Sunday, February 22, 2015

Fooling Around With Nobody's Fool

Song 239: This week's playlist track is Take It Back by Reba McEntire, written by Kristy Jackson. In the early '90s I listened to a lot of country radio, and heard a lot of new cuts that I liked, with this track being one. This one also very well illustrates the way so many of the New Country records of the era leaned far enough in the rock direction that you could have more accurately called much of it country rock. Although Reba didn't write the words, she clearly enjoyed delivering the lines that tell her cheating lover how she sees through his obvious lies and now she has decided to make him pay the consequences for playing around. The lyrics fit very well with Reba's image as a no-nonsense kind of country woman who, if she did happen to find herself on the receiving end of some nonsense, would soon see through it and quickly turn the tables on any man who thought he could fool her -- she was nobody's fool, and she was happy to let everyone know that. On a side note, this track is my fourth sly reference to the first verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which begins with lines that mention Pam Tillis (Song 210), Johnny Cash (Song 218) and Randy Travis (Song 231), followed by the line does Reba McEntire-ly too much? You can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.

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