“Cowboy Take Me Away”
The Chicks
Written by Marcus Hummon and Martie Maguire
Radio & Records
#1 (3 weeks)
January 28 – February 11, 2000
Billboard
#1 (3 weeks)
February 5 – February 19, 2000
What could capture the promise of the new decade better than the Chicks at the top of the country chart with such a traditional and progressive single?
Martie Maguire was inspired by the old Calgon commercials of the eighties, where a weary housewife would sink into the bubble bath after a hard day and cry, “Calgon! Take me away!”
That pop culture moment influenced one of the Chicks’ most enduring hits, capturing how a country girl still longs for the simple life, even as she’s making good on her dreams in the big city. Maines’ growing confidence as a vocalist is matched by the increasingly bold musicianship of Maguire and sister Emily Strayer.
On one hand, it’s hard to fully articulate just how fresh this track from Fly sounded at the turn of the century. Indeed, many of the songs from that album haven’t aged as well in terms of production, but you could drop this on to radio now and it would be an even more of a balm than it was back in the day.
We’ll see the Chicks a few more times before the decade is out, and they’ll be showing up with a classic every damn time.
“Cowboy Take Me Away” gets an A.
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It sure does sound great! Sentimental but my wife choose this song as her walkdown a our wedding so it hold a special spot but even if you took that away it’s a beautiful song and I love the mandolin sprinkled and of course the harmonies. Great way to start the decade.
Favorites from “Fly”
“Sin Wagon”
“Cowboy Take Me Away”
“If I Fall You’re Going Down with Me”
“Let Him Fly”
“Goodbye Earl”
2000 is off to a better start than 1970, that’s for sure! I don’t know if there’s a bad song on Fly (and of course, Home); that this is one of my least favorite songs from that album is not a knock on Cowboy Take Me Away but rather a testament to The Chicks’ artistry. This song makes me want to be taken away by a cowboy too, haha. Its dreamy and soars like the fantasy the protagonist desires.
Of course, The Chicks music is a bright spot of the 2000s. But I’m interested to see how I feel about this decade through the lens of this feature, because I remember a listening to a countdown in probably 2005 and realizing that I didn’t like any song in the top 40 that week. So, I turned off the show. Up until then, I had religiously listened to a country countdown show each week.
2005 is about the time I quit listening to Country Radio on any sort of regular basis
I mostly gave up on the countdown shows in 1999 when radio began pivoting to “nine-week #1 hits” and molasses-paced chart movement. I still kept tabs on radio though, but 2005 was definitely the point where it really started to slump for me as well.
…very interesting remarks, folks. could you possibly point out a little more specifically, what it was in particular around 2005 that put you off listening to country radio. ironically, it coincides roughly with the start of country universe, the beginnings of the careers of future commercial powerhouses like jason aldean or carrie underwood. miranda lambert got into full swing, taylor swift was around the corner. toby keith, brad paisley, keith urban, rascal flatts, kenny chesney were huge. all in all, it seemed pretty standard procedure the way it was going then. the no. 1 songs of that year were not half bad either. so, what was it that seemed to have put you – avid country listeners – off around that point/period in time? any more tangible explanations?
For me, it was that the music was sounding very bland. If I’m remembering correctly, the countdown that I ended up turning off was all just boring to me. All of thesongs bored me.
For me, I bailed on country radio more or less when they turned on The Chicks and most other women and went all-in on a callow brand of “patriotism,” the effects of which we are still very much dealing with. Instead, I was able to use my iPod to curate my own playlists for longform listening to the country artists who I believed were worthy of airplay– Drive-By Truckers, Neko Case, Allison Moorer, Old 97s, and many more– without having to suffer through the era’s biggest stars, most of whom were releasing music that I only occasionally (McGraw), rarely (Chesney), or never (Rascal Flatts, Lonestar) liked at all.
Like Jonathan, the hard pivot toward jingoism and away from women singers was a shot across the bow for me. I still found stuff to like on country radio in the mid-2000s but the direction left a bad taste in my mouth. Things would get worse in the decade to come, but I definitely had an entitled “the music should always be as good as it was in the early-to-mid 90s!” and when it kept drifting away from that high-water mark, I got annoyed.
I wasn’t as big of a fan of this group as most but this was definitely my favorite song by them.
Great song, great vocal and harmonies. Definitely deserves an A.
I’m a sucker for a prominently featured fiddle (see also: Pam Tillis’ Deep Down), so this already gets bonus points from me. That, coupled with one of Natalie Maines’ most affecting, nuanced vocals, lifts a track from my favorite Chicks’ album from very good to great.
This song is so beautiful, the harmonies are on point, and something about it just feels dreamy and has a great atmosphere to it. Also Natalie Maines voice when she sings “Closer to You” sounds so amazing, and like she is genuinely want an escape.
Very good song – this was the last of seven consecutive top ten singles. After this the quality of their singles began to slip, beginning with the ridiculous “Goodbye Earl”. Natalie Maines probably could have had a good solo career – the rest of the Chicks (including former members Laura Lynch and Robin Lynn Macy) really were not good solo singers, at least not within the group context of the Chicks although Macy was an effective bluegrass vocalist.
There are times we do agree, Paul, and then there are times you show up and say a run of singles– “Goodbye Earl,” “Cold Day in July,” “Without You,” “If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me,” “Heartbreak Town,” “Some Days You Gotta Dance,” “Long Time Gone,” “Landslide,” “Travelin’ Soldier,” and “Top of the World”– somehow represents a slip in quality, which is a take so willfully contrarian that even Armond White would question if it reflects the reality the rest of us live in. Good Lord.
I said the “quality of their singles began to slip”, I did not say that none of them were any good, but the consistency was not there. I think part of the problem is that of language having been debased. When I like something (music, food, theater, movies) I usually describe it as good or very good whereas my children and grandchildren describe anything they like as fantastic – nuance has been lost. I have experienced some fantastic things in life (man landing on the moon in 1969 comes to mind) but they are few and far between.
I like most of the singles that Jonathan mentions much better than this one, to be honest.
Same Leeann; I especially love If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me (one of the more underrated singles in their canon), Heartbreak Town and, of course, Long Time Gone.
From where I’m sitting, that’s a near bulletproof run of singles (though I could take or leave Some Days You Gotta Dance).
It seemed like a much quainter time, to see how the Chicks became arguably the most successful all-female group or band in American music history, country or otherwise, with their combination of Emily’s and Martie’s traditional country/bluegrass instrumental virtuosity and harmonies and Natalie’s rock-influenced lead vocals. And the fact that within just a little over three years they’d get ostracized by the country music community that they had always waved the flag for and even get at least one credible death threat because of what Natalie said and where she said that is more than a little sickening to think about.
Fantastic start to the new decade! After the non-event that Y2K turned out be, this song was a perfect anthem as a sigh of relief for those of us warned about airplanes falling out of the sky and prison cells opening up. My love for The Chicks was never as unequivocal as the consensus seems to be on this site and so many other circles, but I was nonetheless a fan and songs like this were the perfect exhibition of why. Natalie Maines’ voice worked best for me when the songs were more restrained, and it was positively soothing on this “take me away” vibe. The Chicks were at their commercial peak here and I wish radio had been gutsy enough to let their outrageous follow-up single do well enough to make this feature as well.
Bouncing from these reviews from the late 80s to the early 2000s has really given me a fashion whiplash. I’d forgotten how frenzied the color schemes were in fashion and pop culture production generally in the late 90s and early 2000s. This video and the “Goodbye Earl” video make me particularly grateful I don’t have photosensitive epilepsy or all of these bright colors might give me a seizure! I was in college at the time and certainly have no memory of fashion being so loud and proud at my Midwestern campus. Anyway, great song to start off a decade that started song but lost me as it progressed.
Grade: A
I always wanted at least one of my ex wives to think of me as their cowboy who could take them away…
Judging from all the comments, this song has the power to transport it’s listeners somewhere else, to take them somewhere in their mind or memory while hearing it.
This classic is country music fantasy and daydreaming at its absolute best.
As for the 2005 divide, I began to feel less of a connection to the artists in country music. It was like the Blake Shelton lyric from his “Pure BS” album from the song “She Don’t Love Me” in which the protagonist bemoans an old lover because, “Not only she don’t love me/she don’t hate me any more.”
I would incrementally and increasingly become indifferent to the music and the people recording it.
This is indeed such a pretty song, and it’s personally one of my most favorites from the Chicks. I especially always loved the fiddle featured throughout, especially the gorgeous solos, and the steel guitar sounds so satisfying, as well (Before I started studying harder on studio musicians, I used to think it sounded like Bruce Bouton playing before finding out it’s Lloyd Maines). The vocals and harmonies from the ladies are also perfect, and I love the theme about wanting to escape to a more country, wide open setting, which I can relate to a lot of times.
This is one of many late 1999/early 2000 songs that brings back great memories of when my parents and I were regularly visiting Lancaster and York, PA around that time. It particularly reminds me of our first Pennsylvania blizzard encounter while over there one day. This song was on the radio not long after we had left Rockvale Outlets in Lancaster and were headed back home to Virginia as it started to snow. My mom kept complaining about Natalie’s vocals because she generally never cared much for twangier singers, but I found myself really falling in love with the song and its beautiful melody (At the time the intro reminded me a little of the intro to Shane McAnally’s “Are Your Eyes Still Blue”). As the song played, the snow was coming down a lot harder and was quickly sticking to the road. Soon it became too much for us to drive through, and we eventually stopped in York at the Hampton Inn at Mt. Zion where they were serving hot soup and sandwiches for the guests coming in from the storm. I remember later that night sitting in the breakfast room downstairs in the hotel watching through the window as the snow piled up high, and I listened to “Wolves” from old cassette of Garth’s No Fences. That’s still one of my favorite and most memorable blizzard experiences that we ever had in Pennsylvania that my mom and I still talk about sometimes. And as a plus, Mom doesn’t seem to mind this song or Natalies vocals too much these days.
Btw, I got y’all beat by one year on when I started losing interest in mainstream country. It was 2004 when I started realizing that I disliked a lot of the new songs coming out, and for the first time I stopped listening to country radio as regularly as I did before that. After that I would only listen to a country station in an on and off fashion and generally turn to CD’s and eventually my ipod instead for better listening pleasure. It’s hard to believe the promise of the beginning of the 2000s that this song showed would quickly fade in just a few years. That said, the 2010s were even worse. Up until 2013, there was always at least still a handful of songs I liked on the charts.
Useless chart trivia: “Goodbye Earl” fell off the charts so fast that “Cowboy Take Me Away” outlasted it. Then “Cold Day in July” almost did the same too, I think outlasting “Cowboy” by only two weeks. As far as I know, this is the only time a follow-up single fell off the charts before the single before it did.
Some of this is because back then, singles on their way down from the top were taken off the charts once they got to #25, and “Cowboy” just took FOREVER to fall off. (This was a problem that started as early as “Just to See You Smile.” But in 2001, when Billboard shrank the chart to 60 spaces, they changed the cutoff to #20, and eventually to #15 and #10, because big songs just kept refusing to drop.
“Goodbye Earl” and “Cowboy Take Me Away” have been the two hits that have endured the most from this album over the years. Under current chart rules, “Earl” likely would’ve been a multi week number one hit.
It was their first gold selling single and first top twenty crossover hit, which it accomplished without any crossover airplay. Like “Independence Day,” “Hurt,” “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” “Follow Your Arrow” and the Chicks’ own “Not Ready to Make Nice,” “Earl” was a career record that country radio whiffed on.
That’s one of the limitations of being an airplay only chart. I think they introduced streaming too early to the country charts because country audiences are slower to adapt to a new medium. But if they had brought back the sales component when singles became commercially available again, the country charts would’ve been much more reflective of what was popular with listeners at the time.
As much as I love this feature, the AirPlay only era of the country charts just measures what radio decided to play, not what listeners wanted to hear and buy. You’d never know that Johnny Cash was selling platinum again or that an old Time Bluegrass soundtrack was the most popular country record for a long stretch of time. You’d think that a platinum selling artist like Nickel Creek had failed at launch looking at the singles charts.