Album: Fly
Year: 1999
This is all because of Rox. She’s always been a fan of country music — especially tough-chick country music — and in the years just after we got married, nobody was bigger or tougher than the Dixie Chicks.
Had they not been so popular, they would have slotted easily into the alt-country that I’d been a fan of since Rank and File, but their popularity was part of what made them great.
Sure, they were slicker than a lot of the alt-country bands I loved, but not that much slicker and they wrote some great singles that straddled the line between country and pop without even trying. And, unlike a lot of singles acts in every genre, their albums were more than just hits-plus-filler, always worth a listen.
A fiddle-driven fucksong hoedown, “Sin Wagon” was also a revenge song like the almost-as-controversial-but-way-more-popular “Goodbye Earl,” but it was a cheating revenge song. He’d done her wrong, and now it was her turn:
em>On a mission to make something happen
Feel like Delilah lookin’ for Samson
Do a little mattress dancin’
That’s right I said mattress dancin’
Here’s the thing: she hasn’t done anything yet. The beauty of the song is that it’s all about the anticipation of the sinnin’ she’s gonna do. And the tempo suggested that she needed to get on that wagon right away while the kick-ass solos — banjo, fiddle, guitars — suggest she’s gonna have a shitload of fun and worry about the consequences later.
Naturally, this kind of wanton female sexuality pissed off all of the right people, and despite being as catchy as any of their singles, “Sin Wagon” remained an album cut.
“Sin Wagon” performed live in 2003