Dixie Chicks

People say things to get themselves in trouble all the time, when you’re a singer or celebrity you have to be more careful. The Dixie Chicks were on tour and ended up saying something that got them in huge trouble, which almost ended their career. In music there are surprisingly a lot of ways that it can affect you politically. After 9/11 music changed a lot for a while, and it had a huge effect on how people looked at the war. There are a lot of things we can learn from the music and the way political figures use it in debates. The way music changed for me was my view on war and how the USA takes action on wars and natural disasters.

The Dixie Chicks showed how saying one thing about our president can change people’s view on their music. Natalie Maines is the lead singer of The Dixie Chicks and is the one who talks in between the songs. When she was rambling on she happened to talk about how she doesn’t support the war after she goes on to say “I am ashamed that the president of The United States is from Texas”. The band was actually in another country. The US didn’t even hear about it till three or four days after it happened. When people started hearing about what they had said it was all hell breaking loose. Radio stations actually stopped playing their songs and set trash cans out of their stations for people to start throwing out CD’s.

September 11, 2001 was a day that it seemed like the world stood still. People watched in terror as the Twin Towers fell to the ground after planes crashed into them. Most of us in the class were too young to remember really what we felt on the day it happened but, looking back on it that was something that changed the USA. It was two years later that Natalie Maines said what she said on stage, it was just as President Bush was sending troops overseas to war. Music in itself had been changing as well as artist. What happened with Natalie Maines was she spoke her mind basically stating her political views. America is a very split up country in ways speaking of political views and  not everyone liked Bush and what the band endured after it happened was incredibly awful. They started out as the largest selling album and lost their recognition with music. As they were going through they always had a positive attitude toward other people’s words. They actually went on to say this is the most publicity they have got in their whole singing career. What happened to The Dixie Chicks shows what happens when something doesn’t go the way of our country. It shows some of war and terror that goes on within our country over something as small as saying you are ashamed of where our president comes from.

Country music has always been an example of patriotism, after 9/11 it was a huge deal with country music because the music started talking more and more of supporting war. When you look at country music politically you see that a lot of candidates use country music because it speaks to a wide variety of people. With our last presidential election Obama used country music because being and African American he had to catch the attention of a different group of people. Another thing about country music in presidential elections is that most candidates don’t pay attention to what the actual song says and the story line behind the music. They want a song that supports the USA and if they can get a chorus that talks about that they will most likely use the song.

A huge thing when people look at music and what artist say politically they all have different opinions after Hurricane Katrina there was a telethon starring Mike Myers and Kayne West, after being told to read the teleprompter Kayne goes on to talk about how people aren’t looking after the black people being affected he says that white people are being taken care of whereas black people aren’t. After Mike says what he is supposed to Kayne says “President Bush does not care about black people” as you would think people would have a huge uproar it wasn’t a big deal. It never made national news even though the program was showed on every channel. People like to think that the reason it didn’t get much of an appearance on TV was because he was speaking about an issue that has been going on in America since it was founded. There has always been a racial disapproval of African Americans. Another reason is after going to war and people of America found out that we were at war for the wrong reasons Bush’s approval rating continued to crash he had the lowest approval rating of any president.

The whole 9/11 tragedy as I got older I found that I had a different view on what America does with our troops. Music also had a huge impact on my view about the war. A lot of the songs I grew up listening to after war had a lot of sayings in it that made me look at people like there is always a reason to fight. In Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue basically sayings if you mess with America we’re going to take it you to war. Music and war made me think that as a country we don’t agree with what other countries want their government like so we always have to interfere with what they are doing.

Dixie Chicks had a huge impact on how people took words to seriously and their story is crazy. After 9/11, America became a lot more judgmental towards the words that a song can express. Even though Kayne West made a huge statement, that didn’t have nearly as much impact as what the Natalie said because, the world looks so much differently based on the situation. Country music had a huge impact on how people looked at war as well as people involved in war.