Rascal Flatts joins Reba McEntire for an unreal version of “The Heart Won’t Lie.”
With Season 26 of The Voice just a few months away, it’s the perfect time to turn back the clock and experience a live performance of one of Reba McEntire’s most underrated songs, “The Heart Won’t Lie.”
How to Watch
For this particular rendition, the defending Voice champion enlisted the help of some of her dearest friends in the country music world, Rascal Flatts. The iconic band’s lead singer Gary LeVox took the male vocal lead usually reserved for the original singer in the duet, Vince Gill. The result was pure magic, and in a blink-and-you-missed-it moment, you could even catch Gill himself nearly moved to tears.
The unreal performance took place at the 2011 ACM Girls Night Out event, and dare we say, McEntire hasn’t aged a bit since then.
The song’s lyrics are classic country, and McEntire and LeVox easily navigate through the heart-wrenching subject matter (it is McEntire’s original song, after all). As usual, McEntire’s vocals soar.
Our favorite part? A young Carrie Underwood nodding her head along to the song as she watches in awe from the first few rows. 28 years old at the time, Underwood had one of the best seats in the house.
Reba attends the 56th Annual CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena on November 09, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee; Rascal Flatts attends the 51st annual CMA Awards at the Bridgestone Arena on November 8, 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic; Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
Here’s what you should know about “The Heart Won’t Lie”
Originally released in 1993 as the second single off McEntire’s multi-platinum album It’s Your Call, the track made waves in the country music world as a duet alongside Gill.
“The Heart Won’t Lie” was an unsurprising hit, ascending to the top spot on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart after 20 weeks climbing upward. The now-classic song is one of McEntire’s 24 #1 country hits over her illustrious career.
Interestingly enough, in comments made to About.com in 2008, the Voice Season 25 winner revealed that Gill wasn’t her first choice of country legend to sing with her on the track’s original recording.
“Originally, Kenny Rogers and I were looking at doing this song as a duet but we could never get it to sound just right because of the different ranges of our voices,” McEntire explained. “Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out. Later when I was working on a new CD, I remembered that song and called Kenny to see if he was recording it and if not, could I have it and he passed it along to me. We asked Vince Gill to sing the background harmonies on the song. Tony Brown, who was co-producing the CD with me, suggested letting Vince do more than just sing harmony on the song, so he took a couple of verses, and we decided to turn it into a duet.”
