Reba McEntire almost quit music after her mother died.
The 68-year-old country star has enjoyed decades of success in showbiz but revealed that when her mother Jacqueline died in 2020 at the age of 93, she felt like she wanted to give it all up when looking back on photographs with her sister Susie.
Speaking on ‘The Today Show’, she said: “I was going through pictures. I said, ‘I just don’t think I’m gonna do this anymore.’ She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Sing!” She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Sing,’. “I said, ‘I always did it for Mama.’ She said, ‘Oh, you’ll get it back.’ I did.”
The ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven’ songstress went on to add that her mother had been such a source of “encouragement” to her during her youth and believed they could do whatever they wanted to do.
She said: “She was really encouraging for all of us kids, whatever we wanted to do. She taught us harmony. Anytime anybody needed an opinion of who’s off — Susie’s on my part, I’m on Susie’s part — Mama would come in with her spatula after she was frying potatoes. She would say, ‘OK, Reba, you’re on Susie’s part. Sing it again.’ We’d sing it, and she’d say, ‘Oh, that’s perfect,’ and she’d go back in and keep frying potatoes.”
The ‘Consider Me Gone’ singer recently explained that she decided to keep going with her career because singing his her “God-given gift” and she still loves it all these years later.
She told ETCanada: “I realized I’m still doing it because I love it. And it’s my God given gift that I cherish. I absolutely love to get to sing songs to make people feel something, whether it’s sad, happy, whatever it is. And so that’s the gift she gave me and Susie and [my brother] Pake. And so you got to keep on going.”
