#65, "Not Ready To Make Nice," The Chicks (2006)

150 Favorite Songs: #65, "Not Ready To Make Nice," The Chicks (2006)

I didn't pay much attention to the Chicks in their initial incarnation. I liked "Goodbye Earl" and their cover of "Landslide," maybe a few other songs that I wouldn't have recognized as theirs. But I didn't give much thought to country radio in the late 90's and early 00's, so they were mostly just off my radar until the protests started.

When the protests started, I was on their side, because you'd have to be an asshole not to be. Seeing that much venomous jingoism (with a powerfully misogynistic undercurrent, because U!S!A! U!S!A! just isn't as satisfying if you're not also calling them the "Dixie Sluts") brought me over to them as people, and then as artists because, it turns out, they really were very good. I don’t know how I missed “Cowboy Take Me Away” the first time around! When I learned that they were working with Rick Rubin for their comeback album, I was really excited.

And then they release a lead single—to the same country radio stations that had attacked them, no less, but which had decided that it was time to give them a second chance—and they might as well have called it "Fuck All Y'all." Like, if you look at the demo lyrics, I'm pretty sure the words "Fuck All Y'all" are scribbled out and the words "Not Ready To Make Nice" are written in the margin. Because, yeah—fuck all y'all. You're ready to bring 'em back into the country music fold, ready to reach out to your listeners with how they've done their time in exile and if they just go back to making nice music, you'll only call them the Dixie Sluts under your breath or off the air? Fuck all y'all.

But you don't need my little blog rant up there, because they already said all of that. It was the song they gave to country radio. Minor chords and strained vocals and sharply accusatory lyrics—“i made my bed and i sleep like a baby / with no regrets and i don't mind saying / it's a sad sad story when a mother will teach her / daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger”—that builds into this epic power-ballad (and you can hear the contributions of honorary 4th Chick, Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson, when it starts to explode) and the whole time, it's powerful and defiant. And it’s also vulnerable, too, because that's an important part of it.

The song isn't called "Fuck All Y'all," because that's not their style. That's not what the Chicks have ever been about. The thing that makes this more than just a punk rock kiss-off to the bad guys is that this isn't the career that they had planned. If you ask, I dunno, Ice Cube circa 1992 if it's a sad, sad story that a mother would teach her daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger, he'd be all, "Nah, that's just life." But the Chicks clearly thought that their fans—that Americans—were better than this. And so they're not just angry and defiant, they're hurt. Because why wouldn't they be? Of course they are. Ice Cube would be hurt, too. He'd just have never admitted it, dropped some ever-outrageous tracks designed to piss people off even more (and eventually starred in a series of family-friendly films).

The Chicks didn't go that route. They expressed a bunch of complicated emotions—anger and hurt and defiance and fuck all y'all and really, you want to kill me and the sense of betrayal is as palpable as the sense of resistance, and it's just such a complicated, powerful song.

In the end, it's not just a fuck-you to country radio—it’s a declaration that if country radio wanted them back, it'd be on their terms. And if not, they wouldn't lose any sleep over it. We should all be so brave.