The Dixie Chicks unveiled another song from their upcoming Gaslighter album on Thursday (June 25) in the form of the urgent, topical “March March.”
Set to a spare, sonar-like pinging beat, the track written by the trio along with Dan Wilson, Jack Antonoff, Ross Golan and Ian Kirkpatrick takes on a raft of issues in the inimitable take-no-prisoners DC style.
“March, march to my own drum/ Hey, hey, I’m an army of one,” the track opens, before digging into some of the kind of knotty topics polite country acts typically shy away from, from gun control to arming teachers, white men legislating abortion and climate change.
“Brenda’s packing heat ’cause she don’t like Mondays/ Underpaid teachers policing the hallways/ Print yourself a weapon and take it to the gun range,” they sing over a forlorn pedal steel, echoing handclaps and a fiery fiddle solo.
The song also shouts out Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor and gun control activist Emma Gonzalez and the way young Americans are taking charge with the lines, “Standing with Emma and our sons and daughters/ Watchin’ our youth have to solve our problems/ I’ll follow them so who’s comin’ with me (half of you love me, half already hate me).”
Gaslighter, the follow-up to 2006’s Taking the Long Way, is due out on July 17. So far, the group has released the title track and “Julianna Calm Down.”
Listen to “March March” below.
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