POP MUSIC REVIEW : Reba McEntire Wastes Talents on Dull Songs

Reba McEntire confirmed an old adage Friday night at the Celebrity Theatre: It’s not the singer, it’s the song.

McEntire is a gifted, intense vocalist with soaring power and a firmly controlled country quaver. Despite those advantages, the singer from Oklahoma wallowed in dullness for most of her 70-minute early show. That’s what happens when a concert is devoted mainly to hit fodder culled from Nashville music mills where songwriting is treated as so much piecework.

The standoff between a fine voice and uninvolving songs finally ended, but only when McEntire reached back 20 years or more for some worthy material.

Singing a close-to-the-original take on Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” might not have been the height of imagination but at least the Otis Redding composition gave McEntire the chance to show some fire and bite. Taking on a Franklin classic and not being totally overshadowed would be impressive enough for an expert R&B; singer. For a country singer to pull it off was an exceptional achievement.

McEntire also brought an edge to a remake of “Fancy,” Bobbie Gentry’s 1969 tale of a poor country girl who climbs the ladder of success by the only means available: selling her body to rich gents. McEntire jumped into the role, singing it with a don’t-you-dare-judge-me authority that she underscored at the end by striking a combative pose and putting on an imperious glare. The number justified a mid-show costume change in which McEntire went from the cowgirl chic of a long, diaphanous skirt and sequined blouse to a sultry look with done-up hair, black gown and long, black boa. If she was going to sing “Fancy,” she might as well look fancy.

Another highlight was McEntire’s rendition of the Patsy Cline country standard “Sweet Dreams.” McEntire customarily ends her shows with a solo a cappella rendition of the song, but her singing wasn’t entirely unadorned: There was so much reverb applied to McEntire’s voice that you wondered whether the theater walls were made of bathroom tile. But that doesn’t diminish the performance’s obvious virtuousity and sheer clout.

Not every oldie worked for McEntire. Her hit remake of “Cathy’s Clown” is as wrongheaded as any popular cover song in memory (it keeps dubious company with Joan Baez’s stiff, strident reading of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”).

As sung by the Everly Brothers, the original “Cathy’s Clown” was notable for its winning rhythmic spring and the hangdog humor in the lyric. McEntire’s slowed-down, sob-story rendition ruinously changes the song’s point of view, sapping it of its best qualities. The Everlys’ protagonist is a man who realizes love has made a clown of him--a taking-off point for chuckles as well as tears. McEntire turned it around, casting herself as a jilted lover who thinks her ex-boyfriend is a clown for taking up with the less-deserving Cathy. The result was mannered melodrama.

Most of the songs McEntire herself has popularized were planted firmly in the middle of the road rather than in traditional country soil. It was as if she were trying to be like another brassy redhead, Bette Midler, only with an Oklahoma twang. That wasn’t the wind beneath McEntire’s spurs--it was the ersatz waft of synthesized strings and the schmaltzy, hollow tinkling of digital keyboards, used as a cushion against intrusions of realism.

The only hints of down-home country style came in a Western swing dance number, inserted so McEntire could change outfits, and in a long medley of heartbroken ballads. It was no great loss that the songs in the medley were truncated, because few of them rose beyond a rote familiarity of sentiment and lyrical expression.

The show’s staging also lacked spontaneity and a sense of adventure. A taped opening fanfare and the accompanying circling of floodlights smacked of Las Vegas bombast. The only folksy element was McEntire herself. But just when you thought she was being charmingly off-the-cuff, talking about how she loathed having to shape up after giving birth to her first child in February, it all turned out to be a planned setup for some inane shtick in which McEntire and her two backup singers tried to prod the crowd into doing mock-calisthenics. All but a few people in the nearly full house were too nonplussed by this nonsense to cooperate.

Get McEntire some spare, tradition-minded country arrangements. Put her in touch with some writers whose material is personal and individual. Above all, get it into her head that a distinctive talent shouldn’t be wasted on songs that sound as if they were bought off the rack.

Opening act Travis Tritt was put on early; he had come and gone by 7:30 p.m., the show’s advertised starting time.