“Wide Open Spaces” by The Chicks

Amarillo songwriter Susan Gibson started "Wide Open Spaces" in 1993, the first time she came back from the University of Montana, where she'd gone off to study forestry. She forgot the notebook when she headed back to campus; her mother found it and slipped it into a care package, and that spurred Gibson to finish a song about striking out on your own, one she played in clubs around the university.

The Chicks, recording then as the Dixie Chicks, made it the title track of their 1998 album and its third single, and it went to number one on the US country chart for four weeks. Natalie Maines sings lead, Martie Maguire adds fiddle and mandolin, Emily Robison plays banjo, resonator and acoustic guitar, and Lloyd Maines lays on steel guitar, with Blake Chancey and Paul Worley producing.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.