Reba McEntire Still Has the Drive

It was over 30 years ago that Reba McEntire picked up her first Top 10 hit, “(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven.” At the time she had that first hit, the biggest star in country music was Kenny Rogers, and even now, Reba remembers how much the Gambler was driven to stay at the top.


“Kenny,” she told Foster’s Daily Democrat in New Hampshire, “always told me, ‘I don’t have to be No. 1, but I sure like running with the Top 10.’”


Part of her success is simple persistence. She is, she said, “keeping at it, never giving up, never slacking off, always trying to find something new, better, bigger.”


“To maintain is one thing,” she said, “but to kick it in the butt again and go forward is another.”