Dixie Chicks: Still Defiant

Country music superstars "The Dixie Chicks" are riding high in the saddle again, topping the charts after weathering the huge storm kicked up by the sharp criticism of President Bush more than three years ago by one of the group's members.

They're not only a successful country band, they're the best-selling female group of any genre, ever.

The Grammy-winners have just released their first studio album since Natalie Maines' headline-making comments about the president, a fellow Texan.

It's called "Taking the Long Way," and some observers are calling it their best album yet.

During a concert in London in March 2003, ten days before the Iraq war began, Maines said, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." The remark sent shockwaves through the conservative country music world, seriously hurting album sales and resulting in their banishment from most country radio stations. They endured death threats and boycotts.

Maines did apologize, saying, "Whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect." But last month, she retracted the apology, telling Time magazine, ""I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever."

The uproar that followed the original criticism is the focus of the new CD's first single, "Not Ready to Make Nice."

The group performed that song on The Early Show Friday.

Typical of its lyrics are the lines, "I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down. I'm still mad as hell, and I don't have time to go round and round and round. It's too late to make it right, I probably wouldn't if I could."

"Every word in that song is true," Maines told co-anchor Rene Syler Friday, " … and every time I sing it, I just still feel how absurd and crazy that was. And yeah, I can still feel that feeling."

Asked if she thinks the reaction to the single, and the album, might be a litmus test of where the group standS with the American public, Maines responded, "It's the first time we've had a gauge of where we stand. But we just really, it freed us up to not have to think of a genre or pleasing anyone for this record. And we definitely had to write the record for us, and not really think about who else would get mad.

"But now, you know, we figure the 29 percent who are still Bush supporters didn't like us to begin with. So it doesn't matter."