“The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia” is famed for the twisted story it manages to inform in below 4 minutes, and now Reba McEntire has shared the story behind her tackle the nation traditional. As a part of the Vevo Footnotes collection, she breaks down her course of from selecting the music to capturing the video.
McEntire explains that she selected recording her model when she and her co-producer Tony Brown had been in search of out one other older music like “Fancy” to function on her upcoming album, For My Damaged Coronary heart. The primary tape Reba grabbed within the room was “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.” “I handed it to [Brown],” she shares, “and said ‘what about this one?’ It felt like a sign.”
The observe was initially written in 1972, simply shy of twenty years earlier than Reba’s recording, by nation songwriter Bobby Russell. Regardless of all his work on the observe, Russell wasn’t pleased with the result, and was reluctant to even file a demo. His then-wife Vicky Lawrence, a performer on the Carol Burnett present, disagreed, believing he had successful on his fingers. Her instincts had been right—her recording of the music would attain primary on the Sizzling 100 chart in 1973. McEntire remembers that she “got to sing the song with Vicki on her talk show in the early 90s,”
The video for Reba’s model of the observe added extra element to the music’s story by means of interludes of spoken dialogue. “Jack Cole directed the video,” she says. “I also worked with Jack on the music videos for ‘Is There Life Out There’ and ‘Fancy.’” The video options Reba because the narrator, or “little sister,” as each a younger girl in flashbacks and a 60-year-old within the current. “The biggest thing I learned from doing movies and videos is to be patient, it takes time!” she explains. “It took two whole days to shoot the video. One whole day was just taking the photographs you see.”
“My version of the song only went to number 12 on the charts,” Reba displays, “but it’s become one of my fans’ most favorite songs of my career.”
Purchase Reba McEntire’s “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia” on vinyl now.
