Natalie Maines is a singer-songwriter who is best known as the lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, although she is also a solo performer in her own right. Maines is the daughter of near-legendary producer and multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Maines, one of the true architects of Americana music.

After high school, Maines attended several colleges, most notably the Berklee School of Music, where she earned a scholarship to pursue Voice Studies. However, Maines left before completing her degree, opting to pursue a professional career instead.

In 1995, after dropping out of Berklee, Maines was recruited by the Dixie Chicks to replace their lead singer, Laura Lynch. With Maines as lead vocalist, the band took off and earned 10 Country Music Association Awards and 13 Grammy Awards for their work between 1998 and 2007, at which point they took a hiatus.

Always outspoken on political and social justice issues, Maines got the Dixie Chicks into hot water in 2003 at a Dixie Chicks concert in England with comments she made about the Iraq war and then-president George W.

Bush. Her remarks caused a firestorm of controversy, and the Dixie Chicks were banned from being played on (largely conservative) country radio shortly thereafter. The Dixie Chicks were vindicated, however, when their 2006 album, Taking the Long Way, for which Maines wrote all the songs, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and sold over two million copies.

In 2020, after a 14-year-long break from releasing any studio albums, the Dixie Chicks released their next album, Gaslighter. In 2013, Maines released a solo album entitled Mother. This is Maines' first album since the Dixie Chicks hiatus started in 2007.

The album contains Maines' interpretation of several cover songs, including Pink Floyd's "Mother," Eddie Vedder's "Without You," and Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over." She also sings about motherhood, feminism, and painful relationships on the album.