On August 31, 1999, the Dixie Chicks doubled down on their iconoclastic country stance with their second major-label album, Fly. The full-length won the trio-Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer, and Martie Maguire-a Grammy Award for Country Album of the Year and spawned eight country singles, including two No. 1 hits, Cowboy Take Me Away and Without You.
Unsurprisingly, Fly also became one of country music's best-selling albums ever. In 2002, it was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for 10 million copies shipped-a total surpassed only by the Dixie Chicks' own 12-times-platinum previous album, 1998's Wide Open Spaces. Streaming-wise, Fly also dominates, having been streamed over 132 million times.
Twenty years later, Fly feels even more radical and urgent than it did upon release. That's largely due to the album's lyrics, which star women in control of their lives and destinies who aren't letting anything-or anyone-get in their way.
Let Him Fly is about knowing when to let a romantic partner go because a relationship has run its course. Don't Waste Your Heart establishes that even starting a partnership is futile ( my heart can't compromise ), while Some Days You Gotta Dance encourages women to shake off concerns (e.g., inappropriate bosses, commitment issues) with some stress-relieving body moving.
Of course, Fly's protagonists aren't immune to being knocked down by a failed relationship; the fiddle-heavy waltz Hello Mr. Heartache is self-explanatory, while Without You is a cry-in-your-whiskey ballad about heartbreak. However, Fly s characters also don't suffer fools gladly: The album's most notorious song is Goodbye Earl, a modern murder ballad that finds a pair of best friends conspiring to off an abusive husband using poisoned black-eyed peas.
Although the latter tune caused controversy at country radio, the Dixie Chicks revealed in interviews that their record label had far more issues with the feminist-leaning anthem Sin Wagon. The lively bluegrass tune concerns a newly single woman unabashedly sowing her oats-or, as the song goes, doing a little mattress dancin'/That's right, I said mattress dancin'.
Since we have sold so many records, one of the good things that comes out of that is we have lots of control, Natalie Maines told USA Today in August 1999. So we said, There's 13 songs on the record. You can like 12 of them, and we'll like the other one.
Music-wise, Fly found the Dixie Chicks becoming more resolute about foregrounding their bluegrass and classic country roots-another bold move, given that the album emerged during a time when mainstream music was more welcoming than ever to pop-leaning country artists such as Shania Twain and Faith Hill.
Appropriately, however, Fly captures many moods. Kicky fiddle and twangy guitars dominate brisker songs, highlighted by the hip-shaking Some Days You Gotta Dance (featuring bluesy guitar from pre-superstardom Keith Urban), which is then balanced out by the keening pedal steel and melting multipart harmonies of Cold Day in July and Ready to Run. And on Fly, Natalie Maines' Texas-bred holler sounds confident and versatile. It's wild and untamed on Hole in My Head and Sin Wagon and tender on the string-swept Without You and wistful Cowboy Take Me Away.
Despite its straightforward classic country tones, time has proven Fly to be suitable for genre crossover covers. Goodbye Earl was once given a punk makeover by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, while boygenius, an indie-rock supergroup featuring Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers, redid the optimistic Cowboy Take Me Away as a longing love song.
Fly s DNA is also omnipresent in today's country music. The all-women supergroup Highwomen exudes the ladies-first, us-against-the-world stance favored by the Dixie Chicks. Cam is making unabashedly feminist country music on her own terms, while Miranda Lambert-both solo and with her own straight-talking trio, Pistol Annies-is building an arsenal of songs cataloging life's ebbs and flows from the perspective of a firebrand woman uninterested in conforming to stereotypes. Plus, the withering, take-no-prisoners attitude of Goodbye Earl shows up in spades in Kacey Musgraves High Horse, a deceptively bubbly disco-pop song about deflating the ego of an overly confident man.
The Fly era of Dixie Chicks also made an impression on Taylor Swift, a longtime fan of the band, who recently told Entertainment Weekly she was inspired by Fly s overall aesthetics and appreciated how Dixie Chicks were creating music in an unapologetically feminine, imaginative way -a descriptor that just so happens to describe the pop superstar's own catalog and shows how far Fly's influence stretches. It wasn't just the classic country fans who embraced the album: it was the rockers and pop stars and loads of inspired women in between.
Step into your boots and revisit the Dixie Chicks' 1999 album Fly.
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
29/10/2025
ESPN said it will produce animated telecasts for NFL, NHL, NBA and WNBA games across The Walt Disney Co. and ESPN platforms during the 2025-26 season under an a...
29/10/2025
WASHINGTON Despite the government shutdown, the Federal Communications Commission has passed, with some revisions, a previously announced Notice of Proposed Rul...
29/10/2025
29 10 2025 - Media release SBS, NITV and Screen Australia announce 2025 Digital Originals Shortlist
The 2025 Digital Originals shortlisted teams. Photo credit...
28/10/2025
ESPN Announces Monsters Funday Football', Its Latest Real-Time Animated Bro...
28/10/2025
SVG All-Stars: Catherine Chalfant, Manager, Remote Operations, ESPNThe Ole Miss alum is an operational force behind ESPN's extensive college-football catalo...
28/10/2025
Elevating the experience: AI and data take Ryder Cup to the next level By Joe OHalloran
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 10:25
Print This Story
NBC produced th...
28/10/2025
Conquering the Air (waves): Taking a close up look at the IBC Accelerator Priva...
28/10/2025
World Series 2025: Spectrum SportsNet LA Brings Dodgers Fans Closer to the Actio...
28/10/2025
Dylan Southern and Benedict Cumberbatch at the premiere of The Thing with Feathers (photo by George Pimentel / Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)...
28/10/2025
For three weeks in Lagos, Spotify's Greasy Tunes Caf pop-up brought the cit...
28/10/2025
Once a niche subculture, German rap has evolved into an influential cultural movement. Now, Spotify is giving the genre a new home with OFFCULT, a playlist dedi...
28/10/2025
Shane Delia's Malta serves up the Mediterranean this summer
28 October, 2025
Media releases
Feast on 9,000 years of culinary history Mondays from 24 No...
28/10/2025
SBS's global sporting festival continues with the FIVB Beach Volleyball Worl...
28/10/2025
Bilbao, October 28, 2025 - AgileTV, a leading technology solutions company for t...
28/10/2025
Disney, NBCUniversal, FOX, Paramount Each Achieve Double-Digit Monthly Growth
...
28/10/2025
CINCINNATI The E.W. Scripps Company has announced an agreement to sell WRTV, its local ABC-affiliated station in Indianapolis, to Circle City Broadcasting for $...
28/10/2025
Berklee College of Music and Berklee Valencia Named to Billboards 2025 Top Music...
28/10/2025
NEW YORK As AI usage continues to spike, a new study from IAB delves into an important aspect of how AI is transforming the advertising business with new data s...
28/10/2025
Charlie Jablonski, a broadcast tech pioneer who helped shape the modern era of Olympics television coverage, died Oct. 25 at his home in Lake George N.Y., the N...
28/10/2025
VIENNA, Austria Bitmovin has launched Bitmovin Observability, a new stand-alone video data solution that delivers real-time insights into video playback. The so...
28/10/2025
LOS ANGELES LucidLink, the file streaming platform, has announced a Frame.io integration and expanded mobile capabilities at Adobe Max....
28/10/2025
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, today announced that it has joined the Ama...
28/10/2025
Lightware, an industry leader in connectivity and signal management solutions, has announced a major update to its Taurus
platform, which now delivers flawless...
28/10/2025
Following a successful mid-September International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, Hiltron Communications will promote its full range of satellite communi...
28/10/2025
Open Broadcast Systems has chosen MC&S (Media Consulting & Services) as a reseller to help strengthen its presence in France.
With over twenty years of experi...
28/10/2025
Bitmovin, leading provider of video streaming solutions, has launched Bitmovin Observability, a new stand-alone video data solution that delivers real-time insi...
28/10/2025
Ease Live, the leader in interactive TV technology, today announced the successful launch of interactive graphical overlays for UEFA Champions League matches fo...
28/10/2025
LucidLink, the file streaming platform, today at Adobe MAX announced a Frame.io integration and expanded mobile capabilities, streamlining collaboration and hel...
28/10/2025
ATLANTA Gray Media has promoted Nick Hasenecz to general manager of WNDU, its NBC affiliate in the South Bend-Elkhart, Ind., market....
28/10/2025
Applications Open for Berklee Fenway Neighborhood Improvement Grant Boston nonprofits can apply by December 12 for funding to support community projects that ...
28/10/2025
Governments everywhere are racing to harness the power of AI - but legacy infras...
28/10/2025
AI is moving from the digital world into the physical one. Across factory floors...
28/10/2025
NVIDIA is delivering the telecom industry a major boost in open-source software for building AI-native 5G and 6G networks.
NVIDIA Aerial software will soon be ...
28/10/2025
The race to bottle a star now runs on AI.
NVIDIA, General Atomics and a team of international partners have built a high-fidelity, AI-enabled digital twin for ...
28/10/2025
Along the Pacific Ocean in Monterey, California, the Naval Postgraduate School (...
28/10/2025
To democratize access to AI technology nationwide, AI education and deployment c...
28/10/2025
Leading technology companies in aerospace and automotive are accelerating their ...
28/10/2025
28 Oct 2025
VEON's JazzCash Wins Silver Award for Innovation in Lending at ...
28/10/2025
Guests include Wayne Rooney, Maya Jama, Dame Laura Kenny, Chloe Kelly, Chris McC...
28/10/2025
The two-hour special, recorded live from the iconic Dolby Theatre in LA, will ai...
28/10/2025
Eutelsat upgrades teleports with Rohde & Schwarz satellite uplink amplifiers High efficiency and resilient Ku-band amplifiers for excellent RF performance
...
28/10/2025
These appointments come at a pivotal time for ABC, as the organisation continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of a digital-first media ecosystem. The ne...
28/10/2025
Scripps Research awarded $4 million to advance platform for neurodevelopmental disorders The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) grant support...
27/10/2025
You can touch this: Haptics becoming central to the virtual live experience By Adrian Pennington
Friday, October 24, 2025 - 09:12
Print This Story
The vid...
27/10/2025
A tale of two trailers: France's Stop & Go doubles up with its new hybrid tr...
27/10/2025
Pro Padel League Stages City's Cup Finals Inside NYC's Hammerstein Ballr...
27/10/2025
World Series 2025: Sportsnet Delivers Made-in-Canada' Moment for a Nation U...
27/10/2025
ESPN Extends Partnership With Sony's Beyond Sports To Expand Animated Altern...
On August 31, 1999, the Dixie Chicks doubled down on their iconoclastic country stance with their second major-label album, Fly. The full-length won the trio-Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer, and Martie Maguire-a Grammy Award for Country Album of the Year and spawned eight country singles, including two No. 1 hits, Cowboy Take Me Away and Without You. 
