Huge Scandals That Rocked Country Music

Country music's biggest stars are typically on their best behavior when they take to the stage for award galas like the CMA Awards or the ACMs, singing their big hits and chatting amiably on the red carpet. Yet scenes like that don't always tell the full story. As fans have discovered over the years, their favorite Nashville entertainers sometimes go off the rails and wind up in the pages of supermarket tabloids, waist-deep in scandal while their publicists craft sincere-sounding apologies.

The nature of those scandals have run the gamut, and have occasionally become quite sensational. Take Spade Cooley. A little-remembered name these days, Cooley was once heralded as the "King of Western Swing" until he was sent to prison murdering his wife in 1961.

Granted, country music scandals in recent years have tended to be considerably less homicidal. Yet scandals there have been, and plenty of them. From the years-long backlash endured by a popular female trio to a notorious onstage meltdown that caused a rift between the Grand Ole Opry and a Nashville icon, let's discover the huge scandals that rocked country music.

Shania Twain's personal and professional lives had been intertwined for years as she collaborated closely with husband Robert "Mutt" Lange, producer of her hit records. It all came crashing down in 2008, when People reported that Lange and Twain had separated. Rumor had it the split was sparked by his alleged affair with their personal assistant (and Twain's best friend), Marie-Anne Thiébaud.

Twain confirmed as much in her 2012 memoir, From This Moment On. When she learned the truth, Twain wrote, she was so devastated she felt "ready to die — to go to bed forever and never wake up." Seeking a shoulder to cry on, she bonded with her former friend's jilted husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, the other victim of their exes' betrayal.

The two grew close, and in 2010, Twain announced their engagement. "I'm in love!" she wrote in a message on her website (via People). "Frédéric Nicolas Thiébaud has been a true gift to me as a compassionate, understanding friend and over time, an amazing love has blossomed from this precious friendship." A few weeks later, People reported, they were married — resulting in the former couples effectively swapping partners.

Gretchen Wilson burst onto the country music scene with her 2004 single, "Redneck Woman," but it was more than a decade later that she wound up getting into a redneck-worthy brush with the law after a 2018 American Airlines flight. According to CNN, when the plane landed, Wilson was reportedly accosted by state troopers who attempted to interview her about her alleged involvement in "an altercation" during the flight.

That didn't go well. During the conversation, the Connecticut State Police told CNN, Wilson allegedly "became belligerent towards the troopers, and caused a disturbance." She was then apparently placed under arrest.

A few months later, Wilson addressed the incident in an interview with Taste of Country. She claimed that "the things that were reported were not at all on base, and actually there was no incident on an airplane." What did occur, Wilson explained, was that "there were some words between the state police and myself, and that's where all of that came from." The country music star insisted that "all of the things that you read online were not true about that," but wouldn't say more because she'd been "instructed not to speak about it."

Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, and Martie Maguire, collectively known as The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks), watched their career go down in flames after Texas native Maines shared her opinion of then-President George W. Bush during a 2003 concert in London. "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," she said, reported The Guardian.

While the British media barely batted an eye, back in the U.S. all hell broke loose. As Rolling Stone reported, radio stations yanked The Chicks' music from playlists — in fact, a Colorado station suspended two disc jockeys for ignoring the ban and playing their music. Meanwhile, the women received death threats. It got to the point, per Billboard, that hundreds of fans in Louisiana used a 33,000-pound tractor to destroy Chicks CDs and merchandise. Maines issued an apology/explanation, admitting her remarks were "disrespectful," but it did little to quell the backlash.

Public sentiment eventually shifted. As The New York Times noted, all seemed to be forgiven in 2007 when the group "swept all five of the Grammy categories in which it was nominated" — including album, song, and record of the year.

During the 1970s, bespectacled singer-songwriter John Denver became a ubiquitous presence on radio, straddling the country and folk-rock genres, but certainly wasn't categorized as a traditional country singer. 

That may have been behind an infamous incident that occurred at the 1975 CMA Awards, when silver-haired Nashville star Charlie Rich presented the award for entertainer of the year (since Rich was the previous year's winner, tradition dictated he present the award to that year's honoree). In video from the ceremony, Rich is seen onstage, fumbling with the envelope as he rips it open and examines the card with theatrical disgust. He drops the paper, picks it up, and then retrieves a lighter from his pocket and, with a smirk, proceeds to set it on fire. "My friend, Mr. John Denver," he drawls, glaring at the camera while holding the burning paper aloft.

Denver is then seen, grinning widely as he accepts the award via satellite from another location; a helpful onscreen graphic points out that Denver has "no clue what just happened." That little stunt, noted History, led Rich to be permanently blacklisted from the CMAs.

It's fair to say that 2012 was not a banner year for Randy Travis, given that he was arrested once for public drunkenness and again for allegedly driving under the influence. It was that second arrest, however, that really made headlines. As Associated Press reported (via CBC News), when state troopers arrived on the scene of his drunken crash, Travis was reportedly discovered "naked and combative" while threatening their lives.

Five years later, nearly three hours of police dash-cam footage was released, and it was wild. According to The Dallas Morning News, the nude singer initially appears to make a run for it, telling cops, "I'm as fine as damn dandy." In another part of the video, Travis reportedly tells a trooper, "I pray to God that he will have a cancerous growth that infects his bones and every part of his body." He also seemingly threatens that a trooper will be "a dead man in under 10 minutes."

Travis' failed lawsuit, attempting to block release of that footage, offered an excuse for the incident: He was "discombobulated after an extensive concert touring schedule," while a concussion he suffered during the crash "significantly affected his mental faculties."

George Jones was as legendary for his iconic country hits as he was for his hard-drinking, tumultuous personal life. His fondness for alcohol, in fact, resulted in his 1980 DUI arrest and led him to miss so many concerts he earned the nickname "No Show Jones."

Booze also played a part in one of Jones' most infamous moments, which he recounted in his autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All. According to the singer, he'd "been drunk for several days" when his wife, Shirley, "hid the keys" for every car they owned so it would be "physically impossible" for Jones to hit the road and buy some booze. 

"But she forgot about the lawn mower," Jones wrote. "I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat. A key glistening in the ignition." Given that the mower's "top speed was five miles per hour," it took Jones 90 minutes to make it to the liquor store, "but get there I did."

Willie Nelson has certainly had his share of controversial moments, from smoking a joint on the roof of the White House to that time the IRS seized his properties and slapped a $16.7 million lien on him for unpaid taxes.

In Nelson's 2012 autobiography, Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, Nelson revealed a shocking secret: he discovered he had a family he didn't know about, thanks to the unplanned pregnancy of his "old, dear friend, Mary Haney," who never told him he was a daddy. In a quote from the book published by the Express, Nelson wrote that he'd learned she'd "had a child together called Renee." He continued, "It also turns out Renee has a daughter, Noelle, who has a daughter, ­Jordan, who I am happy to now call my great-granddaughter."

According to Nelson, his only regret about his secret family "is that we didn't find out about all these female relatives for so long. I consider them as much a part of ­Willie Nelson and Family as I do my other children." Adding that the families had been discussing spending the holidays together, Nelson marveled, "Ain't that something?"