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
My Kind of Country,
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
Have I Got a Deal for You,
McEntire, 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
CMA 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
McEntire 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
new traditionalist, she was already backsliding. There were no strings on
Have I Got a Deal for You and
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
McEntire's distinctive Oklahoma twang.
Have I Got a Deal for You was hardly a disaster, but it was not the album to consolidate the advance
McEntire had made with
My Kind of Country, much less push her career further. ~ William Ruhlmann
![Speak Now [Deluxe Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0843930006038_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Speak Now [Deluxe Edition]")
