Garth Brooks recently said he wanted to sing a duet with Reba McEntire, and it seems McEntire wants to sing one with him as well. The 68-year-old says she has always wanted to perform a song with Brooks, but has a very good reason for not pursuing it earlier in their careers.
“I don’t think I’ve asked him because I’m sure he gets asked from everybody, to do everything,” McEntire explains to ET Canada. “And I just didn’t want to bother him. But you know, I’m not getting any younger and you never know. You got to seize the opportunity when you can.”
They may not have ever sung a duet together, but the friendship between McEntire and Brooks goes back decades. In fact, it was Brooks who helped McEntire through one of the lowest points of her career, when she lost her band and tour manager in a plane crash more than 30 years ago.
“It means a lot to be friends with Garth because Garth is a force of nature,” McEntire shares. “He opened the show for me in 1990 and 1991, and was there with me on stage, and the concerts after we lost my band and my tour manager in ’91 in a plane crash. Garth was a huge support, and we just felt the love and support from him at all times.”
The future coach on The Voice is herself a pioneer in country music, but she credits Brooks with helping change the entire genre, with his wild performances and engagement with his fans.
“He’s a wonderful person, a great entertainer, changed country music in a way that you can have fun on stage, show that you have fun on stage, and with him climbing up the ladders or the trusses or throwing water bottles or throwing on water people and just running across the stage like a wild man. He has a very special quality about him that everybody falls in love with.”
Brooks wrote the foreword for McEntire’s forthcoming Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots book, out on October 10. The fellow Country Music Hall of Fame member acknowledges he is one of a long list of people who would like to sing with the living legend.
“There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t want to sing with Reba McEntire. She’s the tornado,” Brooks previously said on his weekly Inside Studio G Facebook series.
“I love Reba McEntire,” he continued. “Reba was kind of why you get to do this, because you believed it could happen to you. If it happened to a gal out of a really small town, singing country music, maybe it could happen to you too. I love Reba. She’s been a light out there in the distance for me.”
