There’s a new gospel singer in town and her name is Reba McEntire. Everyone’s favorite redhead is putting her vocal talents toward a new gospel album, Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope, set to be released on Feb. 3.
The album will be a two-disc offering containing 20 songs, both classic and original. Disc 1 will feature classic gospel songs like “Amazing Grace,” “How Great Thou Art, and “I’ll Fly Away,” while Disc 2 will be filled with original cuts such as “God and My Girlfriends,” “Sing It Now,” and “I Got The Lord On My Side.”
One of the standout tracks on Disc 1 is the classic tune “I’ll Fly Away”—a song Reba grew up singing. For the version on the album, Reba waited to record the song until her mother, Jackie, and sisters, Susie and Alice, were in Nashville and could lend their harmonies.
“[It was] too much fun,” Reba tells Nash Country Daily about the recording session. “We were just silly as we could be. We all got around the microphone and Susie and I—we were up there just singing our little hearts out and Mama and Alice just kept backing up,” she laughs. “They’re not used to it, saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to be on tape, we can’t sing.’ I’d say, ‘Oh, get up here.’ It was so fun.”
But that’s not the extent of Mama McEntire’s talent in the studio. While recording the song “I Got the Lord on My Side”—the only song on the album written by Reba—the McEntire matriarch made a suggestion to her daughter that would, as Reba puts it, “enhance” the song.
“She enhanced the song tremendously,” said Reba. “[The song] was ‘I Got the Lord on My Side’ because I had written it. We got in to record it and Mama said, ‘Could I make a suggestion?’ I said, ‘Sure, what is it?’ She said, ‘Instead of saying I got the Lord on my side or I’m so happy, why don’t you say you got the Lord on your side and you’re so happy. And I said, ‘Well, that’s a great idea,’ so we went back in and recorded it again like she wanted us to do and I gave her a writer’s credit. So now I can say, Mama and I wrote this song!”
If you’re happy / You got the Lord on your side / If you’re happy / You got the Lord on your side / If I see that big ol’ happy printed smile on your face / I know you’re happy / You got the Lord on your side.
Listen to Reba singing “Oh, How I Love Jesus,” from her upcoming album, Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope.
