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Reba
June 2020: Other Books
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Reba, My Story by Reba McEntire - 4*
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I adore Reba-I have seen her 2X (and I am not a big country music fan, however my sister-in-law is which is how I got tuned into her.)My favorite song is Does He Love Her-Use to love to open up all the doors and windows to do my Spring cleaning and blasting the neighborhood with a duet😂
Joanne wrote: "I adore Reba-I have seen her 2X (and I am not a big country music fan, however my sister-in-law is which is how I got tuned into her.)My favorite song is Does He Love Her-Use to love to open up a..."
I can picture it LOL! Is that the song she sang as a duet with Linda Davis? She talks about that song in this memoir.
And I'm a country music fan - but not a big country music fan. But Reba has a lot of cross over hits and appreciates all kinds of music. She talks in the memoir about how and why she chose some songs for her albums and concerts that weren't country songs.
Yes, I know she sings it as a duet-Never knew who she was singing it with. She sang one time on an awards show with Kelly Clarkson-AWESOME!
Joanne wrote: "Yes, I know she sings it as a duet-Never knew who she was singing it with. She sang one time on an awards show with Kelly Clarkson-AWESOME!"Kelly very unashamedly fangirls over Reba. It's so cute to watch. I think she even had a small role on Reba's TV show.
No, this isn't a quote from the book. It's something I learned to be very true from personal experience as a decades long member of Toastmasters - having written and given and listened to hundreds of speeches. If what the speaker wrote and says comes from the heart …. then it goes to the heart also - the heart of the listeners.
The same is true of singers and performers. As I read in this memoir, early in her career an MCA music executive advised Reba to find her own songs, "because nobody but you knows what you want to sing." And Reba took that advice, which I believe is one of the keys to her popularity. She chose songs that she believes in. It was interesting to hear the background of many of her popular songs and how they were chosen.
Take for example the song "Fancy", which is probably Reba's signature song and my personal favorite. It was written by Bobbie Gentry, who had a hit with it in 1969 (something I didn't know). Reba took it to the top 10 on the Country charts in 1991 and it is now one of her most popular songs. That almost didn't happen, because one of Reba's first producers talked her out of doing the song on an album because he thought it was too well known as a Bobby Gentry song. Luckily, later - with a different producer, Reba chose the song again and stuck to her guns - for which I am very grateful.
There are many other things that I admire about Reba, such as her hard working attitude and her straight forwardness. This memoir is pretty much told that way - straight forward. No literary fluff. Just a lot of stories about Reba's life, her family and her music career. The beginning of the book, about Reba's family, is both entertaining (she had some real characters in her family) and enlightening. Every member of Reba's family worked HARD even as children on the cattle ranch where she grew up. Easy to see where Reba got her work ethic.
She covers her personal life also, without getting too deep into it. And of course there are several chapters dealing with the tragedy when eight of her band members died in a plane crash in March 1991. She introduces you to each of the band members who died and talks about the aftermath. It broke her heart - and mine when I read about it.
Some of the most fun parts of the book are when she talks about her acting career. This book was written in 1994 before the Reba TV show aired, but she had been in multiple movies by this time. Her first movie was Tremors - another personal favorite of mine. Total camp and I love it! I enjoyed the stories she told about some of her co-stars. For example, did you know that Dan Aykroyd's family had its own real life ghost busting service? (which probably inspired him to write Ghostbuster).
What's important to Reba? - her family, her faith, her music, her friends and her fans. If you are a fan, I highly recommend this memoir.