Chicks teased the music last week
Dixie Chicks return to country music with the release of “Gaslighter.” The single is now available at all digital outlets and radio and is the first new music from the trio in 14 years. It’s the title track from their upcoming album, available May 1st Sony Music Nashville.
The fiery uptempo single starts with the chorus: “You’re such a Gaslighter / Denier / Doing anything to get your ass farther / Gaslighter / Big timer / Repeating all of the mistakes of your father.”
A PSA-style official video was released to coincide with the single and features the Chicks — Natalie Maines, Martie Erwin Maguire and Emily Erwin Robison — dressed in old military outlets and contortionists dancing in front of 70’s inspired trippy backgrounds.
The song was inspired by lead vocalist Maines’ divorce with Adrian Pasdar as the group was prepped to release a covers album to fulfill their seven-album deal with Sony.
“When I started getting a divorce, I had a lot to say, so that kind of sparked me being ready to make new music],” the singer shares on the Spiritualgasm podcast in 2019. “Songwriting is really hard for me, and I think, for many years, I didn’t want to analyze my life or my relationship. I was just in it and dedicated and devoted…I just was not ready to open up like that.”
The Chicks appeared on a recent episode of New Beats Daily with Zane Lowe on Apple Music where they discussed the new song and their relationship with producer Jack Antonoff.
“It was the first song with Jack Antonoff. At the time, we thought we were gonna write with a bunch of different people and get different producers,” the trio explains. “We wrote with him, and we were like, ‘He needs to be the sound for this album,’ because…he blew us away. It was such a fun song to start with.”
Fans can pre-save Gaslighter which will be their final album with Sony before they decide to sign with another label or be independent.
The album is their first since 2006’s pop-leaning Taking The Long Way which followed after being blacklisted by the country community for comments Maines’ made on stage in Europe. In 2003, Maines’ slammed then President George W Bush saying, “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”