The Guardian has published a ranked countdown of the Chicks' 20 greatest songs to mark 20 years of their album Taking the Long Way.

The country trio, once known as the Dixie Chicks, built a catalogue the paper describes as "catchy, sometimes controversial" — a reference signaled in the ranking's headline, which name-checks George Bush, murder and nautical infidelity among the themes running through their work.

One entry highlighted in the piece is "If I Fall (You're Gonna Lose)", one of eight singles released from the album Fly. The Guardian's reviewer expresses amazement at the sheer number of singles drawn from one record, and equal astonishment at their consistency.

"If I Fall … is just great," the review states. The track is described as organ-driven rock "lent a Nashville twang by the fiddle", barreling along with the assurance of a band at the height of its powers — "rich with the confidence of a band who know they can't put a foot wrong."

Fly, the album that produced the single, dates from the group's commercial peak under their original name. The trio later became the Chicks, dropping "Dixie" in 2020, though the ranking frames its subject as a single continuous 20-year arc running through Taking the Long Way and beyond.

Taking the Long Way, the album at the center of the anniversary, was released in 2006 and arrived in the aftermath of the controversy that followed singer Natalie Maines's comments about President George Bush — an episode the countdown's headline explicitly invokes.

The full ranking, which counts down all 20 songs, is available on the Guardian's culture site. For listeners who came to the band through that record, the list doubles as a map of the deeper cuts scattered across their earlier, hit-dense albums.