The Chicks, formerly known as The Dixie Chicks, got candid about several topics during their appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Tuesday. In a segment called “Chick Flick Off,” Andy Cohen asked Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire their thoughts on the band Lady A, formerly known as Lady Antebellum, changing their name as well.
“I think it was good. It was news to us that they had gotten that trademark, what, six years ago or something. I wasn’t up to speed on what they were doing. I think it was the right move,” Maines said before touching on the current lawsuit between the country band and blues singer Anita “Lady A” White. “I think it’s been very awkward and uncomfortable to have this whole lawsuit and it’s kind of going against the point of changing their name.”
Last month, Lady Antebellum announced that in light of the Black Lives Matter movement they were dropping “Antebellum,” a word widely used to refer to the period of time before the Civil War. They revealed they would now go by Lady A, a name the 61-year-old Black singer has been using for over 20 years. However, earlier this month, the Nashville trio filed a lawsuit against White for allegedly attempting “to enforce purported trademark rights in a mark that Plaintiffs have held for more than a decade,” according to the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, when asked by Cohen what the “Gaslighter” singers thought about fans who didn’t like their new name, they kept things real.
“We don’t really care,” Maguire quipped as they all laughed.
The Chicks announced their name change last month, a move that seemed to be in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, as “Dixie” is a nickname for the Confederate States of America amid the Civil War.
“We want to meet this moment,” the trio said at the time.
The trio also touched on Taylor Swift’s comments about not wanting to be exiled like the singers for making political comments. In Swift’s documentary, Miss Americana, the 30-year-old singer touched on why it was important to speak out politically despite some objections from her team and family — bringing up how The Chicks received backlash after Maines’ comment against then-President George W. Bush.
“Every time I didn’t speak up about politics as a young person, I was applauded for it. It was wild. I said, ‘I’m a 22-year-old girl — people don’t want to hear what I have to say about politics.’ And people would just be like, ‘Yeahhhhh!,'” she explained.
“I saw how one comment ended such a powerful reign, and it terrified me,” Swift admitted. “These days, with social media, people can be so mad about something one day and then forget what they were mad about a couple weeks later. That’s fake outrage. But what happened to the Dixie Chicks was real outrage. I registered it — that you’re always one comment away from being done being able to make music.”
They had nothing but praise for Swift, with Strayer saying, “[We’re] just proud of her.”
“She started her career when she was so young, that I think she had people that she went to as kind of a panel when she was younger,” Strayer relayed. “So, it’s good to see her as she becomes her own woman questioning these things and saying, ‘I really want to talk about [politics].’ She was told not to be like us — that’s not news to us either — I don’t know, I’m proud of her, she’s awesome.”
