Reba McEntire
Country music is for the people by the people and its massive world audience can spot an imposter a mile off. They want honesty and integrity. They want stars from hard-working rural backgrounds who’ve earned the right to sing songs of hope and heartbreak. Which makes the Reba McEntire story just about perfect.
Had you entered the rodeo barrel-racing contests in Kiowa, Oklahoma in 1966, you’d have been marshalled by a whip-cracking 11-year-old ranch-born cowgirl in a check shirt and white Stetson whose father was a champion steer-roper.
When not directing horses to canter round three barrels in a cloverleaf pattern, the fresh-faced redhead was ‘travelling from rodeo to rodeo with my sister Susie and my brother Pake,’ she told me, ‘singing in the car as we had no radio’.
Country star Red Steagall heard her sing the national anthem midway through a rodeo final in Oklahoma City in 1975 and the 20-year-old Reba McEntire was signed to Mercury Records. She’s never looked back.
Actually she did look back. Part of her appeal as the biggest-selling female country artist of all time is that she’s never changed or lost touch with her roots. Seventy million album sales later, with huge hits like Fancy and Sweet Dreams – along with TV, movie and musical roles such as the perfectly cast star of Broadway’s Annie Get Your Gun – she still steers by the twin poles of her childhood musical galaxy, the revered matriarchal figures of Dolly Parton (now 66) and Loretta Lynn, who’s ten years older.
‘They are both from rural areas, both have rags-to-riches stories, but they’re both still the same,’ she declares. ‘Same values, same morals, same love of life and country music.’
Reba, 56, is topping the bill at the International Festival of Country Music, which returns to London this month after a 20-year break. So what gives her songs such an enduring appeal?
‘They’re relatable,’ she says. ‘People can relate to them, simple as that. If you sing a song about being cheated on, people can think, “Oh my gosh, that song was written for me”.
‘And if that sadness or that happiness touches my heart when I sing it, then I hope that emotion will transfer to the audience. And I’ll have done my job.’
The International Festival of Country Music is at Wembley Arena on February 26 (0844 815 0815) and Belfast’s Odyssey Arena on February 29 (028 9073 9074). See www.festivalofcountrymusic.com
This article originally appeared in the February 2012 issue of Saga Magazine.