#cma50

BEYONCE & THE DIXIE CHICKS - DADDY LESSONS

Let’s be real y’all. I had to end the week on this. And apologies in advance that this is a bit longer than the other posts but it’s Beyonce. Y’all can suffer through it for Bey.

The Dixie Chicks are still going strong. In 2016, the Dixie Chicks embarked on an European tour. Mom went to that. She’s a mumblemumble year old woman and she got up in the middle of the night because that’s when the Dixie Chicks tickets were going on sale in Glasgow and dammit, she was going to see them. Of course, her and dad did other touristy explore the UK & Scotland sort of things (and it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary so they had an excuse to go to Europe in the first place), but Mom still jokes that she went to Scotland just to see the Dixie Chicks. Through a wonderful coincidence, she saw them perform on her birthday so THANKS MOM, there’s no way on Earth I’ll ever be able to top the fricken Dixie Chicks as a birthday present. As for the concert, she had SUCH A GOOD TIME and bought herself a sweet t-shirt.

A few weeks later, they started on a US tour. And, less than a month ago, they performed on the CMAs with Beyonce, singing her song “Daddy Lessons” from her most recent album Lemonade.

Sidenote: check out the most recent episode of the podcast Switched On Pop for good look at the modern country/hip-hop genres with a brief detour into the controversy surrounding “Daddy Lessons.” But to sum up the ‘controversy’? Various critics basically told Beyonce to stay in her lane with regards to country music, conveniently ignoring the fact that a: the country/pop and country/rock crossover are definitely things so why shouldn’t country/r&b be one, b: Darius Rucker and Taylor Swift’s current music careers exist due to the sole fact that they didn’t stay in their lane, and c: the criticism is heavily coded in racial rhetoric which implies that black people shouldn’t perform country music. That racial rhetoric got blown up into FULL VIEW in the comments of any post detailing this performance.

Hilariously, some of the comments are along the lines of “I support the Dixie Chicks but I’m SO DISAPPOINTED IN THEM for performing with Beyonce because she supports Black Lives Matter.” Remember 2003? When everybody was hating on the Dixie Chicks for expressing an opinion that was contrary to the country music norm? Boy bye, stop with that hypocritical nonsense.

The Chicks had performed “Daddy Lessons” before, covering it at concerts. I don’t know who made the arrangements and who did the asking to get this performance set up but it was easily one of the highlights of the CMAs, showing the Chicks in their element: rocking it out on a stage, having a blast, surrounded by female friendship and togetherness. That bit where Beyonce and each of the Chicks take their turns with “Texas” is downright magical, and the look on everybody’s faces throughout the whole performance warms my heart. Not only can you tell that they’re actual friends who actually like each other but up on this stage, performing, these four women are having the TIME OF THEIR LIFE. It’s good to see that even after all the shit they’ve been through, the Dixie Chicks still have that unbridled and undiminished love for singing and performing. But I don’t want to talk about “Daddy Lessons.” I want to talk about the brief turn to “Long Time Gone” in the middle of the performance.

Remember that song? I talked about it a few days ago, it’s the one where the Chicks specifically call out modern country music. Not only is it a brief nod that the Dixie Chicks HAVE been a long time gone from country music, but they specifically chose the lyrics that I quoted in my earlier post in the snippet performed: “they sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard, they got money but they don’t have Cash.”  Could this be read as another attack against the country music industry, an industry that enforced a years long boycott against the Dixie Chicks for exercising free speech, as well as an industry that still runs rampant with racism and misogyny? An industry that, even at the 2016 CMA awards, shut out female, queer, and poc performers from the nominations and wins? God, I hope so. And God, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was. No matter what you read into it, the fact remains that even now in 2016, more than ten years after the controversy with regards to Bush, the Dixie Chicks still haven’t shut up. And man, I hope they never do.