Goodbye Earl

"Goodbye Earl" has got to be the most lighthearted song ever made about domestic abuse and justified homicide. The song tells the story of a woman (Wanda) who sticks around her small town and marries Earl, who quickly turns abusive. When her friend Mary Ann finds out, she helps Wanda poison Earl's peas and get rid of the body. They aren't criminal masterminds but don't get caught because Earl was a missing person who nobody missed at all. The song has all the sass and humor you'd expect from The Chicks (known at the time as The Dixie Chicks), but the song was written by a guy: Dennis Linde, best known for writing the 1972 Elvis Presley hit "Burning Love." Linde had written several songs that included a character by the name of "Earl," most notably, "The Queen Of My Double Wide Trailer" by Sammy Kershaw. "Goodbye Earl" was an effort to kill off the "Earl" character. Linde also played acoustic guitar on the song.

Before The Chicks recorded this song, an all-male country group called Sons Of The Desert, best known for singing backup on Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance," discovered it and made it a staple of their live shows. According to that band, they recorded the song and were set to release it as a single, but their record label re-routed it to The Chicks, who included it on their 1999 album Fly and released it as a single the following year. Sons Of The Desert were signed to Epic Records and The Dixie Chicks were on Monument Records, both divisions of Sony. Sons Of The Desert ended up leaving Epic soon after.

According to the liner notes, the "iffy harmony" vocals on the song were performed by the "Do-Wrongs," comprising the song's two co-producers - Blake Chancey and Paul Worley - plus Chicks multi-instrumentalist Emily Robison's then husband, singer-songwriter Charlie Robison.