Critic's Review
Hal Horowitz, All Music Guide
If anyone needed an example of how MTV has affected country music, look no further than this gaudy video documenting the Dixie Chicks' 2003 Top of the World tour. Instead of presenting one typical show, or even cherry picking songs from a variety of gigs, the producers decided to break every song into a mini-slide show of all the times it was played, slicing and dicing dozens of outfits, hairstyles, makeup changes and moves into every track. The result is a flashy, distracting mess, treating the music to the slick, choppy, lowest-common-denominator, short-attention-span depths of the most crass MTV videos. Since the audio on each song remains consistent, that must have proved a logistical nightmare for the video editors, but the ultimate effect cheapens the entire production. On the plus side, the viewer gets to experience the enormous, in-the-round stage and how effectively the Dixie Chicks use it to connect with their audience. The shots of the loving fans singing, dancing, and generally adoring the Chicks makes it seem that no males were allowed into these shows. The 5.1 surround audio is impressive and if you shut your eyes, musically this sounds fine. The large supporting band is excellent, and each of them gets enough screen time to show how they assist the trio to expand the group's sweep in the arenas the band plays. But the visuals are so distracting that it's difficult to concentrate on the songs, since no shot is held for more than a few seconds before shifting to a different show and a different flashy costume. It obviously took an enormous crew to present these shows nightly, and they are all listed in the DVD's credits, right down to every guitar tech, truck driver, and even the confetti operator. The double-CD (audio) version of this tour includes four more songs missing from the DVD, oddly including the "Top of the World" title track that appears here only as an extra video in its studio version.
