Reba McEntire Performs New Song In Mother’s Memory On ‘The Today Show’

Reba McEntire has spoken about how the death of her mother made her question whether she wanted to continue as a singer. The country superstar made the admission when she appeared on The Today Show on Tuesday (10), as part of the Citi Music Series, on which she performed the new song that she was inspired to record by the memory of her mother, “Seven Minutes in Heaven.”

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After Jacqueline died in 2020 at the age of 2023, she said, “I didn’t want to [sing]. I told my little sister Susie when we were working at the house, I said, ‘I don’t know if I want to sing anymore.’ She said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I always sang for Mama. She said, ‘Oh, you’ll get it back.’ I did. [She] was the one that inspired us kids, taught us kids how to sing, took us to our singing gigs and was our biggest cheerleader.”

McEntire also spoke about how her boyfriend Rex Linn helped her to overcome the loss. “When you have somebody to share the grief with, when you have somebody to share the fun [and] the sad times, it’s always so much better. And Rex is a very uplifting, positive man, and I love him with all my heart.”

The song imagines what it would be like to make a brief trip to heaven to visit a loved one. “When you find a song that really touches your heart and chokes you up – I gotta sing it. I gotta record it,” said Reba. “That’s what you’re always looking for, is the song that touches your heart. That way, when I sing it, it’ll hopefully touch your heart, too.”

“Seven Minutes in Heaven” is the new song on McEntire’s just-released Not That Fancy album, which is otherwise stocked with pared-back remakes of songs from her huge catalog. It’s accompanied by the book Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots, which was published in the U.S. on Tuesday.

Buy or stream Not That Fancy.