Reba McEntire Takes Part in Netflix’s Viral Social Media Trend With Nod to Her Classic 1991 Murder Ballad
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McEntire has previously described the song as one of the most beloved tracks among her longtime fans.
Reba McEntire has joined the latest social media craze, giving fans a playful nod to one of her best-known songs.
The country superstar, 71, referenced her 1991 rendition of the murder ballad “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” in an Instagram video posted Wednesday, July 29. The clip follows a viral format in which users dramatically sit down in front of a camera as though they are about to appear in a Netflix documentary.
In McEntire’s version, she jokes that she is preparing for a fictional documentary centered on “a backwoods Southern lawyer.” She walks over to a tan chair and takes her place while two women fuss over her appearance, touching up her makeup and arranging her hair.
McEntire, dressed in a leather jacket, black trousers and knee-high boots, points out that she is wearing a microphone before teasing that she may have something significant to say. She then references the infamous events described in the song, jokingly telling viewers to wait until they hear about “the night the lights went out in Georgia.”
The song itself dates back to 1972, when songwriter Bobby Russell wrote it and his then-wife, Vicki Lawrence, recorded it. Lawrence released the track on her 1973 album, and it went on to top the Billboard Hot 100. The fictional story follows a man who is wrongly blamed for a murder and ultimately executed in a corrupt Southern town.
McEntire’s social media joke draws directly from the song’s storyline, particularly its portrayal of a dishonest legal system and a town where justice is anything but fair.
The song found a new audience nearly two decades later when McEntire recorded her own version for her 1991 album For My Broken Heart. Her rendition remained on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for 20 weeks and reached No. 12.
McEntire has previously spoken fondly of the song’s place among her fans, describing it as one of the tracks from her career that her audience loves most.