Dixie Chicks – "Gaslighter"

The last time Dixie Chicks released an album, the #1 movie in America was The Da Vinci Code. Facebook was only available to college students. Justin Timberlake was still two months from releasing “SexyBack,” Google five months from buying YouTube, Barack Obama nine months from announcing his long-shot presidential campaign. It’s been a minute.

The legendary country trio has not been completely absent throughout the 14 years since the Grammy-winning Taking The Long Way. They reunited for tours in 2010, 2013, and 2016. They backed up Beyoncé at the CMAs and guested on Taylor Swift’s Lover. Sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison released two albums as Court Yard Hounds. But compared to the world-conquering superstardom their peak and the rancorous controversy that followed their condemnation the George W. Bush administration, they’ve been keeping an extremely low prile.

That changes this year. In 2018 Natalie Maines began hinting at a return to recording. Last year, the Dixie Chicks made no secret about being in the studio with producer Jack Antonf. In September, Maines confirmed that what began as a covers album to fulfill their contractual obligation to Sony had snowballed into an all-original collection called Gaslighter. And now they’re ready to begin rolling it out, starting with the title track.

Speaking with Zane Lowe on Beats 1, Maines explains:

It was the first song we wrote with Jack Antonf. At the time we thought we thought we were gonna write with a bunch different people and get different producers and we wrote with him and we’re like, “He needs to produce it and this needs to be the sound for this album.” ‘Cause it was just, he blew us away, and it was such a fun song to start with.

Watch the “Gaslighter” video below.

Gaslighter is out 5/1 Columbia Records.