As Reba embarks on an exciting new chapter of her career with the much-anticipated release of Keep On Loving You, her debut album with The Valory Music Co., it is readily apparent that she's not your typical icon.

Sure, she's amassed the sort of career statistics that ensures legendary status in popular music– more than 55 million in album sales, 33 No. 1 hits, 2 Grammys, seven Country Music Association Awards (CMAs), 12 Academy of Country Music Awards (ACMs), nine People's Choice Awards and 15 American Music Awards. The Oklahoma quadruple threat has also found success in television, where her self-titled primetime TV series was a top-rated sitcom for six seasons, on Broadway, where she received rave reviews for her irresistible performance in Annie Get Your Gun, and in film. (And there's a best-selling autobiography, as well as the popular Reba collection at Dillard's featuring women's clothing and footwear and bed and bath specialty items.)

But what separates Reba from other cultural trailblazers with decades-long careers is that she is hotter than ever. Her name remains a familiar sight atop the charts, now nestled among a generation of artists who have been strongly influenced by her music and career path. “Strange,” the sassy debut single from Keep On Loving You, is the fastest-rising solo single and highest solo chart debut of her 33-year career. The new album is the follow-up to Reba Duets, which hit No. 1 on both pop and country album charts. Her last 13 studio albums have each received platinum status for reaching 1 million in sales.

She releases her 31st album to the largest fan base that she's ever had. “Going on TV, I got out in front of so many millions of people not only in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but all over the world, so that just broadened,” she says. “Now wherever I go, everybody recognizes me far more than they ever did when I just had a singing career. I was coming from Mexico and there was a plane from China going through immigration about the same time we were. A lot of Chinese people were looking over at me and saying, ‘You are Reba McEntire. We see you all the time on TV.'”

While proud of her accomplishments, Reba has little interest in looking back; she's too focused on what lies ahead in her relentless quest to find a better song, deliver a better performance and create a more entertaining show. “It's harder to maintain than it is to get there, so to maintain is one thing, but to kick it in the butt again and go on forward is another,” she says. “I am very competitive; that is the driving force behind my career – curiosity and competitiveness. Kenny Rogers always told me, ‘I don't have to be No. 1, but I sure like running with the Top 10.' We're always looking ahead, seeing what more we can do.”

This forward thinking led her to leave her longtime label and sign with The Valory Music Co., a move that reunited Reba with Scott Borchetta, the president/CEO of Valory and sister label Big Machine Records, who formerly worked with Reba at MCA Nashville Records. Borchetta, one of the industry's great record men, helped Reba earn 14 No. 1 singles and sell more than 22 million albums during his tenure at MCA. More recently, he launched the career of Big Machine's Taylor Swift and signed Jewel, Jimmy Wayne and Justin Moore to Valory.

“I think it's a new chapter, I really do,” Reba says of her entertainment career. “I'm back to only my music. In the last 10 years, I've either had TV shows, Broadway or something else going on. Basically this is a time when I can really concentrate and focus on my music. This being the first solo album in six years is very exciting to me, as is the new chapter with the record label and new excitement in the music again.

“It's a big milestone for me to be on a different label for the first time in my career,” says Reba, who had been with the same record company (the merged PolyGram/Mercury/MCA) since 1976 before signing with Valory in November 2008. “Just being with Scott Borchetta again is very exciting because of his enthusiasm and his great team. It's like a family reunion.

“Scott is very creative and innovative,” says Reba, who is managed by her husband, Narvel Blackstock. “He sure makes you work hard, that's for sure. I work harder when I am with him than with anyone else. He and Narvel make a great team of finding things for me to do. If you want to succeed and want your music out there, that is what you have to do because it's very competitive out there.”

Borchetta says, “Reba has attacked this new album with a renewed energy brought on in part by this new beginning. There is a huge excitement and hunger for new Reba music, which is apparent with her lead-off single, ‘Strange,' which is the fastest-moving single of her career. Even though she has nothing to prove, don't tell Reba! The gleam in her eye and the kick in her step can only mean one thing: The queen still rules. And she rules by example.”

Keep On Loving You is a collection of 13 songs that is quintessential Reba. It's a sound that is contemporary, fresh and relevant, yet still true to her traditional country roots . “I still go with the same formula I always have,” she says. “When a song moves me, I will sing it and hopefully it will move you. I just like to sing different songs. I think it goes back to that attention-span thing for me. Mama always said I had the attention span of a 2-year-old. I like to sing an up-tempo kick-butt song and then a ballad. ‘I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry' is one of my favorite songs, and then go into ‘Respect' or something like ‘Strange' or “Just When I Thought I'd Stopped Loving You.'”

Reba's music poignantly captures the routine details and crushing disappointments of American women's lives, where a red-carpet moment is the result of a Kool-Aid spill, not a star-studded movie premiere. It's the sound of babies crying and dryers humming, the silence of unappreciated sacrifices and ignored dreams. There's a secret afternoon hotel stay in “Eight Crazy Hours (In the Story of Love),” but this woman's temporary comfort comes from solitude, not illicit love. She uses the few unclaimed hours to cry out her frustrations in Room 5's bathtub before returning home to serve her family dinner. “She was smoothin' the sheet with the palm of her hand/When the thought struck home I don't know who I am,” the song says.

“It is real life with me,” Reba says. “I am not the glamorous person people may think I am. People who know me know I'm not. I'm the same person I was growing up in Southeastern Oklahoma. I go back home and see how hard my sister Alice works with four kids, one of them handicapped, and with her grandkids. I've got lots of great memories of being at home and the way we were raised, and you never forget that. I love to sing songs people can relate to. One of the reasons my music has lasted as long as it has is because I am a person that they can relate to and my music is what they can relate to.”

As she did in “Is There Life Out There,” Reba continues to offer hope and encouragement to the women of Middle America, letting them know they aren't alone as they face life's changing roles. She proves in “She's Turning 50 Today,” which she co-wrote, that it's never too late to begin leading the life you've always wanted to have.

“There's not many good songs for women around 50,” she says of the song about a woman who starts a new life after being left for a woman half her age. “I'm 54, so I thought it was a good song to sing for my generation. Men go through a mid-life crisis and get a younger woman. Instead of that woman being left behind falling to pieces, she considers it a new opportunity to find fun and adventure in her life.”

Reba loves the story-telling in songs such as “Fancy” and “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” and continues that tradition with the swampy “Maggie Creek Road,” a tale of a pistol-packing mother's retribution against a man who harmed her daughter. A strong female theme with a side dish of saucy attitude is another Reba musical stamp, one that delightfully flows through “Strange” and “Consider Me Gone,” while the heartache is palpable in “Nothing to Lose” and “Over You.” The fun “I Want a Cowboy,” “Pink Guitar” and “I”ll Have What She's Having” provide the perfect backdrop for a girls' night out.

While Reba has always remained true to herself on her previous albums, she presents her most authentic self to date (as Oprah might say) on Keep On Loving You, which she co-produced with Tony Brown and Mark Bright. “I have scaled down,” she says of her musical productions. “I always thought bigger was better, but I like the intimacy of staying out there onstage with my fans instead of going back and changing clothes 15 times. I like that fourth wall being broken.

“I like what I'm wearing and how I'm wearing my hair. I wear my cowboy boots and they are more me than any other look I've ever had in my 33-year career. Everything that we're doing now is more Reba than it was in the past. The things I did in the past were things I wanted to do to entertain me. After getting to do movies and TV, I realized the real me was just the simple Reba. That is the same Reba, the Reba that is on the Reba TV show.”

She developed a new recording philosophy during the six-year span between solo projects. “Back when I was touring and doing 80 to 120 dates a year and coming in and doing two or three albums a year, I'd get in there and sing and start entertaining myself by doing vocal trills and little acrobatic things,” says Reba. “But when you haven't sung for awhile on an album, you really get into the music and the song. And I've matured; I'm growing up. You think about things differently and you aren't trying to impress anybody. You are just trying to pay homage to this song. I mean, I'm trying to impress the musicians while we are performing, but I'm not trying to do outlandish things like the vocal trills I used to do 10 years ago.”

Fortunately, the results have garnered impressive reviews from some of her toughest critics. “Narvel summed it up for me,” she says. “He listened to it over and over and he said, ‘I think this is one of the best albums you've ever recorded.'”

Reba is ecstatic about the album's early and strong reception by country radio programmers (and her husband) and is eager to share her new music with her fans. “I wanted to name the album Keep On Loving You because it's a tribute to my fans: You've always been there for me and I'm going to keep on loving you,” says Reba.

“I'm excited about being with the new record label,” she says. “I'm excited about this new album. I'm excited where I am in my life, my age, that radio is still playing my music and that fans still want to hear my music and see me perform. I'm very grateful, appreciative and blessed.”

“Strange”

"I liked the way it has a lot of different melodies to it. It has great range, but the main reason I like it is because it's so sassy. I love the attitude of it. It's totally different, but it reminds me of the attitudes of 'Can't Even Get the Blues.' I seem to have success with sassy attitude songs. This song is about a woman who has been left behind from her partner or boyfriend, and she is trying to feel sad, but it's just not working, so she's going on with her life. It's a strong woman song."

“Just When I Thought I'd Stopped Loving You”

"This is the song that Rivers Rutherford wrote with Mark Nesler. I loved the beat and the melody. It reminded me of a Rascal Flatts song in the first part of it. It's really catchy.

"It's a song that I'd be singing the middle of the night when I woke up, so I knew it would be a great song when it is in your subconscious like that. I would say this is the least powerful woman song, because she is like, 'Oh, I can't give in and take you back one more time, I can't,' but then she does. I hate to say it's a booty call song, but it does remind me of that. I guess this is my booty call song!"

“I Keep On Lovin' You”

"We were in the studio recording with Tony Brown, and Tony had said they were just finishing up some of the Brooks & Dunn songs. He said, 'You ought to listen to this one song.

"I just love the song. I think it is wonderful. I think it can relate to a couple who have been together for a short time or a long time, but basically a long time. We've been through the highs and lows and ups and downs, we've fought and gotten back together, but no matter what we go through, I'm going to keep on loving you. I think it's an anniversary song."

“I Want a Cowboy”

"Katrina Elam co-wrote this song. I am a huge fan of Katrina Elam. She is one of the best singers I've ever heard.

"I asked Tony to ask Katrina if I could cut 'I Want a Cowboy.' She came in and sang some of the harmony on it too. It's a great kick-ass song that is good attitude. And I'm a cowgirl; I've rodeoed 10 years and I'm a third-generation rodeo brat, so I thought it was just perfect."

“Consider Me Gone”

"It's a strong woman song. I'm sure there are tons of women who get the cold shoulder when the husband comes in from work. He's had a rough day and she's had three kids at home, especially if it's summer. He doesn't want to talk, something's going on and it's confrontation time. If you are giving me the cold shoulder, if you're not wanting to talk to me, and if things aren't getting any better and if I don't turn you on, consider me gone. Here's the way the cow eats the cabbage. It's like, let's poop or get off the pot. Tell it like it is. It's a pretty cool song and it's confrontation time. That is one thing that is wrong with relationships, that there's not enough communication."

“But Why”

"I love the melody. It's one of those love songs that I usually don't record. It's also a strong woman song: 'I can do this by myself, but why would I want to when I can share it with you?' It's a real sweet love song. It's a very soft song."

“Pink Guitar”

"This is just a kick-ass fun song. I can see lots of little girls going, 'Yeah, I want to play guitar.' When I was growing up, guitars were for boys; that was the men's instrument, especially an electric guitar. Girls could play an acoustic guitar. I remember the girl who played on one of the awards shows with Carrie Underwood. She got out there and played her butt off. That was when I found 'Pink Guitar.' I said, 'She's going to love this song.'

"I love the attitude of it. It's still country; it's almost like 'Fancy.' This girl had this dream and she went on to survive and succeed. It's real cute and I love to sing it."

“She's Turning 50 Today”

"It's a song about a woman who found out that her husband left on Saturday for a woman who is half her age. She spent the day lying in bed, but then on Monday got up, loaded up her pickup truck and began a new chapter of her life. She went on with her life and didn't look back.

"I wrote the first two lines of 'She's Turning 50 Today' and sent it to Liz Hengber. I said, 'Why don't you work on this a little bit and email me back what you've got?' Two years went by, and I said, 'Liz, what about that song?' She said, 'Tommy Lee James and I are going to work on it.

"So by the time this album came around to start recording, they sent me an MP3 of it while I was in the studio. I rewrote the second verse to make it more personal and relate to me when I left Stringtown, Oklahoma, in 1987. So in a way it's about me leaving a relationship, but it was certainly years ago, but put the two together."

“Eight Crazy Hours (In the Story of Love)”

"This is a song I was on the fence about because it was so deep that I just didn't know how to take it. And so I let Autumn McEntire Sizemore, my niece, listen to it. She started crying and said, 'You've got to record this song.' I let more people listen to it and they were like, 'Oh my gosh!'

"It didn't hit me as hard as it did a lot of other people. I guess I haven't had to get away. I think my music is my release. Whenever I am menopausal or whatever, I can release things in my music when I sing. That is my therapy. It touched so many people that I recorded it. When I sang it live it choked me up so much that I couldn't get through it.

"This woman has a meltdown and she is just putting sheets on the bed and winds up in a bunch of dirty clothes on the floor, crying her eyes out. She checks into a cheap motel and lets it all out, crying in the bathtub. It was just as simple as picking up the kids and she's back in life again. She just needed to go away and take time for herself. Eight hours later, they're sitting around table eating chicken and laughing. It's eight crazy hours and the story of love."

“Nothing To Lose”

"Nothing to Lose" was on Melonie Cannon's album. When I was working with (Melonie's father) Buddy Cannon years ago, he gave it to me. I love Melonie's voice. 'Nothing to Lose' was one of those songs that I said, 'Man, if I could ever record that...,' so I did. I told everybody, 'I want to feature the band on this,' so we let the band play two or three times. Everybody had an instrumental. It's about a woman leaving on the bus going down to Georgia. She doesn't know where she's going and doesn't know what lies ahead, but she doesn't care. It's another strong woman song."

“Over You”

"Whew! That is a sad song, kind of like Anne Steele. It's a beautiful melody. (My husband) Narvel said he loved this song. He would play the demo over and over. It's just one of those about 'I knew the day would come when we would see each other again. You look great and got on with your life, but I'm still not over you.' It's really sad."

“Maggie Creek Road”

"We were in the studio and I was having trouble with my resonance; I wasn't getting my soft voice at all. During lunch I saw Dr. Richard Quisling, my throat doctor in Nashville, and he opened up my sinuses or resonances or something. I came back to the studio and started singing again and Tony Brown's mouth dropped open, 'My gosh, what did he do to you?' 'He lasered out a little infection.' I put Dr. Quisling on my album thanks-yous. He is just a miracle worker.

"I had been on the fence about this song, but Tony really wanted me to record it. While I was coming back in, I said, 'Let's do'Maggie Creek Road' next,' and he said, 'Yes!'

"It's about this woman who has a daughter that is almost déjà vu for this mother. The little girl is leaving with evidently an older man on a date. This is what happened to the mother 20 years ago. She isn't going to let history repeat itself, so she follows them. They are parked down by the river and she opens the door and takes care of the situation. As the song says, 'You don't want to see Mama go to war.' Mama was protecting her daughter. It's one of those swampy Louisiana songs with that feel."

“I'll Have What She's Having”

"This is a cute song. I loved it the first time I heard it. They had horns on it and I said, 'Of course we'll change it to fiddle and steel guitar.' It's real sassy. A woman is walking into a bar and she's looking for a man. She sees a woman having a good time, dancing with a man. 'I'll have what she's having... and by the way, that looks hot.' We'll have fun with it onstage."