About The Song
She’d get so wildly popular with time that it would be dropped from. her set list for several years, but “Whoever’s in New England” remains one of the most impactful records of Reba McEntire’s career.
Reba was already the reigning Female Vocalist of the Year for two years running at both industry award shows when “New England” topped the singles chart, but despite her increasing popularity on the radio and in the industry, her album sales were stuck in the 200,000 range. That changed when McEntire found the perfect song to fully present her theatrical talents: a Nashville Sound-flavored power ballad about a woman who suspects her husband is cheating on her when he goes on business trips.
McEntire’s own interpretation of the lyric is that the woman is lonely and has an overactive imagination, which plays well into her performance, where she pulls off one of her signature musical tricks for the first time, pairing her Oklahoma twang with a pure pop melody. That whole new traditionalist thing kept her attention for a couple of albums, but McEntire was too creatively restless to limit herself to a style that would ultimately be claimed by younger artists on the horizon anyway.
“New England” also was the first single of hers to include a music video, and it was a perfect fit for the cinematic scale of the record and budding acting skills of the artist. But the reason the clip worked so well is that it remained in service to the song, just like the record did.
When debating McEntire’s artistic peak, I come down pretty hard on the side of the early nineties over the mid-eighties, but the reason that the earlier era is in contention is because of highwater marks like this one.
Video
Lyrics
You spend an awful lot of time in Massachusetts
Seems Like every other week you’ve got a meeting waiting there
Business must be booming or could something else
Be moving in the air up there
You say that it’s important for our future
An executive on his way up has got to play the part
And each time duty calls you got to give it all
You’ve got with all your heart
But when whoever’s in New England’s through with you
And Boston finds better things to do
You know it’s not too late ’cause you’ll always have a place to come back to
When whoever’s in New England’s through with you
I hear the winter time up north can last forever
And I’ve been told it’s beautiful to see this time of year
They say the snow can blind you ’til the world you left behind
Just disappears I hear
I’ve packed your bags and left them in the hallway
But before you leave again there’s just one thing you outta know
When the icy wind blows through you remember that it’s me
Who feels the cold most of all
But when whoever’s in New England’s through with you
Oh and Boston finds better things to do
Oh, you know it’s not too late and you’ll always have a place to come back to
When whoever’s in New England’s through with you