The Singles Jukebox

Given the bro-country behemoth, safe to say Reba’s covering “If I Were a Boy” was either ill-timed or prescient…

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Megan Harrington: Reba is the first signee to Big Machine’s new heritage imprint Nash Icon. Eventually, everyone has to make this transition in their career, from relevant to venerated. If not as fraught between artist and audience, it’s still a difficult corner to turn — especially if you’re still creating and releasing new music, as Reba is, and not assembling endless permutations of greatest hits records, as Reba is not. “Going Out Like That” isn’t a metaphor for ceding your spot to the kids coming up from behind, it’s a breakup song that positions its central character as a fighter in the face of societal expectations for the heartbroken. It’s a rally cry, it’s timeless, and I hope Reba never goes out like that. 
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Alfred Soto: I love the idea of a woman like Reba in an awesome dress, “so tired of being tired,” dancing like she doesn’t give a fuck. Alas, the flat drums and generic solos don’t either.
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Thomas Inskeep: Now, this is late-period Reba at her best, singing uptempo female-empowerment anthems that ring true. Her first new single in four years features tough-minded production from Tony Brown that perfectly suits its lyrics (“He thought she’d be sittin’ home cryin’/She ain’t goin’ out like that”). This bodes well for her upcoming album.
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Brad Shoup: Somehow I’m supposed to see the subject cutting up through this grim stomp. She deserves better than this tune, which sounds like Echosmith for studio lifers.
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Anthony Easton: Yesterday I was listening to a lot of early ’80s Reba, and thinking there is this line between the domestic melodramas of ’70s Nashville and Reba’s best work, and not even the direct line of “Fancy.” Her vocal style has gone out of fashion — the sumptuous overstuffed quality hasn’t been current in decades. Sometimes she hits — “Because of You” was a brilliant imperial tactic — but mostly I just think that style has gone away, and she is not going to recover it. I don’t mean recover it in sales, as this is doing all right, but recover it as being part of the zeitgeist. I cannot imagine Reba making the alt-country slide like Lee Ann Womack. and I cannot imagine her being completely ignored like Wynonna or Terri Clark. But she’s caught, along with Faith Hill and Martina McBride, in the midst of an industry that doesn’t know what to do with them. This song has more rock than her other work and a message about a flouted lover and getting her shit together, but I can’t help but view it as an exercise in high meta. A fuck you to the industry, really. It’s just not a really good one.
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Crystal Leww: My dad moved to the United States in the ’80s, and he fucking loves Reba McEntire. He’s always been a country boy at heart, but seeing the huge Asian man put on a cowboy hat and close his eyes dreamily while Reba is playing through the stereo is even a little surprising to the girl who was raised by him. When asked, my dad said he loves Reba because she has a lovely voice that tells nice stories. He’s a bigger fan of her slower tracks, the ones that sound romantic but powerful. “Going Out Like That” is fast and not so romantic, but it’s still powerful and tells a nice story. I guess when you have 26 (!!!) albums, you eventually span the whole spectrum of emotion. She’s aged better than some legacy acts have.
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Dorian Sinclair: Spiritually akin to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Tonight I’m Getting Over You“, if the girl in the latter grew up in Oklahoma instead of Vancouver. It’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s fun and feel-good and sometimes that’s all I’m looking for.
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Alex Ostroff: I’m a sucker for characters who create reality through sheer force of will, simply deciding that this is the way things are. Reba’s voice usually keeps me at a distance, even when she’s singing ballads that would utterly destroy me coming from occasional duet partner (and recent relative) Kelly Clarkson. But the way she insistently sings “Everybody, here comes the life of the party” hits me hard. It’s not decorum. It’s not Miranda’s “Mama’s Broken Heart” either. I don’t even think it’s denial. It’s someone who knows that this is how things need to be, because the pain of the alternative is intolerable. Reba ends the track declaring “yes she is,” as the guitars fade out, and I wouldn’t dare question her.
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Jessica Doyle: It’s a protest against death, is what it is. She’s tired of feeling like dying, but the removal of the feeling doesn’t change the removal of the fact: she ain’t going out like that, but she is going out. There’s a certain ambiguity in ending the narrative with the heroine doing shots, as if she’s not avoiding oblivion but simply trying to control how she meets it. Bless this song’s courage, and while we’re at it, bless the third-act drumwork. The next time I lose somebody I’m blasting this. Probably before then, actually.
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Mo Kim: New Year’s Day 2013: just me and Mom in the car. The night air is crisp when I roll down the windows, but she’s barely driving through the rainstorm in her eyes. I’ve always been her confidant, one of the only people she lets herself be wounded around. Her first love left her after three years when she got too invested and he got too bored. When Dad got his PhD, it was his mother who took all the credit for supporting his family, not mine. She tells me Grandpa was the best man she had ever known: she cries herself to sleep sometimes because mothers can be children, too. I hesitate a little when Reba McIntire calls this song a “women’s power anthem“: I don’t think Reba can speak for all women, much less my loving, conservative, conflicted mother. There are many women who will find strength in the literal meaning of the lyrics, and I celebrate that, but I submit that the woman at the center of “Going Out Like That” also stands in for a larger archetype of female resistance, a refusal in the face of constant dismissal and abuse and heartbreak to succumb. Mom’s heard this song even before it was written: when we roll into the parking lot that night, she asks me for a Kleenex and wipes the eyeliner off her face. She gets out of the car. She keeps walking.
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