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The Dixie Chicks’ May 2, 2003, Entertainment Weekly cover turned the words surrounding a political controversy into its central image. It followed backlash to Natalie Maines’s remarks about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Years later, bandmates Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire formed Court Yard Hounds, a separate musical project whose self-titled debut arrived in 2010.
Why the Dixie Chicks posed nude for Entertainment Weekly
In March 2003, during a performance in London ahead of the Iraq War, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President George W. Bush and said she was ashamed that he was from Texas. The remarks provoked backlash, including boycott calls and radio stations withdrawing the group’s music. The Washington Post’s 2022 retrospective and CBS News’s contemporary report from April 30, 2003 document the controversy.
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For its May 2, 2003 issue, Entertainment Weekly photographed Maines, Emily Strayer, and Martie Maguire nude, with phrases associated with both criticism of and support for the band painted on their bodies. The image made the words themselves part of the story: rather than treating the backlash as background, it put the language surrounding the group directly in view.
The concept emerged through discussion involving the band, its publicist, and magazine staff. In the Washington Post’s account, Maines proposed showing the words people were using about the group; participants then developed that idea into the painted phrases. The cover’s strength was its visual shorthand. Geraldine Hessler, Entertainment Weekly’s creative director at the time, later recalled: “You didn’t have to have a lot of words on the cover because the image was so strong.”
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What the cover said about Maines’s remarks
In the April 30, 2003 CBS News report, Maines told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she regretted her choice of words but was not embarrassed by her political thinking. Those are distinct positions: she expressed regret about how she had phrased the remark without saying she had abandoned the underlying view.
In a 2013 anniversary recollection reported by the Washington Post, Strayer called the cover “the most bold thing” the band had done and said she understood its gravity as the shoot was happening. That retrospective view helps explain why the cover is remembered as more than a provocative photograph: it was a deliberate response to a public dispute that had reached the band’s career and reputation.
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What Court Yard Hounds has to do with the cover
Court Yard Hounds was the later duo project of Strayer and Maguire, two of the three Dixie Chicks. The pair released a self-titled debut album in 2010. The connection is biographical and musical: two musicians featured on the cover later worked together as a duo. The available accounts do not establish that Court Yard Hounds was formed in response to the 2003 cover.
NPR’s 2010 album review and Texas Monthly’s interview with the duo provide context for the project and its debut. The album is a separate chapter from the Entertainment Weekly cover: one captures a moment of public controversy, while the other documents Strayer and Maguire’s later work together.
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