Starting Over

Personnel: Reba McEntire; Mac McAnally (acoustic guitar); Dann Huff (electric guitar); Larry Byrom (electric & acoustic guitars); Terry Crisp (steel guitar); Rob Hajacos (fiddle); The Nashville String Machine (strings); Chris Hicks (saxophone); Michael Omartian (keyboards, piano); Steve Nathan (keyboards, synthesizer, Wurlitzer); Leland Sklar (bass); Carlos Vega (drums); Tom Roady (percussion); Robert Bailey, Vicki Hampton, Lisa Cochran, Linda Davis, Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, Wendy Waldman, Karla Bonoff, Kim Richey, Mike Mellet, Chris Rodriguez (background vocals).
Engineers: Terry Christian (tracks 1, 4-8, 10); Steve Tillisch (tracks 2-3, 9).
"On My Own," with Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride and Linda Davis, was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals.
STARTING OVER finds Reba McEntire returning to pop and country classics of the past after a couple of relentlessly modern country-pop fusion albums. These aren't the standard honky-tonk or roots-rock touchstones everyone else is rushing back to in these tradition-conscious, authenticity-driven times; these are Reba's roots. The pop songs range from Motown ("You Keep Me Hangin' On") to the lounge ("By The Time I Get To Phoenix"); and the country ones are almost all pop-infected, country-politan ballads, originally done by the likes of Crystal Gale ("Talking In Your Sleep") and Steve Wariner ("Starting Over Again"). It may not be hip stuff, but it is all indisputably classic, and Reba's lush, sad remakes make it clear how influential it all is on modern country.
The title has a double meaning. If the music represents a renewal for McEntire, the songs themselves are about a different kind of renewal--the sad kind that follows broken marriages and other failed relationships. Every one of these songs, which date from the early '60s through the mid-'80s, is about leaving. They carry the same emotional force of the ballads already in McEntire's repetoire, often on a more personal level. Bobby Bare's "Five Hundred Miles Away From Home" recasts the folk standard "500 Miles" as a tale of a terribly wrong, unspecified turn somewhere along the way. And "I Won't Mention It Again," a chart-topper for Ray Price in 1971, could have been a Patsy Cline torch song, and McEntire sings it in a voice of hurt and longing that echoes Cline at her best.
Starting Over isn't quite a rebirth for Reba McEntire; rather, it's a tribute to her formative influences. Consisting of nothing but covers of a selection of her favorite songs from the '50s, '60s, and '70s, the album is an engaging listen. Some of the tracks demonstrate her roots, while others are nothing more than entertainment. McEntire doesn't reimagine these songs, but she delivers strong, confident performances that make them sound fresh. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine