Dixie Chicks--sisters Martie Seidel and Emily Robison, and singer Natalie Maines--who have been on tour with their second major-label outing, Fly, spent part of the year simply demonstrating that they are not a flash in the pan.  With the video for their domestic-abuse revenge fantasy "Goodbye Earl," which starred NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz as the doomed abuser, they crossed over from country to a mainstream national form.  In other news, Maines met and married actor Adrian Pasdar, Seidel divorced, Robison went from blond to brunet, together their two records have sold more than 17 million copies, and their shows have been selling out in every market.

What's the best thing that happened to you this year?
    NATALIE: I got married and am having a baby.
Well, there's not much that's a bigger deal than that.  What's been your favorite purchase in the last year?
    EMILY: My favorite splurge purchase has been horses.  I have absolutely no idea how to handle horses, and I've become injured on a regular basis over the last couple of months that I've had them.  So that's my new challenge.
    MARTIE: I've avoided making purchases ass all, because my life is kind of up in the air right now.  The year was the Year of the Divorce for me.  And I just tried to kind of focus on the tour, and living on the bus, and not making any extravagant purchases.  But I've bought a couple neat vintage clothing pieces that I really like.  I bought a Pucci cress probably from the early Sixties, and it's really cute.  I wore it to meet the President of the United States last month.  It was his birthday, or a couple of days after his birthday, and he was opening presents with his family, and it was really neat that he invited us into the Oval Office to share in that.
Did he appreciate the Pucci dress?
    MARTIE: Emily said he was looking at my ass when I was walking out.
    EMILY: I caught him.
You also had a little controversy during the last year, with "Goodbye Earl."  It's sort of like an answer to Eminem, since he has a song about wife killing.
    NATALIE: Well . . . I think that music give you a way to stretch yourself any way you can and to tell someone a story, so he may be saying it in first person, but it may be about something else.
    EMILY: As far as I'm concerned, in country-music history there are so many songs about men shooting their girl in the head, or songs about violence toward women, and it's just kind of assumed that because it's a folklore style of writing, it's OK.  But when you flip it, and it's about a woman killing a man, there's all this hubbub.
    NATALIE: I'm more afraid of Kid Rock than I am of Eminem.  That Grammy performance scared the crap out of me.  I was literally fearful in the green room.  I didn't know a lot about him, and when that little midget come out . . . it scared me.