Toby Keith vs. the Dixie Chicks: Boot Battle

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, country superstar Toby Keith released “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” Some embraced the song as the perfect rallying cry for an angry and traumatized nation. Others felt it was a crude, hateful, jingoistic anthem about putting your boot in someone’s ass. Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks fell squarely in the latter camp, and denounced the hit tune in interviews. Months later, when the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted from the country music community following their onstage criticism of President Bush and the invasion of Iraq, Keith was quick to peg the band as unpatriotic traitors. Though they eventually buried the hatchet with Keith, the Dixie Chicks remain exiled from the country scene and their once-thriving career has never recovered. Their feud gets to the complicated truth of what happens when an artist publicly takes a political stance. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rivals is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Rivals, the show about musical deeps and
feuds and long simmering resentments between musicians. I'm Steve, ma'am
Jordan's and in this episode we're gonna be talking about

(00:22):
some hot button issues like War nine eleven and early
adds pop country really running the whole gamut here. I
hope this episode isn't too controversial for our listeners. Jordan's. Yeah,
I hope. Uh this this might be the most controversial
one this side of the side of beer from my horses. Yeah,
you really don't want to give beer to your horses.

(00:43):
I feel like that should even be a controversy. I
think that's pretty clear cut. Yeah, there should be a
pea ad for that. Yeah, we're talking about Toby Keith
versus the Dixie Chicks. This was something that it just
raged in the culture in the early two thousands, which

(01:04):
is a really strange time. You know, like when whenever
people talking about like how like the Trump years are
really crazy, I feel like we don't remember just how
insane the early two thousands were. The Freedom Fries era.
That's the Freedom Fries era. We're talking about here. Yeah, exactly,
freedom fries and all sorts of stuff, and this story, uh,

(01:26):
I think really epitomize. It's just how people lost their
damn minds for a while in the early odds for
a really minor thing, Like it's shocking the look back
at what was actually said from advantage point of fifteen years,
almost twenty years and see the completely disproportionate reaction. It's
it's absolutely insane. I mean you've got people like uh,

(01:48):
Kathy um, Cathy Griffin, Yes, Kethy Griffin holding up trump
severed head and that's like the line now but very crazy. Well,
let's get into this mess all right. Now, this all started,
like so many of life's pleasantries, with Toby Keith song
courtesy of the Red, White and Blue PARENTHESI is the

(02:08):
Angry American In case you forgot, that's the one that
features the line you'll be sorry you messed with the
US of A because we'll put a boot in your ass.
It's the American way, classic classic song, classic songwriting. I
can't argue with that, you know, putting boots in people's
asses is the American way. I mean it is. He's
got a point there, Toby Keith of course, wrote that

(02:29):
song apparently in twenty minutes on the back of a
fantasy football sheet. I'm told, and really, did you know that?
I didn't know about the fantasy football part. I knew
it took twenty minutes. I always feel like, uh, I
wonder if it actually took like three minutes and then
he took like a seventeen minute that that'd be my guess,
because I don't think you need you only need twenty

(02:51):
minutes to write that. It seems like you could have
knocked that out in a couple of minutes. But what
else could we put in someone's ass? All right? A boot? No, okay,
we could do kicks. No, that doesn't feels good. I'll
go well, we'll stick with boot. We'll just stick with boot.
It works, it works, It's poetic, right, And this was
one of the sort of many hypernationalistic, hyper aggressive country
songs that were released in the wake of nine eleven,

(03:13):
and they all had names like you know I'm gonna
drop kick Saddam who says Mama across the Astrodome for Jesus,
like these songs that are really sort of deeply uncomfortable
to hear now, but at the time we were mourning
the death of three thousand people in the most shocking
way we've ever experienced. We're trying to process these feelings
of grief and anger, and it came out in music

(03:35):
like Toby Ky song, which is a sentiment that a
lot of people agree with at the time. Yeah, I
don't know if you remember this song. There was a
song called have You Forgotten by Darryl Whirley. He was
another country singer, and in that song he rhymes the
word forgotten with bin laden and that always sticks out
to me as being very indicative of that time. But

(03:56):
you know, even like someone like Neil Young wrote a
nine eleven song called Let's Roll was named after Todd Yeah, exactly,
the guy in the United ninety three, you know, said
that before going after the terrorists and the plane going down.
Neil Young wrote that song. It's like, Neil, did you
have to get into the nine eleven song business? I

(04:17):
wish you had a set that one out, But you know,
fortunately no one remembers that song except me and now
banging it up in a podcast. I'm sure Neil would
appreciate me talking about Let's Roll. Yeah, that definitely just
cost us a good like year eighteen months and a
potential CSNY reunion, And like with the Toby Key song,

(04:38):
I guess he wrote that for his decks. His dad
was was a veteran, and he wanted to make his
dad proud, right he he had just died. The song
has actually a lot more of a personal meaning to
Toby then. I think a lot of people realize, like
he said, it was written for his dad. It was
a vet and a lifelong democrat actually, and he had
just died, I think just before nine eleven, I think,
and he was basically thinking about what his dad would

(04:59):
would think of all this um And at first Toby
didn't want to record it. He thought it was too personal.
And he performed it at the Pentagon in front of
a platoon of Marines that were shipping out to Afghanistan,
and a Marine Corps General, James Jones heard it and
loved it and begged him to record it. He says
it's the most amazing battle song that he ever heard
in his life. So that was really the reason why

(05:19):
it got recorded. He was drafted, basically, he was drafted
by the American government to to record this jingoistic song,
and he had no choice. So he did it, and
you know, I already feel like I'm gonna be in
the position of having to defend Toby Keith in this episode.
And it's a very odd position to be in because

(05:40):
I'm not normally one to defend Toby Keith. But in
the interest of context, the interests of fairness, I think
it's worth pointing out, like what his career was like
before this song, because he wasn't like some right wing,
redneck conservative guy. He was basically just like this goofy
country singer. Like the Visa of the Angry American is

(06:02):
a song called Who's Your Daddy? You know, which I
feel like it's more indicative of like what Toby Keats
output was before that. Like his first hit song was
back in ninety three. It was a song called should
Have Been a Cowboy, was the number one hit on
the country. It's this pretty good song. But like his
big hits from the nineties were songs like how do
You Like Me Now? And I Want to Talk About Me?

(06:24):
These sort of like happy, go lucky, witty, goofy songs.
You know that you put on in your truck and
you roll down the windows and you sing along and
there's not a lot of thought to it. I just
feel like he wasn't really an ideologue. You know, he
wasn't someone that I think it was an intellectual person
who was like reading US News and World Report and
thinking about geopolitical issues. You know. He was a goofy

(06:47):
country singer. But then he wrote this song that just
took off and it really captured the zeitgeist right and
again it came more from his feelings about his father
have been about you know, reading ripped from the headlines
kind of thing. But the song, just because of its
coarse message of putting boots in other people's asses, got
under people's skin. Peter Jennings, the ABC newscaster, Uh, they
were gonna have Toby Keith on and he basically asked

(07:09):
him to either tweak the lyrics or pick a different
song and perform. And Toby ended up refusing to appear
on the show. And I guess his fans sent hundreds
of boots to ABC headquarters, which is amazing. It's pretty funny.
And I gotta say it's really funny here Jennings. He's
a Canadian Manadian. He has no saying this. He has

(07:30):
no saying this. Love it or leave it, dude, literal
leave a dude. You can have some maple syrup up
in Canada, dude, if you don't like boots and asses. Now,
one of the many people who didn't care for the
song was Nadlie Man's of the Dixie Chicks, and she
was very critical of the song, and she gave an
interview where she said, I hate it. It's ignorant, and

(07:52):
it makes country music sound ignorant. It targets an entire
culture and not just the bad people who did bad things.
You've got to have some tact. Anybody can write We'll
put a boot in your ass, But a lot of
people agree with it, and and and just to put
this in the context too, because you know, we're talking
about Toby Keith being this pop country male star who
was writing I guess party anthems, you know in the nineties,

(08:15):
you know, feel good type music. And with Natalie Mains
talking about this, I mean the Dixie Chicks, I feel
like we don't really understand like how huge this group
was for about a three or four years span in America.
I mean they were one of the biggest bands in
American history for about a few years, like in the

(08:36):
late nineties and early two thousand's, like, they put out
a record in called Wide Open Spaces that sells thirteen
million records. Jesus wow. Yeah. A few years later they
put out Fly, which sells eleven million records, and then
their third record, Home, which ended up being the album
that coincided with the controversy that occurred with Toby Keith

(08:57):
and and Natalie Means subsequent comments in London that only
sold six million records, which is still a lot of records,
but significantly significant, significantly fewer than the first two. But
if you add all that up, that's thirty million records
over the course of three albums. I think they're one of,
if not the best selling female group of all time, right,

(09:18):
if not the number one, like number two or three.
I mean, it's hard. I'm hard pressed, just off the
top of my head to think of a female group
that would so as many as that, unless you're unless
maybe Destiny's Child would be like in the conversation, you know,
but like but but I'm not even sure if Destiny's
Child had like multiple albums that were like diamond sellers,
you know, the way the Dixie Chicks were, and you know,

(09:42):
they really were a group that was coming at country
music from more of a traditionalist standpoint. You know, like
this was the era of Shania Twain in arena pop country,
you know, where she's jumping around and there's like pyrotechnics everywhere,
and you have Garth Brooks as well, swinging around on
bungee cords and basically having a kiss concert every night

(10:02):
with the headset Mike and mixtion. Chicks are coming on
and they're playing fiddles and banjo's and acoustic guitars and
they're still writing great pop songs or or they're performing
great pop songs but doing it with this traditional country instrumentation,
and it's really going over in a big way. So
Bernalie mains to speak out against Toby Keith. I mean,

(10:23):
this really is like Godzilla and King Kong going head
to head and country music. I mean to just enormous stars.
These are twin country titans. And her dad did you
know her dad was a Lloyd Main's was a huge deal.
It was. He was inducted into the Austin Music Hall
of Fame initial class with Willie Nelson and Steve Ravon

(10:44):
and him where the inductory class of the Austin Hall
of Fame. He was a session musician. I think so
she comes from serious music stock. Wow, that's what I
call it, Jordan rontal factoid of like serious research. My friend,
I didn't know that, that's what I do. Thank you
for doing that. So we have this thing where Toby

(11:04):
writes the Angry American putting boots and asses, and Natalie
Mains is like, it takes no talent to write a
song about putting a boot in the ass. And I
feel like Toby Keith just said, oh, that's cool. I
don't have a problem with that. Right. Is that how
it unfolded? Like it just ended right there? No? No,
he kind of went nuclear. Um. He had some pretty
choice words. A little later that year in two thousand two,

(11:25):
speaking I think was CMT dot com, he said, basically,
you asking me about Natalie Mains is like asking Barry
Bonds what he thought about a softball player what a
softball player said about his swing. That's not true. That's
not true, Toby. It gets worse. She's a she's not
a songwriter, so we can't discuss the mechanics of the song.
Why don't you just go down on Second Avenue and

(11:47):
pick one of those homeless guys, and ask him what
he thinks about it. To me, it's the same, what
a second avenue, The second avenue like a haven of homelessness?
And I don't know that, Yeah, that part I don't know.
But but he goes on to say he's sounded like
lou Reid there, though it's very specific reference there to
urban urban Blaite, the lost verse of Walk on the

(12:08):
wild Side. He says, I am a songwriter. She's not,
and so she can say my song is ignorant. But
it's ignorant for her to say that because she's not
a songwriter. She said anybody could write Boots in your Ass,
but she didn't, which is the argument that a lot
of modern artists have for you know, my kid could
paint that. Well, yeah, they didn't. She's never written anything
that's been a hit, he goes on, So it's ridiculous

(12:30):
for me to have to respond to that. And then
finally he goes full Nikita kru Chef. Here you can
almost picture and banging a shoe on the table. I'll
bury her. He says, she has never written anything that
has been a hit, and he should have said, how
do you you know what he should have said. He
should he should have said, how do you like me? Now?
That would have been like, that would have been, that

(12:51):
would have completed that perfect quote. Or maybe maybe I'm
gonna put my boot in her ass also would have
worked too. Yeah, maybe that I'm just saying, like, make
a do the callback to an earlier hit, you know,
just because you're marketing yourself. You know what's interesting to
me about this because as you know, as we'll get
into in this episode, I mean, this conflict is ultimately

(13:11):
defined by political differences. You know, essentially there were people
on the right that were associating themselves with Toby Keith
and people on the left were embracing the Dixie Chicks.
But if you look at the beginning of this rivalry,
it's really about musical differences. Like Toby Keith is taking
exception to Natalie Means this criticism of his song on

(13:36):
these sort of authenticity grounds, you know, this idea of like,
I'm a songwriter and you're not, so you have no
right to attack me, whereas Natalie Mains is coming at
it from this idea of of, you know, country music
shouldn't be about this. Country music should be more enlightened
than this. Country music should be more progressive than this,
and this guy is like a knuckle dragger and he's
representing like the worst elements of this kind of music.

(13:59):
So oh, I really see this like a musical conflict
with these two that, as we'll see, takes on like
a much broader political significance as we move forward. It
does get messy and also interesting to note that Toby
Keith up until I think two thousand eight was registered
as a Democrat, right, and he later on he and
this will have more significance later he said that he

(14:21):
was always against the war privately, which is I mean,
obviously something that's easy to say after the fact. But
if that's true, that's very interesting that You're right, it
really is just um musical differences. Well, and you know,
if you remember that Toby Keith is not an ideologue,
but he's just like a meathead who's writing fun songs
or songs from his gut. The angry American, I think

(14:42):
maybe makes a little bit more sense as like an
expression of a guy who's watching the news and it's
just getting mad about this thing that's happened to the country,
which I think a lot of people probably felt at
that time. That's why that song was popular. And it's
one thing to say like I want to put a
boot in your ass and then just say like I
actually want to send true and risk their lives, you know,

(15:03):
as a matter of policy. You know, like if we're
gonna take a sophisticated view of that song, that would
be I guess my defense of that song. He's writing
about the emotions of the time, and then Natalie Man's
objecting to the actual political implications of that emotion. Yeah, no,
I think that's a really it's a smart way to
put it. And she's also saying like, I even if
it is an emotional expression, it's still stupid. Maybe you

(15:25):
are and you are a person who has some influence
and has a platform. Maybe you can use your platform
for something smarter than this. Uh. And then Toby keep
to that basically says I will bury, which I like
how you compared to the Kita Khrushchev. It actually makes
me think of like Dolph Lundering in like rock before,
you know, like another great Russian leader. You know, it's

(15:47):
like that kind of thing, like I must break you,
that kind of thing. But I mean, but this is
really just table setting for like what ends up being
the big thing that happens with the Dixie Chicks at
this time. They are using their platform, as you said,
to try to make a point. They're performing in London, Uh,

(16:07):
nine days before the American invasion of Iraq in March
of two thousand three. Um. I think the day before
about one million people demonstrated in London against the impending war.
The Dixie Chicks are on stage about to perform Traveling Soldier,
great song about a g I who writes love letters
to a girl he met just before he leaves to
go fight in Vietnam. Uh. He dies in Vietnam. It's

(16:28):
a sort of the flip side of the Angry American.
This is sort of the This underscores the human cost
of putting a boot in someone's ass, if you will.
And it's important to note too that this song was
a number one hit on the country charts as well,
and the same way that the Angry American was, so
people were also seeking out more nuanced songs to sing
both sides. Although this would prove to be the last

(16:50):
number one hit for the Dixie Chicks, they would never
get even close to having a number one hit on
the country charts after again having this huge drun. Let
it last at about five years really where they really
were like the Taylor Swift of their time. So just
imagine you have Taylor Swift dominating the world, and now

(17:12):
we're soon gonna have a situation where Taylor Swift is
like extinguished practically overnight, which is just crazy to think about,
but that's essentially what happens. Oh, it's insane, all right, hand,
We'll be right back with more rivals. Natalie Mainz is

(17:36):
on stage in Law and then she tells the crowd
just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all.
We do not want this war, this violence, and we're
ashamed at the president of the United States is from
Texas talking about George W. Bush. Almost immediately this statement
proves explosive in the country music world and in the
world at large, and somehow the fact that it's on

(17:57):
foreign soil seems to make it even more reprehensible and
traitorous to some people back in America. And this was
this was the pre social media age and pre YouTube.
So it actually began with a British review in The
Guardian which cut out the stuff about being anti war
and anti violence, and so the only statement that was
printed was they were ashamed at the President United States
is from Texas, which I mean the context softened it

(18:18):
a bit. And basically it's just DJ's faxing each other
like the story and like really turning it into like
a thing, like whipping the audience up about it. And
I feel like maybe the precursor to this is like
in the sixties when John Lennon said that the Beatles
were bigger than Jesus, and DJ's in America took that
comment and ran with it, and then they were encouraging

(18:40):
people to like bulldoze their Beatles records and burned their
Beatles records, and you had like the Ku koos Klan
threatening to like assassinate the Beatles like on the road, uh,
for their tour in nineteen sixty six. I mean, it
seems like, weirdly the precursor to like what was happening
here with the Dixie Chicks were It's almost like DJ's
using this as a publicity stunt to build their own

(19:02):
names and to take the Dixie Chicks down at this point,
taking this comment, which I think is fairly innocuous, you know,
I mean, I mean, like the foreign soil thing always
makes me laugh. Like when people talk about this is
on foreign soil, you know that you said this as
if she was like in Afghanistan performing for the Taliban
and burning in American flag. Guess saying this, It's like

(19:24):
she's in England, you know, performing for Dixie Chicks fans.
It's like, why does that make it worse than if
she were in America saying this? It's just a silly
way to like justify censoring her. I mean it seems
like a pretty you know, transparent uh thing there. You know,
like this rhetorical idea that somehow it's worse if you're

(19:45):
in a different country and you're criticizing the president then
if you're in America. I mean, it's so crazy, especially
in the area of Trump now, to look back on
on how benign it all kind of seems. But but people,
I don't think it was just DJs. I was reading
about how DJs will get called up for people who
would give them death threats and rape threats, and I
mean I think I was actually sort of a grassroots

(20:06):
thing too, from from people especially in Texas, and instantly,
I think in one week they're single At the time,
Landslide plummeted from number ten to number forty three on
the Hot one hundred and then was gone after that,
and the the implications were big. The band lost their
promotional deals with Lipton, which is okay, and Red Cross.

(20:26):
The Red Cross denied them a million dollar endorsement because
they feared the ire of the boycott. I think, like, okay,
like when when the Red Cross pulls an endorsement. Yeah,
even like the Red Cross is saying like, yeah, you know,
we don't want you. You went on Foreign Soil and
you said bad things about George Bush. We can't associate
with you. Blood drives. Yeah. Yeah. There were people like

(20:47):
vandalizing like their houses, and I like you said, all
the death threats and like rape threats, just all this despicable,
just garbage that was being hurled at them. And again
it was more than DJs. But I do feel like
there were people in the industry that were whipping people
up and encouraging this this type of behavior, you know,
and it was from the country music establishment. You know.

(21:10):
There wasn't anyone saying out there, hey, I mean there
were very few people saying, hey, they have a right
to say this, we you may not agree with it,
but we're not going to kill their career over this.
It's like one statement, it's relatively benign. There were no
calming voices. It was as if the Dixie Chicks became
this focal point for people to like let out their

(21:32):
anxiety or let out their anger, or it was an
excuse to show how patriotic you could be by like
putting the Dixie Chicks in their place, and and and
just the idea that like you could really just kill
someone's career as swiftly as country radio and the country
music establishment was doing to the Dixie Chicks. It's it's
really hard to conceive of now. I feel like now

(21:55):
we have things like social media, where Dixie Chick supporters
would have had more of a voice, you know, or
just you know, you know what I mean, Like, you
feel like there'd be more more of an equitable sharing
of opinions about this, But it just seems like people
are in lockstep against them at this time. Well, you
think that in the era of cancel culture, we would
be able to conceive of this kind of just backlash,

(22:16):
But it really it's huge even by today's standards. I mean,
it's just absolutely overnight, the biggest country act in the
world is just gone, just for some non grata anywhere. Yeah,
you mentioned cancel culture, which I feel like a lot
of time is overstated. You know, what cancel culture often
is in a modern context is someone says something stupid

(22:37):
and they get excoriated for it for about twenty four
to forty eight hours, and then the world moves on
to something else, and maybe that person feels embarrassed or
aggrieved over that, and you know, it's not easy to
be put in the barrel like that, But you're not
being canceled, you know, like eventually people forget about it
and you move on. But this is truly being canceled. Yeah, exactly.

(22:58):
Like when the Red Cross is saying we have we
want nothing to do with you because of this one
thing you said on stage, that really speaks to just
how quickly and how broadly they were affected by this
um And you know, well, it's true that the Dixie
Chicks weren't canceled. They went on to make out the
records and they even had great successes after this. It

(23:19):
was never the same. Yeah, when you look at where
they were, it's they they were never going to get
that Highever, again, you had Bush speaking out against them,
you had Reba Queen Reba speaking out against them, and
naturally so did Toby Keith. He saw a good opportunity
to put the boot in, as it were. Toby has
been laying low this entire time for a little while anyway,

(23:40):
because it's because this is about a year after their
initial conflict over the Angry American. But now the Dixie
Chicks are down, and Toby Keith could decide to be
a gentleman, or you could decide to kick them when
they're down, And he decided to kick them when they
were down in a pretty spectacular way. During his Shock
and Y'all tour, he uh here, yeah, let's let's let's

(24:02):
savor that for a minute. The Shock and Y'all tour,
uh he displayed a crudely photographed, excuse me, a crudely
photoshopped picture of Natalie Main's embracing Saddam Hussein as the
backdrop whenever he performed The Angry American. Not incendiary in
the least, and he defended it. He defended it by

(24:24):
saying that he thought that Natalie Mains was being tyrannical
by her sort of dictatorial like attempt to squelch his
free speech by singing this song. He thought he was
equating her with Saddam Hussein by her desire to have
him not sing that song, which I don't buy that
for a second. That he's like such a bullshit excuse.
It's like, Okay, I I saw Toby Keith a couple

(24:45):
of times in the odds because I was a reporter
for a small town newspaper and like Toby Keith is
like he was like one of the only people that
would come to the market that I was in, and
I saw him do things like this in his concerts,
like patriotic sorts of like showmanship, like getting the crowd
riled up. And he was also touring with Ted Nugent

(25:07):
at this time. Remember, Yeah, it's like the nude would
come out and he would shoot an arrow at like
Saddam Hussein, like a cardboard cutout of Saddam Hussein, and
then in the arrow might have been on fire. I
can't remember, let's just uh. But like when I saw
that stuff, I felt like, well, this is theater, you know,

(25:29):
this is like a rena rock theater. This is like
kiss spitting out blood in front of people, and you know,
this whole sort of hackneyed explanation that he thought that
Natalie Mains is being tyrannical and that's why put her
in a photo of Saddam Hussein. I'm inclined to believe
that he did that because he knew that people would
get excited to see that on a screen. He knew

(25:51):
that she wasn't popular with country music fans. And if
you want to get eighteen thousand people on their feet
and cheering, that this is an easy, cheap thing to do,
and that's why you did it. That seems like a
more accurate, truthful explanation for why you did stuff like
that to me. Oh yeah, I'm very much inclined to agree.

(26:11):
But Natalie, she's outspoken, she's not taking this line down.
A few weeks later, she goes to the A C.
M Awards and So wearing a T shirt that says
f U t K What was that mean? The dicks?
It just publicist claim that these letters stood for freedom
United Together in Kindness, But of course every other person

(26:32):
on the planet thought it so for f you, Toby Keith,
and that was obviously what it really stood for I
think she later admitted it. Yeah, so that was her
a slightly less aggressive than a than a JumboTron image
and a international national arena tour, but still message received
loud and clear. Uh, their feuding And I don't know

(26:55):
if you know, did you know that there was a
CMT news special about up this few in an hour
long TV special in two thousand three? Yeah? I heard
about this, Yeah, and it was very slanted toward against
Natalie Mains essentially right. Oh, it's incredible. It's on YouTube.
It's just like packed with like talking heads verily, very
soberly saying I was surprised to see her shirt and

(27:18):
only only Natalie can tell us why she wore it,
like just these oh yeah that it was really like
how dare you wear this T shirt? You know with
letter F on it? Yeah. Meanwhile, Toby Keith is like
equating you with like a murderous dictator you know, on
arena stages throughout the country, Like what like what's worse?
Like I think it's pretty clearly the Toby Keith thing.

(27:39):
But I don't know if you want to like ascribe
this to like, you know, patriotism at the time or
just sexism general animus, like you know, against the Dixie Chicks. Old, yeah,
I mean I think sexism is probably the most accurate,
uh explanation for this. I mean, like, because there's really
no other way to look at this and say that,
like him, how her t shirt is worse than like

(28:01):
what Toby Keith is doing. You know, they're at least
equally bad. But I think what Toby was doing was
butchport egregious. Oh yeah, and I mean yeah, because there's
no way around at least there's some subtlety to what
Natalie's doing. I mean, there's different ways to read it,
but yeah, it's so it's pretty awful. But the Dixie
Chicks get some defense from a a fairly unlikely source.

(28:23):
Moral Haggard country legend, outlaw country legend. He defends the
Dixie Chicks. He uh posts an essay to his website
that's basically criticizing the Dixie Chicks radio band. Uh. He
says they've cut such an honest groove with their career
because they don't like George Bush, so we should take
their records off. I really found that sort of scary.
Are we afraid of criticism? If so, why it seems

(28:46):
to me we're guilty in this country of doing everything.
We're always opposed. I've all we've always opposed all my life.
I'm almost afraid to say something. It got to the
point where my wife said, be careful what you say. Well,
that's really not the America I'm used to. Wow, Marl
Haggard's afraid that's that's that isn't America. You don't want
to be in right there, He's not afraid of much.
And I'm not surprised that he would say that. I mean,

(29:07):
I feel like he came from the generation that you
know he I mean, he started his career in the sixties.
He had that song Okay from a Skokie, which came
out at the height of the Vietnam War and was
a song that was I think satirizing the red kneck
culture of the time, but like a lot of people
didn't realize that because it was such a great song. Yeah,
it was embraced by the red kneck culture as as

(29:29):
being anticounter culture, but he was really just making fun
of them. Was almost like an archie bunker type song.
And it's said to me that this wasn't the moment
where Toby Keith and the Dixy Ticks could have come
together because I feel like Merle Haggard is definitely one
of those people that Toby Keith would have looked at
and respected, and I think he would have understood the point.

(29:51):
He totally did. He's a hero, and I think he
would have understood the point that Merle Haggard was trying
to make. But it didn't happen. I mean, this just
went over people's heads, that basically, and it she seems like,
you know, unfortunately, real Haggard at that time was not
the most relevant pop person in terms of country radio,
so he was someone that was pretty easy to ignore,
even though he put his own kind of protest song

(30:13):
at that time. It was called America First, and uh,
what's the land of that song? He says, let's get
out of the rack and get back on track, which
means so, there you go. It's the same it's the
same thing, right. I Mean, that's a that's at least
as like explicit as like what Natalie Maine said, you know,
and he put it in a song. You know, she
just said that on stage, but she said it on

(30:34):
Foreign Soil Sour Sticks in your Crawl. Yeah, that's the record.
That's the recurring theme here, because that is the original sin.
Here is the foreign soil aspect, the dirt she said,
on the wrong dirt. The coats all gets back the
seventy six. We're gonna take a quick break to get
a word from our sponsor before we get to more rivals.

(31:08):
So there is eventually a detente between Toby Keith and
Dixie Chicks occurs. In August two thousand three. Uh, Toby
Keith basically waves an all a branch, if you could
call it that, after a band member lost his two
year old daughter to cancer. Uh. He basically said that
that put the whole fight in perspective. He said he
saw a picture on the cover of Country Weekly with

(31:30):
himself and Natalie and the caption said fight to the death,
and he just said, you know, it all seems so insignificant.
I said, enough is enough. So he basically said, you
know what I'm I'm not going to rag on the
Dixie Chicks anymore. Later that year, he admitted how embarrassed
he was by the whole thing and how disappointed he
was in himself that he stooped to that level. But
then he also defended himself for having the picture of

(31:52):
Saddam Husein and Natalie by once again saying that he
didn't start this fight. Uh, she started it by dissing
his song and by trying to make him not sing
that song anymore. It was dictatorial. So really he kind
of backtracks a bit, but for the most part it's over.
There are some minor issues later on. Um yeah, I

(32:13):
mean I think this is a case like it was
clearly too little, too late for him to say at
this point that he was embarrassed by what he did.
You know, after you put you know, if you put so,
you know, someone's photo with Saddam who's saying and blasted
on arena screens all across the country. You know, it's
hard to kind of step back and apologize for it
after the fact. But I will say it again. I

(32:34):
feel like I'm like defending Toby Keith here, I'm like
his defense attorney in this episode. I do feel like
this is probably closer to like who he actually was.
You know, I don't think that he was a guy
out to make political points. You know, he wasn't like
a Fox News talking head, at least not at this point.
I think he wrote the angry American of an expression

(32:57):
of like emotion. He coution in his normal sort of
goofball language, you know, putting a boot in the ass.
You know, there's not a big leap from that to
like who's your daddy? Like on the other side of
the song. It's just sort of a goofy phrase that
in a way, it's kind of funny, you know, and
and it's a way for you can listen to that
song and you can laugh at it, you can have

(33:17):
a release while also feeling like you're striking back against
Asama bin Laden just the way that Natalie means engage
with him, which I think was more from a truly
kind of politically enlightened position and just taking him way
more seriously maybe than even Toby Keith took himself. And
then he fell into this sort of default of having

(33:38):
to defend his own music, and then it just gets
escalated from that. And that is a fair point. I mean,
in later years, Toby Keith made a very big point
about saying, you know what, I'm really not political. I
performed for George W. Bush, I performed for Obama, I
performed for Trump. For me, it's about the country it's
not about party lines. It's it's just so you're right
in a lot of ways. I think the political side

(33:58):
of it is something that he doesn't here to advertise
that much and doesn't really care to comment on publicly,
whether or not that's for a self preservation reason, because
he knows his base sort of remains to be seen
or it doesn't mean to be seen, like what happened
to Dixie Chicks. But um, but you're right, I don't
think he puts that first in the same way that
that Natalie Mainz takes the stand for for her political

(34:19):
beliefs in quite the same way. Well, it's crucial about this,
I think. And what always interests me about these types
of rivalries is that at this point, it's already too
late that it doesn't really matter like how Toby Heath
feels or even how the Dixie Chicks feel, because the
culture has taken this over and we and they've projected
their own meaning onto what this revelry means. And it's basically,

(34:39):
if you're on the red team, you like Toby Keith,
and if you're on the blue team, you like the
Dixie Chicks. And really, from like this point forward, even
if like their initial conflict was really about musical differences,
they're going to be defined in these political ways in
their career, and you could see the split in the
audience is really and the types of people that are
gonna flock to one or over the other. When really, like,

(35:01):
when the Dixie Chicks were first starting out, I'm sure
lots of conservative people loved them, you know, I'm sure
they probably had more conservative fans and liberal fans like
buying their records in the late nineties. But ten years
later that was gonna I think probably changed pretty dramatically. Yeah,
I mean, I think it was weeks before the whole
London incident. They were singing the national anthem at the
super Bowl, which is kind of the most American thing

(35:22):
you can do, right, And seeing the national anthem at
the Super Bowl, I mean that just their place in
in middle of road Americana was so so just ingrained
and and I think to hear that from them was
That's probably why it was so shocking. It wasn't just
what was said, it was who said it. One thing
that it's just sort of like a what if scenario,

(35:44):
you know, just looking at the Dixie Chicks and the
Toby Keith as being signifiers of like the different political
ideologies in America. You know there was that ad for
al Gore in two thousand and eight, Like did you
hear about that? Like they were gonna be an ad together. Yeah,
I was the Alliance for Climate Protection and they kind
of would do this thing where they would take unlikely duos.
I think they had Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich appear

(36:07):
in an ad together basically say we're all into this,
this climate fight against climate change together. And they asked Dixie,
the Dixie Chicks, and Toby Keith to do one together
and it fell apart, and Toby Keith kind of publicly
blamed the Dixie Chicks for never agreeing on a date
and kind of threw them under the bus for why
it never came together. And that would have been a
great at that would have come together. Apparently they've they've

(36:32):
never met. Did you know that they've never met or
spoken to one another, at least as of a couple
of years ago, because Toby refused to even mentioned Natalie
Mains by name, So it's probably safe to say they're
still not good fans of each other. Yeah, And like
Toby yeah, he won't say her name, and like the
Dissy Chicks will occasionally take shots at him every now
and then, right, because there was like an interview in

(36:54):
two eleven where Marty McGuire, uh who was that? Like,
Emily Robeson was asked about Toby Keith and she accused
him of ripping off Robert o' keen song h for
his uh the gun. Yeah. Yeah. She basically said, you
know Toby's new song bullet in the Gun, Uh, maybe
players Robert o' keen song the Road Goes On. It

(37:16):
sounds kind of similar. Check it out and that's like,
you know, keens like signature song too. So like to
accuse Toby Keith of like ripping that song off was
like a pretty big accusation, but in a way it
kind of matched. Like you know what if she's if
he's gonna go for Natalie Man's as songwriting credibility and
really like you know, lay into her then hit him

(37:37):
where it hurts. And obviously not as politics, it's it
is how we views themselves a songwriter. So I mean
that was probably the best shot they could have taken.
If they're still interested in stoking the feud between them
so this incident really is like relatively short lived and
yet like the aftermath of like what happened to the
Dixie Chicks especially, I mean it continues to this day,

(37:58):
but it finds their career. Yeah, and which is amazing
because you go on their Wikipedia page and Toby Keith's
name is all over like if you control f it's
it's just everywhere. You go on his page and their
name is like it's not the same at all. Their
name is not on it at all. This whole conflict
really I don't think affected him almost at all his career,

(38:22):
would you say, Is that fair to say? Yeah? I mean,
like I think he eventually crested commercially, you know, as
the odds went on, and he's I think someone now
who isn't really a part of mainstream country at all.
I think he's someone who can still tour and do
pretty well. But you know, he's reached the age of
where most performers get like you don't have hits forever.
You eventually get into sort of like the legacy artist

(38:43):
phase and like your living off your past basically, especially
in country music, that's a very common trajectory. Um. But yeah,
I don't think his career was hurt because of you know,
him feuding with the Dixie Chicks, and with the Dixie Chicks.
You know, they're a band is still like very successful.
They have been reactive in the past, you know, fifteen years,

(39:04):
although they are now ramping up to put out a
new record uh In in the spring of but um,
I mean really, the big record that they put out
in the aftermath of the Georgia You Bush thing and
the Toby Keith feud was the record Taking the Long Way,
came out in oh seven. Yes, and they really are
stepping away. They basically divorced themselves from the country community.

(39:27):
They they say that they they consider themselves part of
the big rock and roll family. They got Rick Rubin,
who's you know, incredible rock superproducer, to make a very
sonically different record. I always thought it kind of sounded
like an Eagles record, right is that? Yeah? Fair to say,
And that that's the one with not Ready to Make Nice,
which the whole album is just addresses this whole conflict

(39:49):
head on. Natalie, who had only written sort of a
handful of songs in the past, had a hand in
writing I think every song on this album, and it
was therapy for her. I mean it was really them
trying to make sense of what they've gone through and
not many ready to make nice. Just is a direct
response to her critics, and it's just that sort of
enacted defiance. And yeah, I won multiple Grammys. You know,

(40:12):
it's sold I think about three million records, which is
like a very impressive haul, especially at that moment in
time in the music industry, although against significantly less than
what they were selling at their peak. And you know,
I have to say, as much as I appreciate the
fact that the Dixie Chicks were able to come back
from this horribly unfair treatment that they suffered in the

(40:34):
aftermath of the George W. Bush comment, I don't like
their records as much after that whole incident happened. There's
a there's a certain there's a certain weariness that sets
in and a lot of their music that isn't there
on the early records. The early records are very effervescent
and fun, and even a song like Goodbye Earl you know,
which is this revenge song domestic abuse, there's a there's

(40:58):
an you know, there's a nobiliance to that song. There's
a joy to that song. Like it's it's fun to
listen to, no matter how dark the subject matter is.
And I just feel like the subsequent record that they made,
it's a little joyless, that's a little self serious. That's
where they're at, though I think that they were forced
into that position. Though exactly I understand why they did it,

(41:21):
it's just that for me personally, that's not what I
like from them. And I feel like, where where wherever
it is you want to call it, if you want
to call it, like a loss of innocence or you know,
their spirit got crushed a little bit, there's just something
kind of sad about it to me that it just
compounds the sort of tragedy if you want to use

(41:42):
that word, of what happened to them, you know, like
I feel like something was taken away from them by
just how harshly treated that they were. I find the
silence that followed that record even sadder though. To me,
I think that the fact that they got back in
the saddle and actually made music, and not only made
music at all, but just made music the specifically addressed
what happened to them, what was done to them, and

(42:02):
all the death threats they received. There was a great
documentary that came out on conjunction with the album called
Shut Up and Sing, which is the chronicles their tour
in the immediate aftermath of the George W. Bush comments,
and the title shut Up and Sings taken from a
death threat note that Natalie mains Gets was saying that
outlines where and when and how she's going to be
shot unless she shuts up and sings. So it's you're right,

(42:26):
I mean, the innocence is gone. But I think to
pretend otherwise would have I think that almost would have
been even spookier to put out like a really fluffy,
effervescent album in the in the midst of a very
real life or death. I mean, she said later on
that she thought she had PTSD dealing with all this.
She couldn't go out to dinner with her family in
Texas because she was worried that people were gonna be

(42:46):
spitting in her food. That worked at the restaurant, I mean,
she she said that they felt tainted, so they kind
of were in I can't even call it a self
imposed exile or they're a real exile with their sound,
and I actually I like the sound too. I like
the kind of rock country. Again. I thought it kind
of sounded almost like an Eagles album or something, and
so I like the sound of it. Yeah, I know,

(43:07):
I mean again, I wouldn't want them to pretend to
feel okay. It's just said to me that they weren't
able to move beyond it, that this was something that
was going to find them forever. And also, to get
back to what I was saying before, you know, the
culture in a way defined both of these artists as
political artists moving forward. And you know, I'm always someone

(43:29):
I I really admire artists who can speak politically and
and use their platform for good and to you know,
raise the consciousness of the public. But I also have
some mixed feelings about politics becoming too dominant in art
and where it becomes a thing where you can't just
enjoy a song. You have to agree with the song.

(43:52):
You have to agree with the message of a song.
And to me, that's not art. That's sloganeering, you know,
that's that's that's building like a consensus and the different
kind of thing. To me, like the great thing about
music and the great thing about art is that you
can unite different kinds of people under one banner and
you can get them together and you can get them
to agree on something that even if they disagree and
everything else, they can get into this kind of music.

(44:14):
And this was an example of something that I think
became much more common later on, and now it seems ubiquitous,
but at the time I think it was more unique.
But this idea that like, you can't separate who someone
might vote for or what they might think politically from
their music. You know, that we can't just enjoy a
song for being a song. And that makes me. That

(44:35):
gives me mixed feelings. I think about some of their
subsequent work and which really has nothing to do with them,
and it's not I'm not blaming them for that, but
I think it just makes me kind of sad, you know,
it makes me sad for both of them, that now
music is another thing that's going to divide people. You know,
like this used to be something that could bring people
together and now we're going to this is going to
be another cultural that that that splits us up. When

(44:58):
we talk about Toby Keith, for instance, you know Toby
Keith played Trump's inauguration, you know, in sixteen, which you
know he was at a point in his career where
he probably had to take that gig because he wasn't
going to have other big time opportunities like that. I
did have a lot to lose by taking that gig.
But it's like, if if you love Toby Keat's music,

(45:21):
now you have that as baggage his music along with
the Angry American. It's like, oh, it's like I like
this song. It's like I like Whiskey Girl because it's
the dumb song. It's a song. It's a song you
hear at the bar about a girl who likes whiskey
and you know it makes her want to, you know,
take her clothes off or whatever. And it's like, oh,
this is a dumb song I hear in a bar

(45:41):
and it's fun. But now it's like, instead of thinking
of something fun, now you're thinking about this guy who
played for Donald Trump, who like was mocking Natalie Mains
and made her life impossible in their early two thousand's.
You know, it's just the shame when these things have
to sort of intercede on something that doesn't have to
be there. Maybe I would agree with that overall. I

(46:03):
think in the case of Toby Keith, there are a
lot of his songs that that it's not just he
personally feels a certain way politically, but his songs are
completely a political There's certain things in some of the
songs that I do take objection with, and I worry
that it normalizes in some cases misogyny or nationalism or racism.
There's Beer from My Horses has that line about lynching,
which it kind of to me it sounded like he

(46:24):
was romanticizing it, and I always thought that was really
kind of troubling and problematic. And have you heard the
Taliban song Toby Keith Taliban song? Yeah, I don't think
I have no um it's it's it's called literally the
Taliban song, and it um it marks the Taliban, which okay,
that's there, you go, but um it kind of it's

(46:47):
unsubtle to the point that it almost reads a satire.
It glorifies George W. Bush and like a way that's
almost like fetishizing him, and it kind of like cracks
jokes about like poverty experienced by victims of the Taliban
and makes light of bombing the Middle East, and it's
just something about it. It's the politics is there, and

(47:09):
some of the music too, And I and That's where
I think that in his specific case, it makes a
little tougher. I agree with what you said about music
should be unifying people, But with some of his stuff,
I mean, even like I want to talk about Me
or you know American Ride where he expresses doubts about
global warming. I mean, there's some songs, and I know
he's not somebody who you know, as you said, reads

(47:31):
the paper and wants to write a song about social issues.
But even if it's just pandering to his bass or
just trying to write something that that resonates with his bass,
some of the um the beliefs that that he uh
puts in his songs, I do worry about normalizing things
that maybe shouldn't be normalized. But are those beliefs or
those just lyrics that you're putting in a song because

(47:55):
you're trying to get a reaction out of your audience.
Like if we listen to like rap songs that have
songs about murder or you know that that might have
misogynistic elements to it, we're not we're not necessarily believing
that like that's a reflection of like the artist's personal
point of view, or if like an artist is writing
a song about a murderer or any type of sort

(48:16):
of uh, socially unacceptable character. You know, this is something
that people turn to because they're just looking for an
expression of an idea that they might think it's interesting,
but they may not literally support. And I would say
that in the case of Toby Keith songs, which again, like,
I'm not defending a song like the Taliban, because again,
I think Toby Keith is a meathead and like is

(48:40):
a goofball basically, But I also don't think that we
should be close reading Toby Keats songs for their political
intent or their political messages and worrying too much about
how that might negatively affect the world, because I think
in the greater context of everything that affects the world,
Toby Keith is a very very small all aspect of

(49:02):
what makes things good or bad in the same way
that I think most pop music is like that. And
in a way, I feel like that's something that was
more of a of an acceptable position in the early
two thousand's, and now I feel like we talked about
pop music with a degree of seriousness that I think
is sometimes a little foolhardy, where we have someone like

(49:26):
Taylor Swift, for instance, who was actually criticized in because
she didn't endorse a political candidate, and there were people
that were actually blaming her for Donald Trump getting elected,
as if she is like a nation state that has
to set up, you know, like she's like she's Taylor

(49:47):
Swift half exactly, or that she's like one of the
branches of government, like she's like providing checks and balances
on the presidential branch and the congressional brands. It's like, No,
Taylor Swift is a great songwriter, she's a great pop star.
She should not have to be someone that um is
guiding policy in this country. She should not have to peticians,
but she should also be allowed to did you I

(50:08):
mean if she has to share and did you see
the other Netflix documentary MS Americana. Yeah, exactly, And she
and she makes a point of very publicly wrestling with
this idea of whether she should have gotten involved in
the election, And of course she has now since become
more politically active, which is great. I think again, if

(50:29):
you are an artist and you feel like that's something
you want to do, you should be able to do
it obviously and not worry that your career is gonna
be taken from you if you speak out. But I
also don't think that there should be an expectation that
you do it, or that you should be blamed for
political outcomes if you don't speak up. You know, it's

(50:49):
almost like the opposite is now come into effect, where
pop stars are chided if they don't speak enough. You know.
It's like the opposite of what we saw in the
early OTTs, which is a very fasten aiding development. She
got it both ways, though, I mean, she got sort
of more mainstream pop fans who are criticizing her for
not having a point of view. But then in the
documentary she in in two thousand eighteen, she's wrestling with

(51:13):
wanting to speak out for democratic seats for the Tennessee
Senate and House seats, and she is crying talking to
her father, thinking about what happened to the Dixie Chicks
and worrying about what's going to happen to her. When
she expresses her her point of view, and her dad
is off camera talking about renting an armored car. I mean,

(51:35):
it's like, it doesn't it's scary how fifteen years later
it seems like the same situation for her I mean,
she sounded like she was really in fear for her life.
I mean, we're in a tangent here. We can maybe
talk about this in another episode if we talk about
Taylor Swift, I mean, we can talk about the degree
to which things like that are real and exaggerated. And

(51:55):
I would argue that we are not in two thousand
three and her terms of a pop star expressing and
a criticism of the president being in the same position
that that the Dixie Chicks are. I don't think, for instance,
that if Taylor Swift had endorsed Hillary Clinton, that country
radio or any radio station would have like taken her

(52:15):
off the air. I really don't think that would have happened.
I think some would, So I think some country would,
but not not, Manny, You're right, and not certainly not
the same degrees of Dixie Chicks. Well, by that point,
she was she didn't even need country rats anymore. I mean,
she was already into you know phase, So I really
and you know, and and Donald Trump obviously is a
different president than Georgia. I mean, George W. Bush was

(52:37):
like really popular in the early two thousands in a
way that Donald Trump has never But I mean he's
never had like an eight percent or nine approval rating
the way that George W. Bush did after nine eleven UM.
So I think it would have been easier for her
to criticize Trump knowing that there's like at least fifty
of the country that like hates Donald Trump and would

(53:00):
have been under side. But I digress. We should pull
back to Toby Keith in the Dixie Chicks. I feel
like with these two, it's really easy to make a
pro Dixie Chicks argument, right, I mean this, I mean
it's just sort of plainly laid out, like what the
what the pro Dixie Chicks cases? I mean, because they

(53:20):
were clearly wrong. I mean, they didn't do anything wrong,
and they just had so much taken away from them, right.
I mean, I think that the only if you could
call a silver lining to everything that happened to them,
the whole sort of martyrdom, is that it did make
them kind of left wing liberal martyring. They went from
being popular to being important. I think they got a
lot of attention from places like, you know, even like

(53:43):
outlets like E W and Rolling Stone that might not
have covered them in the same way. I think they
went from being like a Shania Twain or Ti mcgrawl
and Faith Hill to a group that meant something. I
think that a lot of people listen to them for
because because they meant something and they were drawn to
them more I think, uh than sort of the average

(54:04):
country act, even like a few years earlier. I don't
think that. I think it a lot of people stopped
listening to them, but I almost would argue that some
good came of it too. And you mentioned that they're
not selling as much too. I mean, they're They're um
taking the Long Way sold more than Toby Keys album
released at the time, and it was also the era
when iTunes was starting to come out and really cut

(54:25):
into the sales of physical albums too. So it's interesting
to think about exactly how much they were hurt in
a career standpoint, but not spiritually. I completely understand how,
you know what, of course they wanted to take a
hiatus and take a step back like that was traumatic
and horrible. Everything that went down with them, Yeah, I mean,
I think, I mean, I think it absolutely hurt their

(54:45):
career in the short term, but I think you're right
in the long term. You could definitely make the argument
that it made them more significant that if they had
just been a standard pop country group, they would have
lost their commerci the momentum anyway, and they would have
also probably been forgotten or at least, you know, become

(55:06):
more of a footnote as they faded away. And because
they went through this terrible controversy, people can look at
them and they can say like, Wow, they really stood
for something, and they continue to stand for something and
the people that love them. It just probably bonded them
even more to the Dixie Chicks at that point. To
the point now to like where you look at younger generations,

(55:28):
you know, people that weren't around when this whole thing
was going down, or you know, maybe they were too
young to know what was going on. You know, they're
going back and they're and they're going to those Dixie
Chicks records, you know, And I feel like those records
have legs, maybe more in a way because I mean,
I think the music stands up on its own, but

(55:50):
when you have this outside cultural significance that hooks people in,
it just makes it more likely that people are going
to talk to you, talk about you after your commercial
peak has faded. Yeah, And I feel like I've been
spoken about their musicianship enough to I mean, I think
that that's obviously one of the main things that they
have going for him too, is I just think they're
incredible players, incredible songwriters, incredible singers. Um. I just think

(56:11):
that that's something that especially at that time too. I mean,
they were really taking sort of the niche approach, I mean,
very traditionalist country approach at a time when that wasn't
cool and it wasn't very popular, and it really blew
up after the whole where other brother where Art Thou
type sounds started coming into play in the early two thousand's.
But yeah, I think that that they took a musical

(56:31):
risk too, and it paid off. Now with Toby Keith,
it's much harder to make the pro case. And I've
been kind of doing this, doing it throughout the episode
because I think I'm I'm probably more um empathetic to
Toby than you are, right, I mean, is that fair
to say? Yeah? I mean not that I'm a Toby
I'm not. I'm not a huge Tooby Keith fan, but

(56:52):
like I can understand I feel like I can understand
his perspective maybe like where he's coming from, and I
almost feel bad, like I don't want to come across
the this like you know, coastal liberal guy who doesn't
understand the real America that that he obsensively speaks to.
I just I worry about some of the messages and
his songs. And also just I don't identify with with him,

(57:14):
right or wrong. I just there's a certain sort of
masculinity there that that I don't relate to. And again
that may may say more about me than it does
about him, in fact it probably does. And just also
sonically I don't really like his music or as like
very much do like the Dixie Chicks. See I would
say that as someone who at least a few times
each summer ends up drinking light beer on a pontoon boat. Um,

(57:36):
I have an affinity for Toby Keats music because I
feel like that is the context in which that music
is best heard, you know, drinking some bruise on a
summer afternoon out on a lake somewhere where you're basically
turning your brain off and you just want to have
a good time. And I think that Toby Keith at
his best makes good songs for that. And what I

(57:59):
think is unfortunate in a way about his career is
that he's now defined as this right wing conservative, redneck jerk,
and he's played into that. He has a lot to
do with that too. Like I'm not absolving him of
the responsibility of that, but I do think that for
people who are inclined to look at him just as
an antagonist of the Dixie Chicks, that maybe it might

(58:21):
be worth listening to some of his hits, and because
I think that, like they're hard to hate, you know, yeah,
I understand that, like maybe they're not always like the
most politically correct songs in the world, although I think
there's a lot of old songs that aren't particularly politically
correct that are still enjoyable to listen to and don't

(58:44):
especially come under criticism from people because they do like
at some point, you we have like a line of
demarcation where it's maybe okay to have certain kinds of
songs at a certain moment of time, and then after
that it becomes verboten to have a song like that.
But in any it, I do think that for what
he did, I don't think he's a great artist, and

(59:04):
I think he's a much less significant artist, without question
than the Dixie chicks. But again, I would just go
back to the idea of people aligning themselves with artists
because they think they agree with them politically, which I
understand why that happens, but I have mixed feelings about that,

(59:26):
and I just feel like defining art strictly by its
political content or what you feel are the political motivations
of the artist and disregarding everything else, I think that
is a hard way to listen to music and to
regard music, and it just bums me out because I
feel like sometimes music should be an escape from that

(59:48):
sort of stuff, right, and I agree with that. It's
just said to me like like, oh, this is this
is like another thing that we just can't get away from.
Even though I understand someone who might listen to that
and be a offended, and I think they have every
right to be offended. But I just want people to
listen to Whiskey Girl and from My Horses and enjoy

(01:00:09):
the dumb charms of of those songs. I worry that
that the angry American it sounds like to me bullying rhetoric,
although I understand the context in which it was made,
and I feel like his behavior towards the Dixie Chicks
was also the behavior of a bully. So I think
in this particular case, not being able to separate, you know,
a person, their personal act and their music. To me,

(01:00:30):
I think it's it's one and the same. And this
this very specific instance, um, and I find it hard
to not feel that that he is a bully. I
but I also completely understand how there's all these other
songs that he has that that don't go down that
root all and and are just fun barbecue songs for
the summer. But I have a hard time getting past
that point. I would just say that, like, if it's

(01:00:53):
hard for someone on the left to accept to be Keith,
perhaps it's worth regarding the person on the right who
reflexively rejects the Dixie Chicks because of what Natalie Maine
said in two thousand three. You know that they decided
that they were going to throw out all her records
because they thought that she was some sort of like
left wing antipatriotic, you know, anti American artist, and just

(01:01:16):
judge are purely based on that, even though there may
have been songs in the past that they really enjoyed,
or because those songs really stand up well, because they're
musically great, you know, because the flip side of this
is that there's people on the right who reject people
on the left who make music just purely for their
political beliefs. And if that's wrong, if it's wrong for

(01:01:37):
reactionaries on the right to kick the Dixie Chicks off
the radio, maybe it's worth looking at from the other perspective,
from the left to the right, is all I would
say about that. But maybe we can all get together
with our horses. That's a good thing about horses, whether
they drink it or not. They have no political affiliations.
They're just horses, so you should just be like horses.

(01:02:00):
But yeah, I don't give him beer, but you know,
give him a carrot and uh, you know we'll all
party together. Oh well, Stephen, you have not convinced me
about Toby Keith, but you have definitely made me take
a more nuanced look at Angry American and some of
his past working. For that, I thank you, And uh,
I'm feeling very conflicted about defending Toby Keith here. I

(01:02:21):
think I am. I was the musical public defender of
this episode. I think you're in ef Lee Bailey. You
were incredibly incredibly good at that. It's always fun talking
with you about this stuff. Man, and uh, I think
we'll have more Rivals next week and that'll be great alright,
looking forward to it, sir. Thanks, thanks for listening everyone.

(01:02:48):
Rivals is a production of My Heart Radio. The executive
producers are Shawn ty Toone and Noel Brown. The supervising
producers are Taylor s con and Tristan McNeil. I'm Jordan
run Talk. I'm Stephen Hyden. If you like what you heard,
please subscribe to leave a to review from more podcasts
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