Reba McEntire Takes Us ‘Back to God’ in Powerful New Video [Watch]
Powerful music needs a powerful music video, and Reba McEntire managed to match the two with her latest single, "Back to God."
An emotional country hymn, "Back to God" is loaded with questions for the listener: "Have you lost a love? / Do you feel like givin' up? / Has your heart been broken? / Are your kids okay? / Will they come home safe? / Do you lie there hoping?"
As the song continues, McEntire hammers home in the chorus that the only way to ease these stresses is to "Fold your hands and beg and plead / You gotta keep on praying. ... We can't go on like this and live like this / We can't love like this / We gotta give this world back to God."
To visually match the song lyrics, McEntire worked with director Mason Dixon, filming scenes for the music video at Nashville’s Tulip Street United Methodist Church and Mount Olivet Cemetery.
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To create contrast, Dixon decided to film each of the two settings differently. The inside of the church, which has beautiful stained-glass windows and high ceilings, features McEntire singing behind a locked camera, emphasizing the serenity and security within the church. The cemetery and other scenes outside of the church were filmed with a hand-held camera and are purposefully more amateur, to create feelings of reality and insecurity.
The scenes in the video take the listener on an emotional ride, ranging from feelings of sadness and grief to joy and a sense of community.
“I’ve been asked a lot lately about why now was the right time to release this song,” McEntire says in a press release. “I think it is always the right time to give it back to Him because we seem to mess things up on our own. We all need to just love each other more unconditionally, without judgment, because we can’t do this on our own.”
"Back to God" is the single from McEntire's forthcoming double-disc gospel record, Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope, set for release Feb. 3.
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