Hard to believe... but it's a post on the Dixie Chicks.

For several days now, a post on About.com's Top 40/Pop site has generated a lot of discussion.

In this post, About's Top 40/Pop writer Bill Lamb related his observations on last week's Grammy Awards. He muses on a few issues, observing that the Dixie Chicks swept with an album that, due to controversial statements made by the band, had received little airplay.

I was mum on the Grammys. There is no punk category, and bands that can fit into punk categorization get thrown all over the boards, lumped in as rock, hard rock, metal, alternative, you get the idea. I was really happy to see some favorites like Wolfmother and the Flaming Lips walk away with awards, and I wasn't surprised or upset to see the Dixie Chicks walk with a huge pile of them.

The Dixie Chicks are not my thing, obviously. My tastes in country lean toward cowpunk and outlaw country. I prefer Hank III to his father, and I will always love Johnny Cash and respect the influence the man in black had on American punk rock. Regardless of their ideals, I'm not going to buy a Dixie Chicks album. But if I were into them to begin with, political statements would not have made me stop buying their records, either.

That being said, I respect that the Dixie Chicks said what they said. Whether or not you agree with their views, you have to respect their right to say it, and shutting them out of the airwaves based on their ideals is not the way to handle music. Airplay should be granted on the basis of musical quality, not the fact that the opinions of musicians clash with radio executives.

Modern music is founded on the image of the rebel. The '60s was the height of the protest song, and the '70s saw the attempted censorship of the Sex Pistols for their abrasive political ideals in the UK, and the FBI monitoring the MC5 for their politics in the U.S. There have always been musicians who used their music for political protest, and regardless of attempts to silence it, the music gets out.

It was perplexing to me that Dixie Chicks were the targets of such animosity. Musicians have always said and sang about the things that are not always topics for comfortable conversation. They spark debate. They make us think.

The Dixie Chicks are not punk rock, but their attitudes are. They are not afraid to say what they believe, even if it challenges their fans or threatens to hurt their record sales. That's what the U.S. is about, being proud and free. Check out any country album. It's mentioned somewhere.

In 2005, Green Day's American Idiot won the Grammy for Best Rock Album and the band swept the 2005 MTV music awards, winning a total of seven of the eight awards they were nominated for. In 2006, In 2006 Green Day won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for Boulevard of Broken Dreams. This is all in spite of the fact that the title track of American Idiot features some seriously politically incendiary lyrics, the most tame verse being:

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information nation of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.

Why didn't they generate such anger? I can only imagine that it's because they are punks, and they are expected to do this, and their audience is made up of people who are open to politically charged lyrics.

I don't buy into that argument. In order for records to sell in the numbers that Green Day's have, they are reaching a large portion of America. There are probably plenty of people with both Green Day and the Dixie Chicks in their record collection.

So why the animosity towards the Chicks? Either I missed something somewhere, or people are forgetting the meaning of creative freedom.

And there you have it. A piece on the Dixie Chicks on a punk rock site. I promise it won't happen again.