As a childhood fan of The Dixie Chicks—now known as The Chicks—and longtime Natalie Maines stan, I was primed and ready for Gaslighter to drop. When I first listened to the lead single, also titled "Gaslighter," I loved its energy, marching beat and biting burns ("repeating all of the mistakes of your father..."). When the full album was released, it was pretty clear after listening to just a few tracks that Gaslighter isn't just an album of breakup songs; it's largely Natalie Maines's divorce album. And I'm here for it.
Look, plenty of songs out there are about breakups. In fact, maybe most songs are about breakups. But it's more of a rarity for an artist to get raw and plain with the specifics of a divorce. So when Natalie Maines gets particular about just how messy the dissolution of this marriage was, it's cathartic and refreshing.
Everyone knows what it's like to feel bitter toward an ex, and that's why there are a million songs about that feeling. What The Chicks do though, is get really honest about where that bitterness comes from, and they don't try to protect the source of this pain by beating around the bush. In "Everybody Loves You," the slow-paced lyrics are cutting: "It's my body, and it hates you / Why does everybody love you? ... They don't know enough about you / Why does everybody love you? / They don't know the things that I do."
The Chicks don't hold back on the snarky bits either. "Tights on My Boat" digs at the ex's responsibility shortcomings ("Hey, will your dad pay your taxes now that I'm done?") and directly calls out the scene of a cheating crime ("And you can tell the girl who left her tights on my boat / That she can have you now"). On "Sleep at Night," Maines reveals that she got a call from her "husband's girlfriend's husband" and even details meeting the other woman, who claimed she was "such a fan" of Maines. Yikes.
I mean…heart eyes and fire emojis all day
Photographer: Philippa Price
Apparently, Maines's ex-husband, actor Adrian Pasdar, tried to keep The Chicks from releasing Gaslighter, claiming that it violated the confidentiality clause in their prenup. (Though I suspect it's because he knew his own shit was about to be under a spotlight, and he didn't want to look like an asshole.) He also claimed that Maines was the breadwinner and that he had to sacrifice his own career to raise their kids...so he asked for $60,000 a month from her.
And that, folks, is why the bare-it-all divorce narrative is less common. Divorces are not just breakups. They're contract dissolutions, business transactions, custody fights, and disentanglements of every little detail of two very intertwined lives. There is no simple way to answer "What happened?" because the breakdown of a marriage isn't always traceable to one event, so people don't tend to jump at the chance to share the full inside scoop. And often, people feel embarrassed baring those nitty gritty details because there's so much stigma surrounding divorce.
My ex-husband and I decided to divorce shortly before my 30th birthday. People told me that we "should have tried harder," as if they were privy to what we did or didn't try. Someone asked me if my parents were disappointed in me for getting a divorce (they're not, in case now you're wondering that too). Afterward, people asked me if I felt it was "too soon to date,"—implying that I was doing something wrong by meeting people—as if they had any idea how long the unraveling of the marriage had taken or how long my ex and I had effectively been living separate lives before the split.
But for every comment or question like those, I got just as many people wanting to talk to me about divorce because they were going through it, had recently gone through it, or were thinking about it. I have to use two hands to count how many people contacted me about it. Almost every one of them (many of whom I'd never previously spoken to about anything beyond casual topics) said they'd never confided in anyone else about it because they thought other people who hadn't experienced it wouldn't understand—it's like a secret network of divorced people who only talk to each other about it. I felt the same hesitation the first time I broached the subject with a divorced friend the year before. And that was only after I'd finally told my therapist that I thought I wanted out of my marriage—her office felt like the only safe place to say it out loud because no one I knew would hear it. I didn't even tell some of my closest friends or my parents until we'd officially decided to call it quits because I was afraid of what they'd say.
But why are we all so tight-lipped about divorce as if it isn't almost exactly as common as marriage?
People (and TV shows and movies and music) put such a high value on marriage as if it's the pinnacle of one's being—the highest honor you should strive for—so divorce is treated like a failure. People ask you if you're okay like you've been shot. People say things like "Oh, no..." and hold their hand to their heart if you utter the term "ex-husband." People treat you like you're fragile, even if you and your ex-spouse have actually just done something good for one another. Even if you're both happier. So, like I said: Divorced people—especially young divorced people—often keep quiet to spare themselves the pity and the line of questioning. But trust me, a lot of us want to be able to talk about it without the fear of judgment.
That's why The Chicks' honesty about the subject is so refreshing. While a lot of the songs are filled with scorn, anger, sadness and disappointment, the album isn't about a failure. It's about getting free of something that made her miserable for a very long time. It's the start of something better for Maines, and a long-awaited return to the Chicks' elegant brand of defiance for us (never forget "Not Ready to Make Nice" and the iconic F.U.T.K. shirt). "My Best Friend's Weddings" is a great forward-looking song about deciding to "go it alone" and doing so with your head held high—and it's also got those classic folksy harmonies The Chicks are known for. If "Julianna Calm Down" doesn't make you want to "put on your best shoes / and strut the fuck around like you've got nothin' to lose," you should give it a second listen. In the end, the album is hopeful and empowering, and that's how divorce can be. And couldn't we all use a little hope right now, even if it's tinged with fury?
Gaslighter has the burn-it-all-down energy that we're all feeling in 2020. This hasn't been an easy year for most people, to say the least. On top of feeling angry and helpless about the injustices of the world (check out track six "March March" to work through some of those emotions), we're also feeling isolated. And I think that isolation has led to greater vulnerability as we all look for new ways to connect with other people. Hopefully that openness leads to less stigma around topics—like divorce—that we're taught to feel ashamed about. Is this an amateur music review or a personal essay? It's a little of both, I suppose. So go listen to Gaslighter, yell if you need some catharsis, and don't feel like you have to be quiet about anything just because other people expect you to.