POP MUSIC REVIEWS : McEntire’s Aim to Please Misses Some Marks

Reba McEntire is country music’s most frustrating underachiever. She’s one of its most popular female acts, with a growing cache of Grammys, gold and platinum records, an occasional film or television role, and a chart-topping new album and autobiography.

But the uncommon vocal chops she demonstrated Friday at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater couldn’t overcome her tragic aim to please.

Her days as a country “new traditionalist” are nearly a decade behind McEntire now, as she has turned increasingly to syrupy tear-jerkers and other mainstream formulas, apparently mistaking a crossover toward pop with musical growth.

The Oklahoma-born singer began the nearly two-hour concert with a very non-country performance of the Aretha Franklin R & B hit “Respect” on a massive, multilevel stage with projection screens and other special effects. What followed was less a traditional concert than something resembling an old television variety show, with bits of comedy and drama, and at least a dozen costume changes, from choir robes to sequined gowns.

“Here I am 39 years old, and I’m still playing dress-up,” she joked.

But when she managed to shake the stage glitz, McEntire was a charming and energetic presence. The natural power of her vocals did much to lift things above the show-biz hokum surrounding her, though the stage was so overflowing with fog during the schmaltzy “For My Broken Heart” that fans in the front rows were fanning it away with their cowboy hats.

McEntire was often at her best during such bluesy numbers as the new “Why Haven’t I Heard From You?” But she earned a standing ovation Friday when backup singer Linda Davis joined her for “Does He Love You?”--their 1993 Grammy-winning duet. (Davis also performed a song from her own “Shoot for the Moon” album.)

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Opening the show was chart-topping newcomer John Michael Montgomery, who also blends pop elements into his sound, but still has his roots firmly planted in the country tradition.

The Kentucky singer-guitarist swaggered across the stage singing romantic ballads from his new “Kickin’ It Up” album that echoed both mainstream country and early Eagles. Montgomery was also enough of the attentive crowd-pleaser to autograph a Stetson or two from the crowd in mid-lyric.

His seven-man band was too restrained to truly “kick it up a bit,” as Montgomery promised, through most of the mid-tempo rave-ups. Their mess of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” did work despite itself, mainly because Montgomery’s lead guitar was so raw and unintelligible (threatening at times to explode into “Freebird”) that the song actually evoked something real of the adolescence he said he was paying tribute.