** REBA McENTIRE “Rumor Has It” <i> MCA</i> : <i> Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic). : </i>

Once upon a time, a rodeo-circuit singer named Reba McEntire sang with the gritty, down-home authenticity of country-music greats like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. But then she started winning lots of awards and, horror of horrors, became an entertainer . This crippling syndrome that promotes image over talent is most evident in her continued preference for slick, emotionally bereft material from Nashville’s songwriting factories.

Only in two songs--”Climb That Mountain High” and a brassy remake of Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy”--is her molasses-thick, Oklahoma drawl allowed to seep through at all. The rest of the time, she’s swimming in glossy over-production, vocally bouncing around an echo chamber as big as the Dust Bowl itself. Even the one decent song on the album--Jesse Winchester’s “You Remember Me”--is stripped of the nearly unbearable melancholy of the original. Evidently, you can take the country out of the girl.