50 Greatest Hits Is The Best There Is For Reba McEntire Fans (For Now)!

The Good: Duration, Vocals, Generally good mix of songs
The Bad: Instrumental accompaniment evolves into something unpleasantly poppy.
The Basics: A strong collection of music performed by Reba McEntire, 50 Greatest Hits is more hampered by problems of the genre than anything McEntire does or doesn't do.


Today, I shall try to put to rest the idea that I simply loathe McEntire's works - my last few compilation reviews have been fairly strong pannings - by reviewing the largest Reba McEntire anthology, 50 Greatest Hits.

50 Greatest Hits is a far better value than many of the more limited-content single disc sets as this provides the closest thing to a career retrospective that currently exists for Reba McEntire. Given that she continues to chart singles, one imagines someday there will be a 75 Greatest Hits or 100 Hits boxed set, but until then, this remains the definitive album anthology for fans of Reba McEntire. Truth be told, those looking for something by Reba McEntire need look no further than this set; having listened to almost all of her albums, no songs stood out as being noticeably lacking from this collection (save her latest, which was made after this was released).

Spanning three discs, 50 Greatest Hits is true to its word with fifty songs, none of which are unique to this anthology. With over three hours of music, this might seem to be an exceptional body of McEntire's creative vision, but the truth is, it is more an anthology of her career. The difference is that McEntire's creative vision is exceptionally limited and does not seem to be much of a Country music legacy. While the one song she wrote, "Only In My Mind" has an arguably Country undertone (it's light pop/Country), discs two and three illustrate a strong motion toward straightforward pop with pop-rock undertones. At least early in her career, McEntire was performing Country-gospel and Country-pop songs.

Sadly, "perform" is the correct word here as Reba McEntire's artistic influence is minimal, as exemplified by her fifty greatest hits. McEntire wrote only one of the songs and she was not even involved with co-writing any of the others. McEntire also is uninvolved with playing any musical instruments and it is only as her career progressed more toward straightforward pop and pop-rock that she took on the duties of co-producing her songs. She is, however, the primary vocalist on all of the tracks, save four duets, which were something she did more of when she became established as the reigning diva of Country (say what you will about Shania Twain's sales, she did not have the endurance of Reba McEntire!). As a result, McEntire's career has largely been performing the songs of others and making the words famous through her.

She has succeeded largely on the strength of her voice. McEntire is one of the few female vocalists who seems quite content to perform in the alto register. This gives her songs a greater sense of sass and spunk, which is probably how she got pigeonholed into Country so quickly (her earliest works actually sound pretty Gospel). As well as performing lower than most female vocalists, Reba McEntire has amazing vocal control. On songs like "Whoever's In New England" and "And Still," McEntire exhibits an uncommon ability to hold notes and make them sound melodic and longing. Indeed, in today's youth-crazed, production-happy music industry, it seems rare to find a performer who has such lung capacity and diaphragm strength to actually hold notes and keep them sounding melodic. McEntire, however, can and does.

As well, Reba McEntire on 50 Greatest Hits proves her ability to sing fast and articulately. Songs like "Fancy" and "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" include faster portions where the words are packed in. On those songs, McEntire not only keeps up, she makes them sound perfectly clear and good. As McEntire's career on this album progresses, she moves from being a Country vocalist ("Little Rock" sounds entirely pop from the keyboard accompaniment, but McEntire's vocals have twang and drawl which get the song considered Country) to one who might as well be pop. McEntire takes on a Diane Warren song ("I'll Be") and a duet with Kelly Clarkson ("Because Of You") and she removes from her voice any sense that she has a Southern or Western American accent. Instead, her vocals sound like those of a mainstream pop artist.

The overall sound of the album(s) is what evolves and, unfortunately, it is more a work that followed or foreshadowed the move from Country to Country-pop. McEntire's earliest songs employ the fiddle and the steel guitar. But that sound moves more toward keyboards and electric guitars as her singles progress and her voice loses is twang. By the time the last few songs play, listeners would be hard pressed to determine what the difference is between a Reba McEntire "Country" song and an early-90s pop song. Country, arguably, is pop ten years too late, if 50 Greatest Hits were to define it! That said, when McEntire's backings are instruments like the electric guitars on "Fancy" and the programmed string sound on "He Gets That From Me," she holds her own and the highlights of the songs tend to be her vocals, which sound far more natural by contrast.

Lyrically, it is hard to compliment or condemn McEntire for much that is on the album. Given that she wrote so little of it herself, it is hard to complain when the lyrics are stale ("Falling Out Of Love") or passe ("The Heart Won't Lie"). Largely, the songs on 50 Greatest Hits are relationship songs. They are songs about love ("Sunday Kind Of Love," "Forever Love"), longing ("The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter," "The Fear Of Being Alone") and loss ("For My Broken Heart," "The Greatest Man I Never Knew"). She does mix it up with songs about HIV/AIDS ("She Thinks His Name Was John") and social change in the family ("What Do You Say"). But largely, the songs are about relationships and how they fall apart or meet the challenges that come their way. I suppose, in some ways, Reba McEntire's songs are the traditional Country "my husband left me, my truck got stuck in the mud, my dog died" kind of songs, but she makes them sound good.

Ultimately, this is the one Reba McEntire collection that anyone who likes Country or pop music will want because it has all of the best, without the filler. The best songs are "One Promise Too Late" (Disc 1), "Fancy" (Disc 2), and "What If It's You" (Disc 3). The low points are "How Blue" (Disc 1), "Take It Back" (Disc 2) and "Somebody" (Disc 3).

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Reba McEntire
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
If You See Him
So Good Together
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection - The Best Of Reba McEntire
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba
Reba #1's
Duets

9/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Reba Duets Is Very Average Background Country-Pop Music

The Good: Good vocals, Generally decent song selection
The Bad: Overproduced instrumental accompaniment, Short
The Basics: A very average album, Duets has Reba McEntire beating her pop-rock sound into the ground with other vocalists assisting.


There is something exciting (at least for me) about going through a musical artist's repertoire and discovering what all the hype about an artist or performer is all about, especially when that performer is outside the type of music I traditionally listen to. Reba McEntire is a favorite of my partner and I'm almost sorry that my immersion in Reba McEntire's works has led her to want a few months away from even hearing the name Reba McEntire. On the plus side, as I near the bottom of the pile of c.d.s I got in for the month to review, I have become quite convinced that while Reba McEntire might be extraordinarily popular, most listeners will do fine just by picking up some of her compilations. I mention this at the outset of my review of Duets because when I put the disc in for the first listen, I expected it to be an amazing departure from McEntire's usual fare. Truth be told, it is not.

By this point in Reba McEntire's career, two and a third years ago now, McEntire had very effectively crossed over to pop music and Duets reflects that with some of her choice of duet partners, like Kelly Clarkson and Justin Timberlake. While McEntire is sure to keep the roster packed with Country music stars, like Ronnie Dunn, Rascal Flatts, Trisha Yearwood, Kenny Chesney, Vince Gill and Faith Hill, the song selection is not firmly Country. In fact, most of the instrumental accompaniment is a more generic form of pop-rock than it is Country. Songs like the duet with Faith Hill, "Sleeping With The Telephone" sound more like a duet between the likes of Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion than Patsy Cline and Rosanne Cash. The more I listened to the album, the more the songs blended together as a form of indistinct musical mash that is best analogized to light radio play one hears inoffensively piping through the supermarket. Despite the overly choreographed and obvious dramatic crescendos, Duets is largely quiet and unimpressive and the vocals are too often in competition with the overproduced instrumental accompaniment.

With only eleven songs occupying 44:19, Duets is a very collaborative work and I found it ironic that there are other artists or performers who seem to have at least as much creative influence (if not more) on the album than McEntire herself does. So, for example, several of the performers co-wrote the song they appear on the album on, but McEntire only co-wrote "Does The Wind Still Blow In Oklahoma?" On "The Only Promise That Remains," Justin Timberlake co-wrote the song, performs vocals with McEntire and is credited with producing the track. McEntire's lone co-writing credit is not all she does on Duets, though, as she provides the lead vocals on all eleven songs. And while she does not play any musical instruments, she is one of four producers on the album, so this does seem to be her musical vision which is represented.

Unfortunately, that musical vision is remarkably bland. Far from being a series of true duets, several of the songs are simply Reba McEntire performing with notable backing vocalists. In the case of "The Only Promise That Remains," it is actually surprising that McEntire managed to woo Timberlake to the project considering how little vocals force he is given in the final product. The songs - which are annoyingly not included on the back of the c.d., only who the guest performer is on each track - include very poppy duets with Kelly Clarkson in a rehashing of her song "Because Of You." "Because Of You," which had pretty decent crossover success, illustrates well the lack of imagination present on Duets. The song does not offer a reinterpretation of Clarkson's original song. Instead, it is McEntire covering it with Clarkson and the instrumental accompaniment sounds identical. In other words, it sounds like McEntire and Clarkson are doing karaoke!

Instrumentally, the album is predictable, bland and remarkably uninspired. Dominated almost entirely by guitars, Duets frequently had the vocalists competing with an overbearing string section that seems content to try to drown out the vocalists. Even the piano-driven "Everyday People" has Carole King and Reba trying to sing louder than whomever is banging out the accompaniment on the piano. Only the real mellow guitars on "Every Other Weekend" does not offer real potential to bury the vocals of the leads. Even on that song, though, the drums are so loud and obvious in an overproduced rock-ballad way that the instrumental accompaniment has moments when it is just plain annoying.

As for the vocals, because this is what the album is trading on, they are erratic at best, depending upon the guest vocalist with Reba McEntire. McEntire's vocals are clear and crisp on songs like "Does The Wind Still Blow In Oklahoma." In fact, McEntire and Dunn play off one another's vocals well with Dunn's raspy drawl contrasting nicely with McEntire's clear alto articulations. Sadly, though, McEntire's voice sounds produced and touched up on songs like "Because Of You" and "Sleeping With The Telephone." What's worse, is that Duets seems to bring out a competitive aspect of McEntire that I've not heard on any of her other albums. When she is the dominant vocalist, she performs in her predictable and standard alto vocals, which she also does while performing duets with Don Henley ("Break Each Others Hearts Again") and Vince Gill ("These Broken Hearts").

But on songs where McEntire is paired with a performer who can perform in the soprano range, the melodies degenerate into ridiculous screech-offs. This is notably the case on "When You Love Someone Like That" (with LeAnn Rimes) and "Sleeping With The Telephone" (with Faith Hill). McEntire insists on trying to go as high as her counterparts (oddly, something she never does when paired with Linda Davis on any of her other albums). And yet, as both of those songs above reach for their emotional climax, McEntire gives her best to keep up and the result is unfortunate and momentarily amelodic for the otherwise awesome performer.

Thematically, Duets is a fairly diverse album, though most of the songs do center around love, loss or loneliness. The closest to Country the album gets is with the duet with Ronnie Dunn. That storysong actually has the two singing to their father (in Reba's case) and mother (in Dunn's case) as musical protagonists who have met in Los Angeles while both are pining for the country. A pretty obvious pandering to the Country music audience with lines like "Out here it's all freeways, fast cars / And cold concrete / You won't believe all the crazy people / Valley girls and sunset freaks / I met a girl you're gonna like her mama / She has your hair / Red as the Tallequah sunset / Sings like an angel I swear / I can't say I don't get lonesome / But I'm alright / Cowboys kinda go with homesick / like blue moons and whippoorwill nights / But does the wind still blow in Oklahoma / Out here the Hollywood stars sure shine bright" ("Does The Wind Still Blow In Oklahoma") the song works because it sounds Country and the vocalists play the song out quite well.

Other songs vary greatly: "Because Of You" is lyrically a great song about a woman finding strength to leave an abusive situation (which, alas, the video does not capture) and "Everyday People" is an anthem celebrating community service. "Sleeping With The Telephone" is a longing track with a musical protagonist waiting on her soldier partner to call from a war zone. Even "Every Other Weekend" is a decent song about being divorced with children. But while these songs tell interesting musical stories, songs like "Faith In Love" are so lyrically generic as to be utterly forgettable. Even "These Broken Hearts," fails to energize the ear of the listener because it doesn't make a statement that is particularly compelling.

The saddest moment of the album comes at the climax and by "sad," I do not refer to the emotional resonance. No, at the peak of the album, Reba McEntire performs "Break Each Others Hearts Again" with Don Henley. Thematically, this is almost identical to Henley's duet with Stevie Nicks from the '80's, "Leather & Lace." Here, the seasoned listener gets to feeling like they are being jerked around auditorily or that McEntire had no idea what else to do with Henley.

Ultimately, this album is average-at-best and it is unremarkable pop-Country that most listeners will be able to pass by without feeling like they are missing out on anything. The best track is "Every Other Weekend," the low point is "These Broken Hearts."


For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Reba McEntire
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
If You See Him
So Good Together
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection - The Best Of Reba McEntire
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba
Reba #1's

5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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A Decent Collection, But The 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: Reba Isn't The Best.

The Good: Representative of a good chunk of McEntire's career, Great vocals
The Bad: Short, Largely incomplete.
The Basics: A fairly obvious cashgrab that bridges two other anthologies, the 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: The Best Of Reba McEntire is an anemic collection of Reba's 25-year career.


As I finish my immersion in the works of Reba McEntire, I feel generally pleased that I am done essentially beating a dead horse. While I have two final anthologies to review, my review on the 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: The Best Of Reba McEntire will actually be surprisingly truncated for one of my reviews. The reasons for this are very simple: the album is short, it is a compilation (so there are no new songs on it) and there is a virtually identical, but vastly superior compilation on the market that is easily available. So, while 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: The Best Of Reba McEntire might be great when you're in a gas station, see it for a buck and want something to cross the country listening to, for those looking to build a permanent collection with a decent selection of Reba McEntire music, this album surprisingly falls drastically short.

The concept behind the 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection was a simple one: to collect the best works from the best artists and performers of the 20th century and offer them affordably to the masses. The concept seemed to be striving for the definitive songs of each performer or artist and in that regard, it is even hard to complain about the "Reba McEntire" addition to the collection. But when the album was released, McEntire had over twenty albums on the market and to have that career reduced to a dozen songs seems somewhere between pointless and disrespectful. Truth be told, even as one who has listened to almost all of McEntire's works now, I'm not sure necessarily what songs I would add to 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: The Best Of Reba McEntire, but I do know that I would not have included the pop-ballad "Falling Out Of Love," which has McEntire sounding more like Streisand than herself.

With a dozen songs, occupying 46:10, 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: The Best Of Reba McEntire is hardly the creative embodiment of Reba McEntire. McEntire did write the superlative song on the album, "Only In My Mind," but was not involved in even co-writing any of the other songs. McEntire does not play any musical instruments, so all of the instrumental accompaniment comes from accompanists and McEntire is a co-producer of only about half the songs. Still, this does show Reba McEntire's transition from a traditional Country performer to a pop-Country superstar.

But, outside the writing of one song, all McEntire can truly take credit for is choosing the songs she performs - which she can do entirely independently now as she has that level of stardom where the record company does not dictate content to her - and for the vocals. On that latter front, Reba McEntire has an exceptional alto voice. On "Falling Out Of Love," she has exceptional lung capacity which is illustrated by the way she holds her notes for a long time, with a very pure and beautiful delivery. On "Fancy," she sings fast and articulate and the result is a Country classic which is dark, but danceable. And McEntire does slow and soulful exceptionally well on "(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven" and "I'm Not That Lonely Yet."

The thing is, McEntire is an able performer, but her interpretations are fairly unimaginative. Take, for example, her rendition of "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia." That song is one I've heard performed by several folk artists and performers and her version is a remarkably similar one to every other version I have heard. In other words, Reba McEntire performs it as if she is performing an old favorite to a group who doesn't want to hear anything new or different. She gives a very "literal" presentation and while she is articulate and has a good storyteller's voice for singing the musical story-song, she doesn't add any flavor that is distinctly hers. This is pretty much the same song that every other folk/Country performer has sung since it was written.

As far as the instrumental accompaniment, McEntire's career is characterized as something of an exploration of the transition of Country music. Starting with the Classic Country (with almost a Gospel flavor) rendition of "(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven," which has organ and piano sublimated to McEntire's vocals, the album slowly makes the transition to the light string and steel guitar dominated Country sound on songs like "Only In My Mind" and "Let The Music Lift Me Up." But following the electric guitar-dominated "Fancy," the songs become increasingly poppy. With "What If It's You," McEntire's sound is keyboard driven with only the perfunctory presence of the steel guitar to keep up the pretense of being a Country performer. It sounds like mid-90s pop, as does "I'll Be." The departure might be what happened to the entire genre, but the song "I'll Be" sounds like a Disney soundtrack pop number and fans of Country are likely to be a bit disappointed by the way McEntire's career here focuses more on her later, pop-driven works.

As for fans of Reba McEntire, one suspects they, too, will be generally disappointed in this album as it reduces twenty-five years of steady musical production down to a dozen songs, many of which are not even the most successful ones McEntire ever released. That said, what truly drives 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection: The Best Of Reba McEntire down is the fact that its content is almost entirely duplicated on the massive fan-favorite boxed set 50 Greatest Hits. That anthology includes almost all of McEntire's #1 hits as well as other Top 10 hits that fans and McEntire believe are her best works. Only the first two tracks from this album are missing from that anthology and as a result, most fans will be happy to lose those two songs and get forty more.

The best songs are "Only In My Mind" and "Fancy," I'm not fond of "I'll Be."

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Reba McEntire
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
If You See Him
So Good Together
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba
Reba #1's

4/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Reba McEntire’s Country-Gospel-Pop Start Started With Reba McEntire.

The Good: Decent vocals, Good overall sound
The Bad: Short, Soft, Somewhat monotonous upon multiple replays.
The Basics: A decent start to her career, Reba McEntire presents a short collection of Country-Gospel-Pop covers which illustrate her great voice, if not much originality.


As my immersion in the music of Reba McEntire continues, I have finally worked my way back to the beginning and I’ve discovered the classic Country sound that made Reba McEntire into the superstar she became. And, while it is a genre I prefer to the Country-pop that Country has more recently evolved into (and that Reba McEntire has been a part of), listening to Reba McEntire on high replay has left me feeling very neutral to the genre. Actually, that’s not entirely true. With every repetition of Reba McEntire, I come to feel more and more like I am trapped in a nursing home hell. The reason for this is simple enough. For some reason, I am associating the sleepy instrumental accompaniment, the inoffensive lyrics and soaring vocals (but not energizing!) of Reba McEntire on her debut with elevator music and music that plays are nursing home lobbies when my grandmother was in assisted living facilities.

This might not seem to be a very fair assessment of Reba McEntire, but the album does have a narcoleptic quality to it, especially on heavy replay. In fact, the only energetic-sounding song is the one that thematically I have the most problem with. Outside “(There’s Nothing Like The Love) Between A Woman And A Man,” Reba McEntire is comprised of slow, soulful ballads with a mild Country-gospel edge to them, up to an including a slower, surprisingly sensual cover of “Right Time Of The Night.” Despite being somewhat sleepy and monotonous, I did find there was enough on the album that was enjoyable enough to (softly) recommend the album.

With eleven songs occupying only thirty-one and a half minutes, Reba McEntire is hardly the creative work of the title performer. Instead of being a rich collection of musical statements the performer wished to make, this eponymous album is entirely written by others. McEntire did not even co-write any of the songs, so this is a collection of Country, Gospel and pop standards performed by Reba McEntire in a Country-gospel musical tradition. McEntire does not play any of the instruments on the album, either. Nor is she involved in the production of Reba McEntire. As a result, it is very hard to say that this is the musical vision of Reba McEntire in any way.

Instrumentally, Reba McEntire is a very classic Country album. The album is dominated by the piano and a string section. While a few songs have the steel guitar and fiddles, the sound is more dominated by classic orchestration, like the traveling Country road shows during the Depression (maybe that’s where I’m getting the whole “nursing home” vibe from the album). Instrumentally, there is little differentiation between the songs and almost all of the music on this album is slow and string-driven. The notable exception is “(There’s Nothing Like The Love) Between A Woman And A Man” which is a bit more upbeat and includes more pounding on the piano keys than any of the other tracks. It also includes backing vocalists who use handclaps for percussion, so it has a more Gospel feeling than the rest of the album. The rest of the album is more contemplative than danceable and the songs do blend together quite a bit.

Vocally, Reba McEntire establishes Reba McEntire as one of the more original vocalists of contemporary music. A contralto, Reba McEntire does not sing attempting to dominate the upper vocal registers and as a result, her songs sound like they have more sass to them, like “Invitation To The Blues,” where she sounds both soulful and melancholy because the song is presented in the lower registers of her vocal range. She has a beautiful range on “I’ve Waited All My Life For You,” but more often than attempting to show off her range, she keeps within the conservative alto range, but illustrates great lung capacity in holding ballad notes to make a truly passionate sound.

Even so, thematically, Reba McEntire plays very much to the Country music conservative base on this album. This is most obvious on “(There’s Nothing Like The Love) Between A Woman And A Man” where she sings “Some folks say that a mother's love is sweeter than the rest / When her baby's nestled in her arms and feeding at her breast / But I can't explain the feeling when you reach and touch my hand / Because there's nothing like the love between and woman and a man / It's a miracle from heaven / That it fills me through and through / Like a feeling that surrounds us / Touching me touching you / When you wrap your love around me it's not hard to understand / Why there's nothing like the love between and woman and a man.” This, personally, conflicts with my view that there’s nothing like the love between two women, but that sentiment does not play so well to the overt assertions of the target demographic. Even so, most of the songs are about love or the loss of love in a very traditional male/female way.

Even so, the traditional message takes a few interesting turns, most notably on the story-song “Angel In Your Arms.” On that song, Reba McEntire sings about infidelity with a little bit of a twist. The lines “When I first found out I hurt all over / I felt so left out till I got to know her / So I drived away as she got over / And I became just like her / So don't be surprised to find that / The angel in your arms this morning / Is gonna be the devil in someone else's arms tonight” (“Angel In Your Arms”) are more vengeful than forgiving or even passionately emotive. Instead, the song is a turn-the-tables Country song and I would not be surprised if it were one of the more popular early songs by Reba McEntire.

Part of what makes me so neutral to the album is that the rhymes are hardly original or even particularly interesting on many of the songs. Rhymes like “Take your love and hide away / Take my word that nothing but heartaches will follow if you stay / Take your love and leave me now / Take a look there's nothing to keep you from breaking me down” (“Take Your Love Away”) are predictable and replay of them is a bit monotonous. The result is that the album has moments that are a bit boring to the ear, even with songs like “I Don’t Want To Be A One Night Stand,” which sounds like McEntire is channeling The Bee-Gees.

Even so, Reba McEntire is a promising-enough debut for the performer that it is easy to see how and why Reba McEntire’s career has endured and grown as a result. Hopefully, as c.d.s and HD-CDs get reworked, this will stay in the marketplace paired up with her sophomore endeavor to give listeners more value for their money.

The best song is “Right Time Of The Night,” the low point is the boring “One To One.”

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
If You See Him
So Good Together
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba
Reba #1’s

6/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Why Reba #1's Can Be Passed By (Easily!)

The Good: Good vocals, Decent duration
The Bad: Instrumental accompaniment becomes very bland, Virtually identical to a subsequent compilation!
The Basics: A disappointing musical anthology, Reba #1's might have been fine at the time, but now lives in the shadows of the nearly identical (but superior) 50 Greatest Hits.


As my study of Reba McEntire's music came to an end, I found myself mired in a few final compilation albums. The first one is Reba #1's and it is a two-disc set that I will probably not muster up a lot of energy to bother writing about. The reason is simple: even before my first listen, I had serious doubts that I would recommend the album. Instead, because the two collections came in at the same time, I marveled at the similarities between Reba #1's and 50 Greatest Hits by Reba McEntire. Reba #1's is a thirty-five track collection, spread out over two compact discs, whereas 50 Greatest Hits, as the name suggests, has fifty songs, on three c.d.s. And while Reba #1's was produced with the speculation that McEntire's magic would work on the two new singles (it didn't), 50 Greatest Hits is true to its word with #1 chart toppers as well as fan-favorite songs. Heck, #1's doesn't even have ìFancy!î

Reba #1's is a career-retrospective, at least up until 2005. The two-disc set is designed to represent the chart-topping Reba McEntire songs that made her a superstar and it is adequate in that regard. But for those looking for this type of career retrospective, 50 Greatest Hits, which came out only two years later, continues to offer a more enduring value in that it is a more complete collection of Reba McEntire songs. All Reba's #1's offers that the other collection does not have are four songs: the two new tracks, "You're Gonna Be" and "Love Needs A Holiday" and McEntire's first two Country #1's from the early 1980s, "Can't Even Get The Blues" and "You're The First Time I Thought About Leaving." Most fans of Reba McEntire, as well as scholars of her works, will find the two new songs may easily be passed by and the other two would willingly be traded for the extra disc in 50 Greatest Hits.

With just over two hours of songs on the two discs, Reba #1's is a good example of Reba McEntire's commercial works as well as the methods she used to catapult herself to stardom. A performer primarily, McEntire was not involved in writing any of her hit songs from this collection. Instead, she is the primary vocalist on all of them - though she does share that duty with Vince Gill on "The Heart Won't Lie" and Linda Davis on "Does He Love You." She does not play any of the instruments on the album and she is a co-producer of her later songs, but not her earlier ones. Reba #1's features the studio album cuts of all thirty-three of her #1 charting hits, along with the two new tracks.

For those who have not heard Reba McEntire's music - or read any of my reviews of her albums - McEntire's career developed from a classic Country/Gospel tradition into the pop-Country songs that became popular in the mid to late 1990s. As such, songs like "Can't Even Get the Blues" and "You're the First Time I've Thought About Leaving" have a Patsy Cline vibe to them with slower vocals and very mild instrumental accompaniment, but later hits like "The Fear Of Being Alone" and "I'm A Survivor" are more up-tempo, electric guitar driven and have little differentiation from pop-rock songs only a decade prior. The instrumental accompaniment varies from the Country pedal steel and fiddles to later keyboards and electric guitars. Indeed, the string and keyboard-driven ballad "Forever Love" sounds more like a Celine Dion song with the instrumental accompaniment than even a Shania Twain (whose sound was hardly Country at all!).

Vocally, Reba McEntire's number ones casts McEntire as a vocal performer, as one might suspect. The instrumental accompaniment, save on the bridges of songs like "If You See Him / If You See Her," is seldom boisterous enough to drown out McEntire. Instead, McEntire sings her lyrics clearly and strongly and in the alto register. She is one of the few vocalists who works in the alto register and for her number one hits, she tends to stay very safe within that range. But what McEntire might appear to lack in range, she more than makes up for in other attributes. She sings with spunk on "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter," with clarity despite the speed on "Little Rock" and with heartwrenching soul on "The Greatest Man I Never Knew."

But fans can easily pass this one by because the two new songs are hardly McEntire's greatest vocal or lyrical outings. While McEntire is a gifted vocalist for most musical storysongs, the limited rhymes like "Sometimes I'll protect you from everything that's wrong / Other times I'll let you just find out on your own / But that's when you'll be growin', / And the whole time I'll be knowin . . .Sometimes life's not fair, but if you hang in there / You're gonna see that sometimes bad is good / We just have to believe things work out like they should / Life has no guarantees, but always loved by me / You're gonna be" ("You're Gonna Be") are not redeemed even by her voice. Instead, the song has a singsong rhyme scheme that makes it unsurprising it did not rise to the top of any chart. Still, it is decent that McEntire sings about things other than simply love and loss.

And yet, for her other unique-to-this-album song, "Love Needs A Holiday," she goes with a little of both of those. The only decent aspect of "Love Needs A Holiday" is the unabashed, adult, sexuality of the song. With lyrics like "He hung up the DO NOT DISTURB / To shut out the rest of the world / 48 hours of just him and her / You can't get this at home / She pulled the covers back and / He said, 'Yeah I'm in to that'" ("Love Needs A Holiday") there is some fun to the track. But it's also not of the caliber most fans expect from Reba McEntire.

That said, the two-disc Reba #1's is not a bad album, but I'm going with the idea that this is one to avoid. Avoid it. Go for the more complete collection: the four you five up from this are replaced with some of McEntire's absolute best songs, even if they did not rise to #1!

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
If You See Him
So Good Together
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba

3/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page.

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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All Isn't Right In The Heartland: So Good Together Is A Depressing Reba McEntire Album.

The Good: Good vocals, Decent sound (if monotonous and overproduced), Thematically unified
The Bad: Short, Depressing, Overproduced
The Basics: Wholly depressing, but not disappointing, album, Reba McEntire makes a collection of songs about loss with So Good Together.


Having listened to the bulk of Reba McEntire's albums, I feel quite confident in saying that if one was going to take their life to a Reba McEntire album, So Good Together is the one to do it by. This may seem a strange opening, especially for an album that sounds so upbeat, but after nine listens to this album, I'm pretty much ready to kill myself. So Good Together is a deceptive album in that it sounds like it is uptempo and fun, but lyrically, this is a terribly depressing album. In fact, this is almost monotonously depressing in its content and listeners are likely to come away from this album wanting to do pretty much anything but go to a Reba McEntire concert.

Thematically, So Good Together is unified by songs that are generally about death, divorce, abandonment and heartbreak. And if it weren't for the fact that the album comes together so well and is so wholly depressing, this would be an easy album to pan. But for those looking for an album to either put them into a dismal mood or to keep them in one, this is a great Country-pop album to do that with.

With twelve songs taking up 46:37, So Good Together is a shockingly depressing choice of songs performed by Reba McEntire. McEntire did not write any of the songs and she is credited as one of four co-producers on the album. So how much creative control or influence she had over the ultimate album is up in the air. Even so, McEntire performs all of the lead vocals - though "We're All Alone" is a duet with Josey y Durval - and she was responsible for choosing all of the songs on the album. As per her usual, McEntire does not play any of the musical instruments on the album. Still, this does appear to be the collection if musical statements McEntire wanted to make, even if it is wholly depressing.

Instrumentally, So Good Together sounds like a very traditional pop-rock album. The album is dominated by guitars, keyboards and percussion and is one of McEntire's louder, more produced outings. Songs like "Where You End And I Begin" only sound remotely "Country" from the vocals of Reba McEntire. For the rest of the album, it is almost surprising that So Good Together wasn't a huge crossover success for McEntire. Songs like "I'll Be" and "She Wasn't Good Enough For Him" sound like pop songs with their keyboards, drums and (in the latter case) mellow, ballad sound. Even the songs that employ the steel guitar, as "Nobody Dies From A Broken Heart" seems to, do not sound particularly less like pop-rock than Country. In fact, So Good Together is the first Reba McEntire album I've found where the instrumentation includes "guitar overdub." This, no doubt, is a production element or sample and it fits the overall sound of the album as this is a very produced album.

Sadly, this goes for the vocals of Reba McEntire as well. McEntire sounds like any number of other artists (Gloria Estefan on "We're All Alone," for example) and while some of the songs have something that might pass for spunk, there is none of McEntire's trademark twang on any of her vocals. She exhibits exceptional lung capacity on songs like "We're All Alone," but for the most part, she spends the album safely in her alto register. Even so, because the lyrics on So Good Together are so important, McEntire's vocals are presented with crystal clarity and given how depressing the songs are, it's hard to decide whether or not that's a good thing. I'd have to say it is because as the vocalist, McEntire has something to say and she's the one responsible for making sure her message gets across.

But So Good Together is almost homogeneously depressing. McEntire sings with heartfelt passion about divorce on "Back Before The War." On that song, she poetically sings "Stacks of paper, my name in bold print / Yours right besides it on this document / Too many lawyers, too many angry words / So much we didn't say, so much we never heard / Do you remember / When I was all that you were living for / Back before the war / Back before the broken vows / The shattered trust, this empty house / When nothing really mattered but us / Back before we climbed too high / My dreams were yours, your dreams were mine" ("Back Before The War") and anyone who has ever gone through a divorce knows exactly what she's talking about. McEntire is a convincing musical narrator on the song and she makes the song appropriately painful and difficult.

Actually, what is most impressive about So Good Together is that the songs are complicated, in one form or another. While songs like "We're So Good Together" might sound noisy with their overproduced instrumentals for the guitars and drums, other songs are far more poignant and piercing. In fact, McEntire is vocally penetrating with her musical storysong "What Do You Say." With lines like "Seventeen years old / She was out with her friends / They started drinking at some party / Till she was three sheets to the wind / Her momma always told her she could call no matter what / She was crying on the front steps / When her mom showed up / So what do you say in a moment like this" ("What Do You Say") McEntire poses questions that do not have necessarily easy answers and makes them musical!

But for those are looking for cheerful, So Good Together isn't the album. Even the closest to a genuine love song, "'Til I Said It To You" is thoroughly depressing if one listens to the actual lines. McEntire mournfully presents the lyrics "Love is a dangerous door to open / If you don't feel it when it's spoken / Sometimes I said it when I really didn't mean it / Just to throw away a promise I knew wasn't true / It meant a little less to me everytime I did it / But I never said I love you from the heart / Til I said it to you" ("'Til I Said It To You") and the listener is left with the reasonable question, "How can we believe this musical protagonist is now telling the truth?!"

Ultimately, So Good Together is likely to leave the listener feeling empty and it does an exceptional job at that. For those looking for a depressing pop-rock album with minor Country undertones, this is the album for you!

The best track is "Back Before The War," the low point is "I'll Be."

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
If You See Him
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba

7/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Reba McEntire's If You See Him Is A Tougher Sell Than It Ought To Be.

The Good: Good vocals, Energetic instrumental accompaniment, Generally decent song choices
The Bad: Ridiculously short, Songs sound alike.
The Basics: A very average album by Reba McEntire, If You See Him does not have much wrong with it, but also has little that sets it apart.


The advantage of "coming late to the party" in the case of discovering musical artists or performers later in their career than most people is that when one looks at the current body of the artist's work, they can see the ebb and flow of the styles and trends that the artist was exploring easier. As a result, one may look at albums as aberrations in the artist's career or as foreshadowing a direction they would later go in. In the case of Reba McEntire, If You See Him appears to be a pretty clear foreshadowing of Duets, which she would release almost a decade later.

I write this not simply because If You See Him has two duets on it, but rather because the musical style is strongly what one would come to hear on that later album. But more than that, Reba McEntire's albums do have a tendency to go in phases from Classic Country to pop with most of them helping to pioneer - and later capitalize on - the Country-pop craze of the Mid-1990s. If You See Him has an odder sense of balance to it, with songs that are very much Country-rock ("All This Time"), classic Country ("Face To Face," "If You See Him, If You See Her"), and the more common Country-pop ("One Honest Heart," "Lonely Alone"). The irony I am running into here, though, is that with this album, Reba effectively blends the already blurry lines between the various genres, creating an album packed with songs that sound remarkably similar to one another. To wit, having heard Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor, long before now, I was somewhat surprised by how few songs from this album were on that; from the sounds of the songs, so many more sounded familiar and my presumption was that I had heard them before.

That said, If You See Him is a very typical Reba McEntire musical experience. With an even dozen songs taking up 45:03, If You See Him is very much a collaborative effort by Reba McEntire and her record company, MCA. McEntire did not write any of the songs on the album and she shares the lead vocals on two tracks with guest performers: Brooks & Dunn on "If You See Him, If You See Her" and Linda Davis on "Face To Face." She does not play any of the musical instruments, but she is a co-producer of the album and selected all of the songs she performed on the album.

Truth be told, I've never been much into Country music, so this whole month has been eye opening to me in many ways. What If You See Him isn't opening my mind to is the idea that Reba McEntire is comfortable with only her Country music audience. Songs like "One Honest Heart," which is electric guitar-driven and pounding with the percussion sounds more like a pop-rock ballad than anything coming out of Country and its folk/bluegrass roots. Instead, many of the songs on If You See Him sound like rock and roll tracks with Reba as a competent vocalist competing with the powerful instrumental accompaniment or very typical pop ballads.

The pop ballads that are mixed in tend to be keyboard-driven and have McEntire sounding more like Celine Dion than herself. Songs like "Invisible" are overproduced and feature predictable swells with the instrumental accompaniment designed to get the most out of the listener's emotional reaction. Somewhere between the two are the more Country-pop songs like "I Wouldn't Know," which has more mellow percussion and includes lighter guitarwork (and the presence of the steel guitar) to balance the vocals. Even so, "I Wouldn't Know" is instrumentally predictable and the song sounds like a pop song, even if it uses the steel guitar (which is not, traditionally, a pop instrument). As well, the song sounds largely like every other song on the album. If You See Him is actually characterized largely by a louder instrumental accompaniment on all of the songs, so McEntire sounds like she is competing with the instruments that are playing behind her.

That said, it's hard to keep the vocals of Reba McEntire down! McEntire is an exceptional vocalist who works in the alto register and on songs like "I'll Give You Something To Miss," she has an energetic quality that has not been duplicated by any other artist in contemporary times. At the same time, she has the ability to be emotive and downright soulful, as she is on "Forever Love" and she plays off Linda Davis with a great ability to present irony in her music on "Face To Face." Reba McEntire fans will, no doubt, be pleased by the vocals on If You See Him, but the truth is that McEntire stays very comfortable in her safe range with this album and having heard nineteen other Reba McEntire albums, it is easy for me to say that she is not presenting anything truly new or unexpected with her vocals on this album.

Even so, the song choices on If You See Him are decent. Like most of McEntire's albums, the songs on If You See Him are largely about love and loss and this album has a number of songs about walking away from bad relationships. As one who is not a fan of Country music as a genre, this album made me come to appreciate the two big solutions Country women give for problems with their men. The first comes up in "Invisible," which is certainly enough to disabuse listeners of the notion that Country women are cold fish. They might value monogamy strongly, but as Reba sings, the solution to being overlooked is often seduction, ". . . tonight in lace and candlelight / She'll prove to him she's not / Invisible" ("Invisible"). It's hard not to like that solution to waning chemistry!

But what caught me was the honesty and solution to "Face To Face." The duet is a musical storysong between a wife and a mistress about their expectations and what happened when they meet. You know the song is not pop (they don't confront the cheating man and make him choose), you know it's not hip-hop (the women don't get into a fistfight or shoot one another), you know it's not rap (there are only two women who have been cheated on and the man's response isn't "I've got eight more I'm stringing along, so what's your problem?!"), and you know it's not Goth-emo (the cheated on women don't kill themselves), because the women size each other up and both decide to leave the cheating guy. It's actually strange and civil to hear the lines "There's no blame here we both end up the same here / A little wiser than we were / There was a time this would have killed me . . . And now that all the spells are broken / The truth's been spoken / My heart has the strength to tell him goodbye" ("Face To Face").

And despite some terribly predictable stronger/longer, tryin'/flyin', lot/not rhymes on "Up And Flying," the album still manages to have some decent poetics at parts. "Lonely Alone" is actually appropriately difficult with its concept of being alone in a relationship and leaving because it's better be alone without someone than be lonely with them. "Lonely Alone" is actually the track that pushed this very firmly into the "recommend" category for me. The bulk of the album's tracks are easy to find on other compilations, but not that perceptive song.

Anyone who likes pop-rock and/or pop-Country will find something to like on If You See Him. It might sound rather indistinct as pop or Country, but it is still a stronger pop album than I've heard lately. And hey, if no one new is going to come along and make decent pop music, why not go back and catch an album you might have missed because it was miscategorized at the time?

The best song is "Face To Face," the low point is the unmemorable "Up And Flying."

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever's In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
What If It's You
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba

5.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page for a comprehensive listing of all of my current music reviews!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Reba McEntire Returns To Country With What If It's You.

The Good: Decent vocals, Good Country-rock sound
The Bad: Short, Moments of vocal overproduction
The Basics: A fun album, What If It’s You is an energetic presentation of Country-rock with Reba McEntire presenting a very fun side of her music.


Reba McEntire was not, in any way, a disappointing choice for a musical Artist Of The Month; but McEntire’s works have ebbs and flows which are very static. In other words, it takes a lot for McEntire to get out of one rut and move her music in a different direction. In the 1980s to the early 90s, she worked more and more from Country to pop and in that part of her career, the albums are frequently repetitive in nature and disappointingly bland with little differentiation between them. If one were to put them on a single playlist, there are about six albums which would all sound like they were a single album.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I put What If It’s You in and began listening to it on heavy replay. The album is different from McEntire’s other works, especially from the period I had been listening to. More dramatic in its sound, What If It’s You has McEntire singing more like a Country performer, but backed with traditionally pop-rock instruments. The irony, though, is that McEntire makes the album sound like it is classic Country, just a bigger, louder version of it and, truth be told, she make makes it work. What If It’s You sounds good, replays well and is a decent pop-Country album, even if it has some problems.

With only ten songs arguably the greatest disappointment of What If It’s You is the short running time of 35:50. Like most Reba McEntire albums, McEntire was not involved in the writing of any of the tracks. As well, she does not play any musical instruments on the album. What she does do is sing all of the lead vocals co-produce the album. At this point, McEntire was selecting her own material and presenting the record company with her albums, so it is very much what she wanted to present that makes the cut.

What If It’s You is an actually fun album from Reba McEntire. If the 1980s were a time when she was singing about loss and love leaving and the like, the mid-90s (at least on What If It’s You) are about having fun after it all. What If It’s You is upbeat, uptempo and songs like “I’d Rather Ride Around With You” have a Country good-time feel of just breaking loose. While the album is not exactly line dance material, the genre is clearly Country and this is a Country dance album (Country-pop) with a notable absence of soft, moody ballads.

The album is dominated instrumentally by guitars, electric and steel and a stronger rhythm section than any of McEntire’s prior albums. What If It’s You has ten string-driven songs which combine guitar, keyboards and bass with percussion the way most bands combine guitar, bass and drums. The result are upbeat Country-pop numbers like “State Of Grace” which sound lyrically like Country songs, but have a pop-rock backing that makes it accessible to anyone who likes energetic music.

But “State Of Grace” also caught my attention because it did something I have not noticed on any other Reba McEntire albums: McEntire’s voice has a produced quality at moments. While there is an obvious voice shift for the effect when the musical protagonist gets on the intercom at work, her voice seems to have more noticeable production employed to clean up the sound of her voice. On other albums, she inhales occasionally or the notes sound like they are coming from a real voice. But on most of the tracks on What If It’s You, there is a flawless quality to the vocals which seems unnatural and produced. McEntire’s voice competes unnaturally with the heavy percussion on “Close To Crazy.” Even so, this is nowhere near as bad as, for example, a Britney Spears album where the singer sounds robotic. Instead, McEntire’s contralto voice breaks through more often than not, but there are moments when it sounds like it has help.

Lyrically, What If It’s You follows very traditional Country themes. McEntire has a very traditional notion of romance on What If It’s You in a Judeo-Christian sense. She sings about love as if it can be an absolute when she explores the ridiculous quality of young love on “She’s Callin’ It Love.” Most of her songs have a musical protagonist and a little message, like “Daddy knows his baby’s headed for a heartache / And that part of growin’ up is learning from mistakes / But he can’t let her go / ‘Cause he knows / That boy’s nothin’ but bad news” (“She’s Callin’ It Love”). You can almost hear the shotgun loading for the wedding. Lyrically, the song has very traditional notions of family and Country.

Even so, I found myself appreciating the irony of McEntire subtly undermining that. With “State Of Grace,” she presents a musical protagonist who is a Walmart worker who abruptly quits so she’s no longer wasting her life. One wonders how many Walmart workers find themselves late at night humming and singing “Attention late night shoppers / A two for one on broken chains” (“State Of Grace”). The song is a carpe diem anthem and it is actually refreshing to hear such an enlightened country version.

Ultimately, there is little surprise to the fact that such a vision comes from Reba McEntire. McEntire has been known to champion social causes and sing about child abuse and women being strong and independent. On What If It’s You, McEntire seems to be declaring that part of that whole paradigm is breaking loose and having fun. It’s about time.

The best song is “I’d Rather Ride Around With You,” the low point is “Never Had A Reason To.”

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever’s In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
For My Broken Heart
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba

7/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Reba McEntire Spreads Her Wings For My Broken Heart Rather Successfully!

The Good: Generally good lyrics, Voice, Mood of the album
The Bad: Dreadfully short, Instrumentally predictable
The Basics: A very average pop-Country album, For My Broken Heart is a good example of McEntire's vocal talents, even if it is unsurprising.


Reba McEntire's works have taken a bit of flack from me, mostly for the fact that they are largely performed by McEntire and not actually the artistic creations of the Country music superstar. So, it seems like every time she has an album where she is involved in any way with the creation of the music, I get excited. Such is the case for the early 80's Country-pop album For My Broken Heart, which has a single song ("Bobby") that McEntire co-wrote. In her considerable arsenal of performances, For My Broken Heart contains songs which are very standard for McEntire, but somehow the mix manages to come together better than most. As well, having heard several Reba McEntire compilations, For My Broken Heart's best songs are not necessarily on them.

That said, For My Broken Heart is a very typical early 90s pop-Country album. By this point in her career, McEntire was effectively straddling the lines between pop and Country and was one of the foremost musical ambassadors pushing Country toward a sound that was less like Patsy Cline and more like The Bangles. It's easy, listening to For My Broken Heart to hear how Shania Twain would naturally explode within the community . . . McEntire softened up her market for her.

Still, with only ten songs and a running time of 36:57, For My Broken Heart is a very short album, regardless of the genre. Reba McEntire's creative control was limited, though she provided all of the lead vocals, co-wrote one song and was a co-producer for the album. She was not, however, involved in writing 90% of the songs and played no musical instruments on the album. Even so, given McEntire's popularity and status - even by this point in her career - it seems like she was making the music she wanted to create and that she was choosing the songs she was going to perform, so this is her intended sound and album, one suspects.

Instrumentally, that means a Country music album which is heavy in electric guitars and keyboards. Yes, this is a pop-Country, almost a pop-rock album. If there were ever to be a pop-rock version of "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia", then McEntire's version on For My Broken Heart would certainly be it! The album is made up primarily of energetic-sounding songs, most of which are about the loss of love and missing people. McEntire's consistent musical protagonist on this album is one who has been left behind.

Even so, the album also is heavy in ballads, like "The Greatest Man I Never Knew" and the title track. On those keyboard-driven songs, McEntire is meant to sound like a pop diva on the order of Barbra Streisand and she succeeds. Reba McEntire's instrumental backing sounds like Streisand's orchestral backing on several pieces, though the infrequent use of the steel guitar and fiddles does set McEntire apart.

Also what sets Reba McEntire apart is her vocal range. While most female performers try to showboat by seeing just how high they can go in the soprano range, Reba McEntire rules the alto register. Not trying to be the next Ella Fitzgerald or Celine Dion, McEntire is comfortable in the lower ranges which make her sound more soulful and intense. On songs like "Is There Life Out There", she has an energetic Country twang in her voice which makes her distinct and her voice one of the unique ones of our generation. Moreover, she has a clarity to her vocalizations which is intense, beautiful and entirely penetrating on ballads like "If I Had Only Known." Even so, For My Broken Heart is more a study of what is expected of Reba McEntire than a defiance of it. Vocally, this is Reba McEntire at a wonderful performance ability, but she's been there for quite a while.

That said, For My Broken Heart succeeds because the song lyrics and themes are strong. This is a concept album, of sorts, with McEntire working through her feelings of loss from death and abandonment. Songs like "The Greatest Man I Never Knew" and "If I Had Only Known" explore the universality of being left and having no ability to connect with the departed person. So, when McEntire sings "If I had only known / I'd never hear your voice again / I'd memorize each thing you ever said / And on those lonely nights / I could think of them once more / Keep your words alive inside my head . . ." ("If I Had Only Known"), anyone who has ever had lingering issues with a person who has died is likely to choke right up. McEntire's presentation of the poetic words have that potent an effect on the listener.

And, largely, "For My Broken Heart" is musical storysongs in more of a folk/Country tradition than the pop sound the album has. Songs on this album tend to have musical protagonists who have an obstacle, do something about it and explore the consequences. As such, songs like "He's In Dallas" tell complete musical stories with lines like "I'm staring out the window through these teardrops / Holding on to the only dream that turned out right / We're on a Greyhound bus bound for West Virginia / He's in Dallas without us tonight." McEntire's style works well for musical storysongs and one suspects in a different time or place, she would have been a premiere folk singer.

That said, not all of the lines are gold on For My Broken Heart. On "Buying Her Roses," the rhymes are obvious as McEntire is compelled to perform lines that end with rhymes like blame/flame, me/see, knows/goes, and fight/right. The saving grace for McEntire is that she did not write the lyrics and as a result, she cannot be blamed for the more mediocre lines she sings. And, honestly, none of the songs are truly bad from a poetics perspective.

But For My Broken Heart is a good collection with a ridiculously small portion and as such, it replays sounding a lot more mediocre than the first few listens. But most fans of pop or Country will find enough to enjoy to make this worth picking up!

The best song is "If I Had Only Known," the low point is "Buying Her Roses."

For other Reba McEntire works, please check out my reviews of:
Feel The Fire
Heart To Heart
Just A Little Love
Have I Got A Deal For You
The Best Of Reba McEntire
Whoever’s In New England
What Am I Gonna Do About You
Reba
Sweet Sixteen
It's Your Call
Greatest Hits Volume Two
Read My Mind
Starting Over
Greatest Hits Volume III: I'm A Survivor
Room To Breathe
20th Century Masters: Christmas Collection - Best Of Reba

7/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page.

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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