If “Goodbye Earl” smuggled suspiciously feminist ideas onto the country charts, “Sin Wagon” was about an even more explosive topic: aggressive female sexuality. Yes, “Sin Wagon” is all about fucking as Maines sings from the perspective of a hot-blooded young woman who seeks out a little “mattress dancing” after a break-up. By hip-hop or rock standards it’s a pretty tame, albeit maddeningly catchy number, but its mildly risqué lyrics were enough to keep it from being picked up by country radio (though even with airplay, it still charted at No. 52 on the Billboard Country Songs chart).

Dixie Chicks take a more demure, dreamy approach to romance on “Cowboy Take Me Away,” a massive hit that once again explores the yearning for escape and transcendence that courses through so many of its songs. It’s a theme that reappears on another standout track, the album-opening “Ready To Run.”

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Dixie Chicks began as a fairly conventional bluegrass group rooted in the virtuosity of Maguire’s fiddle playing and Robison’s banjo mastery, but they embraced a more mainstream, pop-oriented sound once Maines came onboard. The group’s 2002 album, Home, was hailed as the band’s return to its bluegrass roots, though a group whose musical masterminds play banjo and fiddle isn’t likely to stray too far from bluegrass, especially given the trio’s gift for Louvin Brothers-style harmonizing.

“Long Time Gone,” the opening track, concerns a young striver who leaves her hometown looking for success in the bright lights of Nashville only to return home and embrace the simple pleasures of country life. The lovely cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” that follows foreshadows the group’s eventual musical shift away from country.

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In an unfortunate bit of timing, Dixie Chicks just happened to be working Home’s third single, “Travelin’ Soldier,” when Maines made her explosive comments about how not everyone loved President Bush or approved of the war in Iraq. Suddenly, Dixie Chicks were country radio’s public enemy No. 1, though the momentum for the group’s best and most ambitious album was strong enough that it still sold 6 million copies anyway. A good illustration of the group’s growth can be found in its album-ending “Top Of The World,” a heartbreaking, six-minute-long lament from a dying man reflecting on a lifetime of regrets and missed opportunities.

The ferocity of the backlash against the Chicks split their career into two distinct stages: pre-backlash and post-backlash. Being vilified and blacklisted by the country establishment only served to radicalize and politicize the Chicks. Maines may have stumbled into notoriety and controversy, but there’s nothing accidental about Taking The Long Way, the group’s 2006 comeback album.

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Taking The Long Way Around,” the opening track, establishes a tone of quiet defiance as Maines reflects back on the conformity and quiet, sheltered lives of the friends she grew up with and her own unwillingness to kiss the right asses and say the right things for the sake of pleasing people she can’t stand anyway.

“Easy Silence” celebrates a partner for providing a quiet haven and sentient fortress of solitude that keeps the ugliness and noise of the world at bay. It’s a love song, but when Maines sings, “They form commissions trying to find the next one they can crucify / And anger plays on every station / answers only make more questions” the implications are clear.

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But not quite as clear as they are on “Not Ready to Make Nice.” The title says it all, doesn’t it? On “Not Ready to Make Nice,” Maines channels rage and bottomless hurt into a staggeringly forthright song that grows in intensity until it’s almost unbearably intimate, as when Maines sings:

It’s a sad, sad story when a mother will teach her 
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words I said
Send someone so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter saying that I better 
Shut up and sing or my life will be over?

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Long Way is suffused by righteous anger. For this most personal of albums, the Dixie Chicks shared co-writing credits on every song for the first time with help from ringers like Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson, Linda Perry, and Sheryl Crow.  Since country violently rejected Dixie Chicks, the band returned the favor by hiring Rick Rubin as a producer and moving into a more rock-oriented direction. At worst, this makes the group sound disturbingly like Sheryl Crow. At best, Long Way captures the sound of a band defining itself and finding its voice outside the sometimes-stifling confines of country.

Maines may have begun her career as country’s sassy little sister, but every little sister has to grow up eventually. Long Way doubles as a coming-of-age album from three of the least likely outlaws imaginable. In their own adorable way, these Chicks are totally, completely badass. At the very least, they’re way more badass than Toby Keith.

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