Reba McEntire Gives Fans ‘Something Different’ On ‘Not That Fancy’ Album
‘I thought it was a great idea and a great way to give the fans something different,’ she says of the stripped-down remakes.
Reba McEntire has described the less-is-more approach she took to her new album of stripped-back remakes from her catalog, Not That Fancy. The record arrives today as a companion for her book Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots, which follows next Tuesday (10).
Shop the best of Reba McEntire’s discography on vinyl and more.
In a new interview with the Associated Press, McEntire tells Maria Sherman: “We had done Remixed, Revised and Revisited [her 2021 compilation] and so we pulled some of those songs. Working with Dave Cobb, that was an album that was stripped down, that we wanted to pull from. And we added some more songs to it, brand new songs, which is our new single called ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven.’ And it just worked out really good to be ‘not that fancy.’”
Of the process of deconstructing some of her best-loved songs, Reba adds: “You get used to hearing something a certain way, and then when it is stripped down to just a few instruments, you got to get comfortable with it again. You kind of have to relearn it. And some of the songs we slowed down, changed the tempo, and it just made it a totally different song. So, I thought it was a great idea and a great way to give the fans something different.”
Emma Jordan in Entertainment Focus singles out one track that benefits from the simplified structure, noting that “the lyrics of murder ballad of ‘The Nights The Light Went Out In Georgia’ are clearer; it is a complicated, twisting story made all the more powerful in this non-production production.”
Another track revisits McEntire’s smash “Does He Love You,” which she originally recorded with Linda Davis, whose part on the new version is taken by Dolly Parton,
“We were picking out the songs for the album,” says McEntire in the AP interview. “”Does He Love You’ came up and we were all like, ‘Well, if we did it again, who would we like to have sing with you?’ We all started pitching names and put them in the hat. When somebody said ‘Dolly,’ everybody just said, ’Oh, absolutely, we got to ask Dolly.’ And she said yes.”
Buy or stream Not That Fancy.
