Martina McBride ‘So Grateful’ To Record New Single, ‘Reckless’

Martina McBride fell in love with her brand new single, “Reckless,” the moment she heard it. “I was like, ‘Holy! This is my song. I have to have this song,” the four-time CMA Female Vocalist of the Year recalled during a phone call with Sounds Like Nashville earlier this week.  But there was one problem: “Reckless” was already put on hold by someone else…Grammy-winning trio, Lady Antebellum.

After hearing the demo, McBride quickly picked up the phone and called her good friend Sarah Buxton, who co-wrote the song alongside Zach Crowell and Heather Morgan, and together, they decided it would be best to wait and see what happened.

A few weeks went by, and just as McBride was about to head into the studio, producer Nathan Chapman called Lady A’s Charles Kelley to see if the trio had plans to record the song. When he found out how much the song meant to Martina, Kelley graciously gave her his blessing to cut the song.

“He goes, ‘You know what? If she loves it, she can have it,’” McBride explained, recognizing that Kelley’s act of kindness was “such a beautiful thing to do.”

“Hopefully, I’ll get to pass that forward to someone one day,” she said. “ It worked out like it was supposed to and I was just so grateful to get to record a song that just meant so much to me.”

While “Reckless” will resonate with a lot of people for many different reasons, it took Martina back to the early days of her career when she was playing the club scene. Although she was working two jobs and paying her own bills, she admits she was “also kind of partying and just being young.” That’s when she first met her husband, John.

“He came in and saw who I really was and just loved me unconditionally. I feel like that’s what the song is about, gratitude for unconditional love.”

Although the Kansas native has quite the resume with 20 Top 10 singles and six No.1s to her name, she admits she still gets a little nervous when releasing new music.”It’s kind of like showing somebody your baby and hoping that they think it’s cute,” she laughed.

“Reckless” drops tomorrow, and one thing’s for sure: Martina will be sticking close to social media to see what fans think of the song.

“I’m probably not going to get much done on Friday,” she admitted, and recognized that releasing new music has changed quite a bit over the years.

 “You do get instant gratification now, where you didn’t use to.  You used to have to wait for the reviews to come in or see people to hear what they thought or write letters. And now, you know you will do get immediately a sense of how it’s going.”

When it’s all said and done, McBride hopes fans love the song as much as she does. “I love it, so at the end of the day, there’s that gratification for me. I know it’s a great piece of work and I know it means a lot to me, but [I] want everybody to like it.”