Dixie Chicks break silence to reveal why they dropped ‘Dixie’ from their name

The country pop group formerly known as the Dixie Chicks have explained why they changed their name.

Natalie Maines, Martie Erwin Maguire and Emily Strayer told the New York Times they officially changed their name to the Chicks last month after seeing a Confederate flag on Instagram labeled ‘The Dixie Swastika’.

‘I don’t want to have anything to do with that,’ Strayer told the newspaper. 

Despite the change only being enacted recently, the Travelin’ Soldier hitmakers said it’s been on their minds for many years.

‘We wanted to change it years and years and years ago,’ said Maines, 45. 

‘We were literally teenagers when we picked that stupid name,’ added Maguire, 50. 

The women had for a long time wanted to ‘separate’ themselves ‘from people that wave that Dixie flag.’

The Dixie flag is one of the designs often used to designate the Confederate States of America, and has long been considered a symbol of racism stemming from America’s slavery past.

The Confederacy was an area of slave-holding states below the Mason-Dixon line that seceded from the union over the issue of wanting to keep slavery in place, leading to the U.S. Civil War. 

The Chicks first courted controversy in 2003, when, just days before the US invasion of Iraq, Maines told a London audience the trio were ‘ashamed’ that then President George W. Bush was from Texas.

The ensuing backlash led to boycotts of the band and diminished album sales.

However singer Maines told the New York Times that the group are now far more willing to speak out politically.

‘I criticize the President every single day!’ said the native Texan.

The group also spoke about the controversy surround their 2016 Country Music Awards performance with Beyonce.

Country musician Alan Jackson famously walked out while the group performed Daddy Lessons with Beyonce and others criticized the performance.

‘For them to disrespect her that way,’ Maines said of the Destiny’s Child superstar, ‘was disgusting.’ 

The Chicks will release their upcoming album, Gaslighter, following a long hiatus under their new name.

The release, which is a comeback for the group who hasn’t put out a new album in well over a decade, was delayed previously due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Formed in 1989, The Dixie Chicks reached the pinnacle of their popularity in the early 2000s but plummeted out of the spotlight after they criticized then-president George W. Bush over the Iraq war. 

The Chicks’ new album Gaslighter drops on July 17.