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Artist News Releases
Dixie Chicks drop the Dixie, become The Chicks
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 26 June 2020
The Dixie Chicks have changed their name to The Chicks in the wake of all the recent Black Lives Matter protests. There had been various calls for the group to follow the lead of Lady Antebellum and to drop the slave trade associated part of their name.
Unlike with Lady Antebellum’s name change to Lady A, the Dixie Chicks’ announcement did not come with a lengthy statement about the decision. Or any statement at all, really. Simply, their new single, ‘March, March’, arrived yesterday and it was credited as being by The Chicks.
Like Lady Antebellum, the Dixie Chicks are switching to a new name that is already used by another artist. However, while 60s New Zealand-based sister duo The Chicks are no longer actively performing, the US band do seem to have at least asked for permission first.
Confirming this – and, by association, the name change – a spokesperson for The (Dixie) Chicks told Pitchfork: “A sincere and heartfelt thank you goes out to The Chicks of NZ for their gracious gesture in allowing us to share their name. We are honoured to co-exist together in the world with these exceptionally talented sisters. Chicks rock!”
The Dixie Chicks announced plans earlier this year to release their first album for fourteen years, ‘Gaslighter’. It was after Lady Antebellum changed their name that Jeremy Helligar penned an op-ed for Variety, suggesting that the Dixie Chicks should follow suit.
The word ‘dixie’, he wrote, is “the epitome of white America, a celebration of a Southern tradition that is indivisible from black slaves and those grand plantations where they were forced to toil for free … For many black people, it conjures a time and a place of bondage. If a ‘Dixie’-loving Southerner today insists the word merely represents a deep appreciation of their homeland, they’re probably white”.
While the band haven’t spoken about their reasoning for changing their name, the new single and its video do have a protest theme, so it seems likely that they took Helligar’s words on board. Watch the video for ‘March, March’ here:
