seats. And asked off for like three weeks in advance and nope. And so they're like, if you go to that concert, you're going to be fired. And I was like, fine. You gave them plenty of notice.

I'm totally on your side here. What was it about them at that time? They were so successful, you know, back to back 10 million copies selling albums. Like, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how huge they were. in that late 90s moment. Like, what was the appeal for you? They were virtuosos of their instruments in the way that the highway men were doing things on their own terms

and, like, maybe making it feel like their fans could own their own stuff, too, I guess. I did want to ask you about Marty McGuire, you know, who is very arguably the most successful, you know, pop star fiddle player ever. Like, what struck you about her style and her technique? What made her so perfect for this band and this moment? I think it was, she started in school orchestras and then also did fiddling. And that's what I identified with because that's what I did. But she also did Western Swing like you would do in Texas.

And I think when you spend that much time learning instruments in both language of classical and fiddling, then you can contribute in all kinds of ways. not just straight-up country, but even in the ballady stuff where it's just beautiful and clean and precise. And it wasn't just back, though, because she was really good at viola and all kinds of instruments.

And then I guess then you got the sisters singing harmony together. That always helps. The transition from Texas to Nashville is another very stark, you know, going from one to the other. And you did that too, of course. Like what changes when you go from being like a Texas star to like a Nashville star to like a national star?

Like what changes about your sound or your attitude? Well, I was a side person when I was in Texas and I couldn't really make it as a solo artist, artist because everybody knew me as a fiddle player. Like I would try to get gigs and they're like, but you play the fiddle and I was like, yeah, but I also do my own thing now. I moved to Nashville for that. And also because Texas is huge. and logistically it just works better to operate out of a place like Nashville where you can be in Atlanta and three hours or on a flight to New York and two. And it just works together. And then the difference though sound wise, it's hard to separate distance from time sometimes, like the distance from your home versus time away and time experiencing and growing.

I think the music just tends to evolve as it's supposed to but you're always you always refer back to that center of where it was when you started. Did you have any experience with the pre-fame chicks like the records before Natalie

joined? They were a regional band at that point but you were living in the region. I didn't but I did have experience with Natalie's dad Lloyd because I lived in Lubbock and I knew the Maine's brothers and I knew, you know, the Flatlanders and all the, everybody else you'd expect to know and play with around there.

What is it about Lubbock? Like, obviously, the checks have a song Lubbock or leave it. Like, is there something about that city in particular that inspires all these famous musicians, even if it's mostly inspiring them, you know, to get good enough to leave? I have a lot of different theories. There was a time when, you know, there was trains and there was. you know, cotton, and there was cows, and there was, you know, cattle drives and, you know, all these kind of things. And then there was the dust bowl where it used to be lots of grass

and prairies. It's now just the world's largest, flattest landmass. And all the trees are, like, shipped in. There's no trees that are, like, actually grow there, you know, it's kind of, it's, it's basically a desert by our own making. But being that it's the world's largest flatest landmass, I tried selling that to the city. They didn't go for it. It's catchy. It blows dirt. It's like being sandblasted all the time.

But it's more than two-thirds sky when you're standing on it or looking out of your car window. You're looking at all sky. So some of my theories have to do with it being spacious and big enough to have room to think and also practice, there's nothing to do there. So you might as well follow your art. And there really isn't anything to do there. You can go to Texas Tech or you could go work at the hospital. That's about all there is.

And my other idea is that, you know, people have been moving in and out of Lubbock for a long time. And it kind of breeds a reckless type of energy. And in that, I think that you can kind of feel it. And when people are from there and there are a type of. in their approach with music. For one thing, you just explained wide open spaces, the song to me, you know, that makes

a thousand percent more sense now. When you think about late 90s, country music stars, I don't know if that's like Faith Hill, Reba, Martina McBride. Do you see the chicks as part of that, or were they so huge back then that they were almost beyond like country music? Like, what space did they

occupy for you back then? Country for sure. It kind of felt like it happened overnight, even though it didn't, because it was like 1998 with the first one. And then the next one was shortly thereafter. It was in 99. That's pretty quick. And then it was complete country, but it showed, they didn't have to go through those things

like Chenaya Twain and Leanne Rhymes had to do, which is, what is it called when you get developed, that kind of thing, that artist. Like you don't do that and you didn't have to go through, jump through all the hoops, I guess. And so what I think that they did was they showed like female friendship and they showed like world class musicianship and, you know, teamwork and all that where the other women country stars at the time, they were great, but they were already preconditioned in a way, I guess. I don't know. That's the right words. But I think when the Dixie Chicks, this is me guessing, and I don't know, it could be hypothesizing really. It feels like with the amount of time it took Riba and Chenaya Twain and all. all that. They had like a pick of, or they were kind of the ace writers in town, they would record their songs. But what I liked about what Natalie did and the chicks, that they started writing also. They already were writing, but they also loved great music like Patty Griffin and all that.

And I don't know. I'm kind of going off in a tangent. But I like that they did it on their own terms. And we're able to because they were so fucking good. Yeah, yeah. As for Goodbye Earl, like, it's just still such a shocking song to me, like this super upbeat, like sing-a-long song about such a dark and serious topic. Like, as a songwriter yourself, like, what's the trick to getting that mix right? Like, how do you pull off a song this tonally complicated, really? There's a couple of different ways you can think about it in the way of it being a murder ballad. And that's the thing that we've had since before we even, settled America. And you could also think about it as a celebration of this is what I do. Because people experience domestic violence. Back in those days, I could see how that'd be a little bit wild to talk about. But now on these kind of ages and days and times, we have ways where we can get help and we have the internet and all that. But I think it's, when you put

the dark subject matter with the likeness of the of the music I think it kind of balances so like if I was going to play it in the car my daughter wouldn't really notice what it was you just you know you just hears happy music but then at the same time you're doing what music's supposed

to do which is you know telling a good story you know sometimes somebody might want to fantasize about that very same thing I don't know I don't know oh I was going to say the guy that wrote it wrote a bunch of songs.

I was going to ask you, Dennis Lind. He wrote Dan by Your Man, too. Yeah, that's wild. Like, is, what do you think it is about his approach that made him, you know, you wouldn't have guessed, frankly, that, like, one guy wrote either of these songs. Like, what approach did he take, like, what perspective that he had that made him so right for this kind of thing? I think what he does well when we think about his songs is akin to what he's.

George Saunders does is painting pictures of characters and knowing the characters that you're writing about or being able to speak from the character's voice. That's not an easy thing to do to method write yourself into a good song. And you proved it over and over like little tiny worlds, but where he knew all the characters and he could inhabit them. And I think that's how they all kind of fit. Yeah. I love George Saunders.

I never thought of it that way. but that makes a lot of sense. But you know how he's like the king of dialogue and like characters? Yeah. No, just in a few lines in a short story. Like you get a complete sense of a person and that's what a country song does. Like two lines is enough to give you an entire universe about somebody. It's only in the last like 48 hours listening to the song,

Goodbye Erwin, reading about it, like how important the other woman is, like her friend who flies back immediately to help. Like I'd always just sort of blown by that part. But this is a song about friendship. Exactly. It's exactly. And I don't think I'd given that the weight that I think a lot of other people who listen to it have. They're very moved by the fact that she flies back immediately to help her friend.

That's a crucial part of the song. I think like, you know, when some of the, when people were like banning it from the radio too, I wonder if they might should have paid more attention to the line about being in intensive care. or maybe like, hey, we wouldn't have to write songs like this if we were doing more for for victims. Yeah, the way Natalie sings the words intensive care, I just, you know, I cringe every time and like the best way from a songwriting perspective. Like it's so vivid and it's so disturbing.

But again, within this very catchy and infectious pop song, it's just, it's a beautiful and sort of terrible thing that happens just on those words. And even though it's fiction, it could also It could also work as a cautionary tale Of course, of course Do you remember in real time that goodbye Earl being a controversial song In terms of radio playing it or country music accepting it Were you sort of tapped into that or got a sense of that?

I do, I paid attention to it a lot. I was still living in Lubbock at that time. I graduated high school year early in 1999, and I would drive to South Plains Music College where she went to school some and a lot of folks have gone there Patty Lovellis, all this kind of stuff. I'd drive there and come back every day

and before the age of the internet radio and CDs and those were the CDs I'd blasted and among others I had to stay current on all the music but very very in touch and in tune with it. In Lubbock, Texas we had K-Triple-L

the radio station and they were like the first to like start burning the CDs and piling them being assholes. Were there particular chick songs on those records like fly wide open spaces? Is there a song that sticks out to you, you know, from a songwriter's perspective? I always liked, I really liked Marty Spiddling, but I like that one, there's your trouble. and I really like that one and I mean I like all of them I mean I know them all

and I like the the ones that Darrell Scott wrote and I really I think I like there's your trouble and I like the other one that's off of there I also like the landslide of course but how could you not right of course that's beautiful and there was that the I think it was on the home record

that soldier song soldier. That's the one that really got me more recently. That's a fantastic song. That sort of skyrocketed to one of my favorite songs from them and from that era, you know, pretty recently. That song is amazing. I've been listening to your new record

all weekend in the line. I know where the bodies are buried and where the candies hid jumped out at me right at the end of the record. Like I, the best chick songs to me sort of balance mundane stuff and more fantastical stuff like you're daydreaming about murder while you're running errands or something. Do you take what?

Oh, I meant the bodies are buried in the way that I know like what the skeletons in the closets are. Yeah, but still, I love the idea of just like fantasizing about getting out of a place while you're driving around the place, like doing errands. Like you love where you are. But yeah, I get a lot of that from the chicks in songs like wide open spaces, of course. I was just wondering what inspiration you took from them as a songwriter. I think I took from the, that you can sing whatever kind of song you want and just and you can play your instruments and record your own instruments and not have to have the session folks do it. You can do it. And that's kind of what I took. Also, I don't know that I was paying too much attention

to the songwriting at that time because I was too mesmerized by just by the harmonies and by the way that they work together by the amount of space in the song versus the amount of instruments. And then I was really struck by the fact that Marty was bringing the fiddle back into fashion, which is major because there are ways to apply it and keep it modern and going in the right direction. Yeah. What impact did she have, you know, as a fiddle prodigy yourself? Did you see immediately, you know, doors opening up on her account?

I saw that, you know, more bands were hiring fiddle players again. And I saw just the way, like even at that concert that I got fired from that job from, I just for her to command that part of the stage and to do it with strength and not, you know, she wasn't, she didn't shy away from any point of it. It was just, it was, it was just, it was, it was magical, really. It's just really neat when you see somebody in their own meditative state of doing music, where it's obvious that they're not even considering the periphery. Amanda, this has been great.

Thank you so much for talking. We really appreciate your time. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I hope if it wasn't insightful, I hope it was entertaining. It was awesome. It was awesome. It was perfect. Thank you so much. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Amanda Shires.

We were thrilled to have her. Thanks as always to our producers Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now I'd like to ask you to please go listen to Goodbye Earl, By the Chicks. See you next week.