Reba McEntire doesn’t write many of her songs. So when she does, it is truly memorable. In 2010, McEntire released her All The Women I Am album. The record includes only one song McEntire wrote, and it’s “Somebody’s Chelsea”. Released as a single in 2011, “Somebody’s Chelsea” was written by McEntire, along with Liz Hengber and Will Robinson.
Not only did McEntire co-write “Somebody’s Chelsea”, but the idea came from McEntire as well. She was watching the film P.S. I Love You, starring Harry Connick Jr. and Hillary Swank, when she had the idea for what became “Somebody’s Chelsea”.
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“They’re sitting at the booth in the cafe,” McEntire tells The Boot. “And she’s saying how much she loved her husband, who passed on. I don’t know his name in the movie; it could’ve been Frank or something. And Harry Connick Jr.’s like, ‘What did I do? What’s wrong? How come you won’t love me?’”
In the film, McEntire recalls Swank saying, “Well, my husband was this, he was that. He was just so good…’ And Harry Connick Jr. gets up and starts to walk out, and she goes, ‘Where you going?’ He said, ‘I want to be somebody’s Frank. I’m going to go find that person.’ I’m like, ‘What a great idea for a song.’”
The Message In “Somebody’s Chelsea” by Reba McEntire
“Somebody’s Chelsea” says, “I wanna be Somebody’s Chelsea / Somebody’s world / Somebody’s day and night / One and only girl / A part of a love story / That never has an end / You know that’s what every woman wants to be / Somebody’s Chelsea.” A veteran songwriter, Robinson remembers being blown away when he found out McEntire’s idea for “Somebody’s Chelsea”.
“I thought it was such a clever and unusual idea,” Robinson says. “I’d never heard it like that before. I think the story was a bit different in the movie. It was a younger girl whose husband had died suddenly, so we decided to make it an older man who had been married about 60 years and lost the love of his life. And the singer’s thinking, ‘I hope somebody loves me like that.’”
“We got chills when we started thinking that this could really be a good song, if we write it right,” he adds. “It was a challenge to write it right because it’s an unusual title … that’s one reason I liked it so much, is that the title intrigued me. Luckily, we were able to get the song at the same level as the title.”
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