Superstar Reba McEntire has amassed a fanbase that knows her from any number of entry points — her five decades of making music, work in television (Happy’s Place, Reba, The Voice), Broadway (Annie Get Your Gun), film (The Hammer, The Gambler) or even retail and hospitality.
So as she approached her 50th anniversary of releasing music, McEntire — who has scored 60 top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, including 24 No. 1s — wanted a way to celebrate her achievements while continuing to look ahead.
In April, the Country Music Hall of Famer and her team began rolling out a series of monthly music capsules that allow fans to connect her deep catalog of music with her newer material and help introduce younger fans to her vast array of songs. Each EP revolves around a central theme, and pairs a new song with four catalog songs.
On Friday (Aug. 21), McEntire will release the latest EP in the series, Tourist, with songs from the pen of Grammy-winning songwriter Brandy Clark. “Every song I’ve recorded of Brandy’s, pretty much every song I’ve listened to that she sent to me, touches my heart. She’s one of my favorite songwriters of all time,” McEntire says.
Previous EPs, which are only available digitally, include One Night in Tulsa, Hurt Like That, Ain’t Gonna Keep It Waitin’ and Ring Ring. One Night in Tulsa was built around McEntire’s home state of Oklahoma, with the title track appearing alongside catalog songs including the 2007 Ronnie Dunn collaboration “Does The Wind Still Blow in Oklahoma.” Ring Ring centered on songs with a telephone storyline, pairing its title track with older songs such as 1994’s “Why Haven’t I Heard From You.”
McEntire credits her manager, Justin McIntosh, and label home MCA, with spearheading the EP series.
“I thought it was totally genius, because the catalog business is booming right now,” says McEntire. “People are getting very nostalgic and they like the old songs they are familiar with. So, to pair a brand new song with past songs that are in the catalog, I told Justin, ‘This is one of the most creative, genius things I’ve seen done.’”
“Reba sits in a unique position,” adds McIntosh. “Because of the TV shows, she has a whole other audience that really doesn’t know her as a musician. Maybe they know ‘Fancy’ or ‘I’m a Survivor,’ but they don’t know 50 years of music. So it hit me, ‘What if we took these new songs and paired them with songs that were thematically similar from her catalog?’ It would encourage that new listener that hasn’t heard maybe some of these songs before to dive in for the first time, and then those fans that know and love these songs, it would give them something new at the same time.”
Among her promotional videos for the series was a recent music video for “Ring Ring” — a song about a confrontation with a cheating partner that turns into a night in jail. The song and its video showcase McEntire’s unerring sense of comedy and humor, though the three-time Grammy winner says she initially had slight reservations about recording the song.
“I thought it was fun, and then I thought, ‘Well, it might be too silly. I’m 71 years old. Why am I singing songs like this?’ But the more I listened to it, the more I loved it. It brought out the kid in me,” she says.
“This was one of those songs that we were like, ‘How do we make this fit on a record?’” McIntosh adds. “Because it’s so fun. And it does fit, when you look at her history and [songs like] ‘Take It Back.’ She did those fun, campy songs. She can do heartbreak songs like nobody’s business, but she’s also a really, really great comedic actress.”
Further bolstering the EP series are playlists, available on Spotify, YouTube and Pandora, including The Reinvention of Reba and The Reign of Reba that highlight McEntire’s expansive catalog of hits.
“It’s harder than ever to put new music out in the world, so this was kind of an experiment for us truly to go, ‘What will we see from this?’” McIntosh says. “And we’re seeing it pay off because her listeners are increasing. Every time we put out [an EP or playlist], we’re seeing these spikes. It’s keeping them engaged because we’re coming with content more regularly versus putting out a record, where people consume it for a couple of weeks and then they move on.”
Beyond music, McEntire is filming season three of her NBC series Happy’s Place, which will premiere Oct. 23. She plans to continue releasing EPs through the rest of 2026 , while also highlighting special moments, such as the 25-year anniversary of her hit song (and Reba theme song) “I’m at Survivor.”
“Reba is at a place in her career where she can play,” McIntosh says. “We don’t have to do it like it’s always been done. And I think every artist is looking at that now going, ‘How do we do this differently? What is the radio piece of this? What is the streaming piece of this?’ That’s really what drove the conversation.”
Another piece to consider? Social media. Reflecting on how things would have been different if social media had been around when she released her first album in 1977, McEntire says: “It would have been a quicker way of getting in touch with your fans, and [having] the immediate response of ‘What did they think?’ We had a fan club, we had a quarterly newsletter that we put out and we corresponded by mail. It would have been a totally different, faster way to get in contact with more fans.”
Even so, McEntire approaches the ever-evolving task of reaching her audience with the same can-do spirit she has taken throughout her career. “The barking dog gets the biscuit, so you got to come up with something that’s interesting. You just got to keep recreating yourself.”
