Dixie Chicks bio

The Dixie Chicks are a female country music trio from the United States comprising Emily Robison, Martie Maguire and Natalie Maines. They are one of the highest-selling female bands in any musical genre, having sold 30 million albums as of June 2006. The group formed in 1989 in Dallas, Texas. After years of struggle and personnel changes, the Dixie Chicks achieved massive country and pop success starting in the late 1990s with hit songs such as "Wide Open Spaces," "Cowboy Take Me Away," and "Long Time Gone." The group became well-known for their lively persona, instrumental virtuosity, fashion sense, and outspoken political comments. As of 2007, they had won 13 Grammy Awards, and are the first country-rooted act in Grammy history to receive three Album of the Year nominations, with Fly, Home, and Taking The Long Way. Ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lead vocalist Natalie Maines publicly criticized U.S. President George W. Bush. The ensuing controversy cost the group half of their concert audience attendance in the United States as chronicled in the 2006 documentary Dixie Chicks At the 49th Grammy Awards Show in 2007, the Chicks, as they are informally known, won all five categories for which they were nominated, including the coveted Song, Record, and Album of the Year, in a vote they interpret as partly a statement for free speech.

Source: Wikipedia