The boycott eventually lead to the virtual demise of the band. The Dixie Chicks also received hundreds of death threats from the incident. The Dixie Chicks lost their sponsor Lipton, and The Red Cross denied a million dollar endorsement from the band, fearing it would draw the ire of the boycott.
Concerts were canceled in the US as the Dixie Chicks couldn’t sell tickets, and rival concerts were set up that would take Dixie Chicks tickets in exchange. Some DJ’s who played the Dixie Chicks were fired.ĭixie Chicks CD’s were rounded up, and in one famous incident were run over by a bulldozer. Even radio DJ’s and programmers who sympathized with the Dixie Chicks were forced to stop playing them from the simple logistics nightmare the boycott created. Radio stations who played any Dixie Chicks songs were immediately bombarded with phone calls and emails blasting the station and threats of boycotts if they continued. Their single “Landslide” went from #10 on the Billboard charts, to #44 in 1 week, and the next week fell off the charts completely.
Spoken 10 days before the beginning of the Iraq War, the backlash took the Dixie Chicks from the biggest concert draw in country music to relative obscurity in country music in a matter of weeks.ĭespite numerous clarifications and apologies from Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks, a full on boycott of their music was called for by pro-Bush, pro-war, and pro-American groups. The comments at the concert beginning a Dixie Chicks world tour sparked off possibly the biggest black balling in the history of American music. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. Ten years ago today, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks stood in front of a crowd at Shepherd’s Bush Empire Theatre in England, and uttered these now infamous words: