Valory Music Co., the independent label formed last year as a subsidiary to Scott Borchetta and Toby Keith's Big Machine Records, has added another huge feather to their proverbial cap: Reba McIntire. The announcement appears today on Valory Music's website.
A multimedia entertainer, Reba sold more than 55 million albums, won two Grammy awards and starred in the popular sitcom Reba! She has for a long time been signed with MCA Nashville, a division of Universal Music Group, where she met Borchetta, who at the time was Senior VP of Promotion.
McEntire and Borchetta worked closely together at MCA Nashville creating a strategy that dominated airplay, sales and touring at a time when few other female artists were doing it. During their collaboration, Reba and Borchetta had 14 number 1 hits and sold over 22 million records, giving MCA Nashville the title "Label of the Decade" for the 1990's.
Valory Music was formed last year when Borchetta surprised the music community last year by announcing a similar high-profile deal with Jewel to produce a country record. At that time, Borchetta stated that the objective of Valory Music was "to continue the momentum that has been achieved with Big Machine by not only replicating our current culture and our recent successes, but also by taking everything that we've learned over the last two years and pouring it into this exciting new venture. We continually re-engineer what we think we know and we feel like we've identified an incredible opportunity with the simultaneous availability of some incredible artists and record executives. . . ."
Together, Big Machine and Valory are two of the most successful independent projects in town, selling records for a stable of artists that includes the aforementioned Jewel, Taylor Swift, Trisha Yearwood, and Emerson Drive.
McEntire is expected to release a single with Valory Music next spring, with a complete album coming in the summer of 2009.
