Thriller

When Michael Jackson sang "Leave Me Alone," a song about how hard it is to be a millionaire freak show, he was adding a voice of warning to his face of warning. But the eternal principles and consequences he was elucidating, and to which only he cannot fall victim, went unheeded. Except by me--irrelevant because I don't have a career to kill.
Hence, when the new Dixie Chicks new album came out, it sent chills down my spine to notice the undeniable fact that the singer looked like a blonde Michael Jackson . Not the scary one of today, the relatively normal looking one from the Thriller video. She has the same eye make up, and is apparently wearing the same prosthetics. Mostly it was just creepy and I feared she may be lurking in the dark recesses of my basement. But there was more to it than that--much more.

It was more proof that the charismatic controversial Chicks from Dixie are on their way out. The first sign a band is finished is when they start singing about what it's like to be a rock star. How hard it is to be on the road. Or how their ideas need to be taken seriously. ETC. It killed Journey. It finished the Squirrel Nut Zippers. It almost put Kid Rock out to pasture. It kills Morrissey repeatedly, but he valiantly rises from his own ashes and remembers that a music icon singing about his career as a music icon is a short, dead-end alley. (Rappers are exempt because from the off all they ever talk about is how great they are anyway. In fact, as they exception that proves the rule, you might have noticed how they fade away when they stop talkin' 'bout all they bling, and how all the suckah MC's go runnin' when they on the mic.)
I don't have a problem with the Chicks personally, or even politically. (They are less than irrelevant on both counts, so why bother considering, much less objecting?) I'm not saying they SHOULD go away. And I'm definitely not saying that I yearn for the halcyon days when their borderline intelligence, sub-teenage take on vigilante justice lit up the airwaves with country cross-over frenzy. Maybe Earl did have to die. It isn't for me to say. This is about sympathy for three girls who, without pseudo-country music, would be neither pretty enough nor smart enough to make their way in this big crazy world. Someone should have told them: "Don't release that song about how tough it has been to be you. Don't let the sun set on your short career! Stick to dishing out Stevie Nicks' table scraps! Or go back to singing about Earl before your career has to die!"
But nobody told them. And now, as if to confirm the prophecy of doom, on the very cover of their CD, the singer looks like Michael Jackson in the Thriller video. Nobody who resembles Jacko in any way can be long for this world. The dark voodoo technology required to keep him and his career alive cannot be replicated.

Nothing can save them now. But perhaps their chapter in the chronicles of fading limelight will serve to warn the next generation of (vaguely) talented, cross-over(trailor) trash (talking) dissidents.