Dixie Chicks

For as conservative as it can seem at times, country music has always been a place for rebels.

One of the most successful bands of the ’90s and 2000s, The Chicks (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks) emerged as valuable counter-programming to Nashville’s more outdated narratives, mixing radio-friendly bluegrass with a progressive edge that made them outcasts to country purists but unlikely heroes in mainstream pop.

Not that they ever courted the mainstream, per se.