Reba McEntire Hairstyles That Completely Missed The Mark (We Had To Look Twice)

Country music superstar Reba McEntire has had quite the hair transformation, rocking some truly bold styles over the course of her lengthy career. But nobody bats a thousand, and when you're someone like McEntire, who is constantly swinging for the fences when it comes to her looks, you're bound to whiff now and again. Granted, we should point out that some of McEntire's missteps aren't hers alone. The "Fancy" singer has been open about the fact that she hasn't always had full control over her hair.

For example, she apparently had to fight her management team tooth and nail to be able to cut her hair short back in the 90s. And even then, they apparently forced her to wear a wig for months on end before giving her the green light to debut her new look. More to the point, it wasn't always easy for McEntire to push back against all the micromanaging and to put her foot down when it came to how she was presented. "It took me a while to gain that confidence to stand up to a professional stylist, hair and makeup person, and say, 'That's not me. I don't like that,'" McEntire told People in 2024.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that McEntire has worn some truly embarrassing hairstyles that will likely continue to haunt her.  With that in mind, here are some Reba McEntire hairstyles that missed the mark so much that we had to do a double-take.

It's no secret that Reba McEntire has a high forehead. It's something she herself even joked about in a 2015 Facebook post. Obviously, we're not here to throw shade at the singer for something she can't control, but the curly middle part she rocked back in the 1970s definitely had an unfortunate spotlight effect. It's a shame, too, because the curls themselves look positively immaculate. Still, we can definitely see why McEntire started utilizing bangs to cover her forehead up a bit more. But as we'll see later, she didn't always hit the mark with those, either.

In the 1980s, big hair was king. And following that trend resulted in some of Reba McEntire's biggest hair fails. That's not to say the look can't work, but for McEntire, it was just way too much. You don't even have to take our word for it. McEntire made it clear in a 2024 interview with Glamour that she regretted getting that perm in the early '80s. "I have natural curly hair," she explained, adding, "If you add a perm to natural curly hair, it looks angry. And it did." 

You'd be forgiven if you don't even recognize Reba McEntire in this throwback pic without her iconic red hair. But what's even more jarring than her hair's golden hue is its almost spherical shape. Mind you, this snapshot was taken at the 1986 Country Music Association Awards, so it's clear that the '80s still had a firm grip on McEntire's fashion choices at this point. But what makes this hairdo, in particular, so bad is that McEntire's giving off serious grandma vibes here, even though she was only 31 at the time.

Mullets and country music go together like America and apple pie. As it turns out, though, this particular style doesn't exactly mix with that perm Reba McEntire came to regret so much. When she tried to go "business in the front, party in the back" in the late 1980s, it ended up being less Billy Ray Cyrus, more Dave Mustaine, and not in a good way. Mercifully, that accursed decade was almost over by that point. Unfortunately, the '80s didn't really end until about 1991 or so.

Reba McEntire's affinity for big hair continued into both the early and mid-1990s, but a new decade came with new problems. More specifically, the fact that McEntire's locks grew noticeably farther out than they did upward, giving her hair a bizarre, almost square-like quality. Honestly, we're starting to see why McEntire said "forget it" and chopped off most of her hair in the latter half of the decade, especially if her team was even half as fussy over her hair as she says they were. We can't even imagine how much lighter she must have felt rocking that pixie cut.

Though Reba McEntire pretty much kept her huge hair for the entire first half of the '90s, she did occasionally change things up during that era. However, this wasn't always for the better. Take, for instance, the 1992 Academy of Country Music Awards, when she went for an asymmetrical, '50s-esque updo. That's kind of a risky style to begin with, and once again, the natural curls and bounce of McEntire's hair just didn't agree with it. We can only assume how much hairspray was holding everything in place, as it looked like it could have burst at the seams at any minute.

When Reba McEntire cut her hair super short during the back half of the '90s, it was apparently quite liberating for her, per the aforementioned Glamour interview. And quite frankly, we love her pixie-cut era, which is why you'll find it nowhere near this list. However, anyone who has ever worn their hair super short only to grow it out long again knows all too well about that awkward middle phase. And by the time the '90s turned into the 2000s, it was clear that McEntire was not immune, as her hair looked like it just couldn't make up its mind. But we've all been there.

As we mentioned earlier, Reba McEntire definitely learned to effectively use bangs to her advantage over time. The thick, side-swept look is an especially big winner for her. That said, getting there apparently took some trial and error. For instance, at the 2005 Funny Ladies We Love Awards, she went for more of a wispy look, and it really didn't work for her. Her thin little bangs appeared at odds with the rest of her hair, which was much fuller. Combine that with the asymmetrical curls (the left side was visibly bouncier), and the whole thing just looks like kind of a mess.

Speaking of the wispy bangs Reba McEntire tried out in 2005, we have to talk about her look at that year's Family Television Awards. We get that McEntire had some bad luck with big, curly hair in the '80s. But going thin and straight isn't necessarily going to guarantee success on its own. And while this style at least made the thin bangs look a lot less incongruous than they did at Funny Ladies We Love, the whole thing still felt a bit half-baked, and was eye-catching for all the wrong reasons. It's far from McEntire's worst hairstyle ever, but she and her stylists definitely could have stood to go back to the drawing board on this one.