During its first decade,
Reba McEntire
's career had a "two steps forward, one step back" quality to it, even though she kept doggedly progressing, year by year. In 1984, her two big steps forward came with her surprise win as Female Vocalist of the Year at the
Country
Music Association (
CMA
) awards and the release of her bid to join the
new traditionalist
movement,
My Kind of Country
. Her next album,
Have I Got a Deal for You
, released nine months later, constituted another step back, if only a slight one. On
,
McEntire
had eschewed the Nashville publishing houses for the most part to pick old songs previously recorded as LP tracks by the likes of
Connie Smith
and
Faron Young
, which she then sang as if she were
Patsy Cline
reincarnated. The topping on the cake was
Harlan Howard
's newly written song of divorce-in-the-making,
"Somebody Should Leave."
On
, who co-produced the album with
MCA
label president
Jimmy Bowen
, went back to the publishers for new songs. She stuck to the
traditional country
arrangements, but with a bit more variation; leadoff track
"I'm in Love All Over"
was an up-tempo number in the style of the
Bakersfield sound
, for example, while
"I Don't Need Nothin' You Ain't Got"
was given a
Western swing
treatment. The trouble was that even a newly minted
recipient couldn't find strong songs. The title tune and first single was one of those metaphors taken too far in which Nashville songwriters specialized, and elsewhere
was reduced to mouthing overused cliches in songs like
"Red Roses (Won't Work Now)."
Another mistake was that she dared to do some writing herself, although her
"Only in My Mind,"
which actually got to number five in the
country
charts, demonstrated that she had absorbed the lesson of
"Somebody Should Leave"
in trying to come up with songs that addressed the viewpoint of contemporary women. It was also disheartening that, just after having staked her claim as the leading female
, she was already backsliding. There were no strings on
Johnny Gimble
's fiddle was still prominent, along with
Weldon Myrick
's steel guitar. But the closing track,
"Don't Forget Your Way Home,"
still sounded like an
adult contemporary
pop
ballad, albeit one sung with
's distinctive Oklahoma twang.
was hardly a disaster, but it was not the album to consolidate the advance
had made with
, much less push her career further. ~ William Ruhlmann