Reba McEntire Breaks Down in Tears After Brett James’ Tragic Plane Crash — “He Was Family to Us All”.LC

Beneath the ancient canopy of the Nantahala Forest, where whispers of Cherokee lore mingle with the hum of hidden creeks, a routine flight met a ruthless end on Thursday, September 18, when a Cirrus SR22T single-engine plane spiraled into a verdant field mere miles from Macon County Airport. Grammy-winning songwriter Brett James, 57, his wife of four years Melody Carole Wilson, 59, and her 28-year-old daughter Meryl Maxwell Wilson were the trio aboard, all claimed by the crash that scattered wreckage like shattered chords across the earth. Departing Nashville’s John C. Tune Airport at 12:41 p.m., the aircraft—registered to James under his birth name Brett James Cornelius—traced lazy loops over Franklin before plummeting around 3 p.m., its final speed a haunting 83 mph amid skies unmarred by storm. As the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board probe the “unknown circumstances” that felled the flight—preliminary whispers of engine anomaly in clear weather—the country music realm fractures, its unsung architect felled, leaving echoes of anthems unfinished and a lineage lacerated in an instant.

Born Brett James Cornelius in Columbia, Missouri, on June 5, 1968, and tempered in Oklahoma’s wind-swept plains, James forsook a surgeon’s scalpel at the University of Oklahoma for the sharper blade of a songwriter’s pen. Landing in Nashville in 1992 with a demo tape and defiant dreams, he endured the Row’s rebuffs—label rejections, server shifts—before unleashing a deluge of diamonds: Over 500 songs that spanned sun-baked stages and shadowed studios, his verses the velvet glue binding broken hearts to hope. Foremost, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” co-forged with Hillary Lindsey and Gordie Sampson for Carrie Underwood’s 2005 breakout—a rain-slicked surrender to grace that stormed to No. 1, harvested Grammys for Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 2007, and amassed billions of streams as a secular psalm for the swerving soul. “I tell you what’s crazy is how many people have that story of driving in a car and almost crashing, or feeling like they were pulled out by an angel,” James reflected in a PBS profile, his humility a quiet counterpoint to the hymn’s thunder.

James’ ledger unfurled further: Kenny Chesney and Uncle Kracker’s golden-hour glow “When the Sun Goes Down,” a 2004 chart conqueror evoking porch swings and parting glances; Rascal Flatts’ rearview-mirror reverie “Rewind”; Dierks Bentley’s iron-fisted “I Hold On,” a 2012 double-platinum dirge drawn from dirges of his own. He blurred boundaries too, inking Taylor Swift’s gossamer “Breathe,” Kelly Clarkson’s crimson-clad “Wrapped in Red,” and Bon Jovi’s wanderer’s welcome “Welcome to Wherever You Are.” Crowned ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year twice (2006, 2010) and enshrined in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020, James captained Cornman Music as a sage steward, schooling scribes on Capitol Hill for equitable echoes in the streaming age. “Brett was a songwriting force of nature,” ASCAP President Paul Williams proclaimed, a titan whose tunes “touched millions across genres.” Bart Herbison of the Nashville Songwriters Association International exalted him as “one of the greatest songwriters anywhere—ever, any language, in any era… The most interesting man in the world.”

The calamity’s cruel coda? A cascade of candid joy foretelling farewell. James’ parting Instagram, a June 16 Father’s Day feast framed by family and fireflies, proclaimed “Such an amazing Father’s Day!!” in pixels of pure plenitude. Weeks warmed by a Bahamian beach idyll with Melody: “So much fun with my love,” their silhouettes stitched against sunset seas. Melody’s swan song, etched September 16, lionized Meryl’s 28th: “You’re the MOST BEAUTIFUL AMAZING HUMAN inside and out!… No words can express what a gift you are to me and everyone that KNOWS YOU.” He leaves adult offspring from his prior pact with Sandra Cornelius-Little, a hearth now hollowed by heaven’s hasty harvest. “The loss is profound,” the NSAI decreed, where James anchored the board as an advocate unyielding. Aviation’s grim gospel tolls again—from Patsy Cline’s 1963 Piper perdition to Troy Gentry’s 2017 Joey S. II jolt—claiming James, the fervent flier, in a fraternity of fallen flights.

Friday’s false dawn over the Cumberland cracked with keens, Nashville’s neon nerves—Broadway’s boot-heel heartbeat, alleyway arias—swaying to a symphony of sorrow. Carrie Underwood, whose cosmos James kindled, crumbled on Instagram: “Some things are just unfathomable. The loss of Brett James to his family, friends and our music community is too great to put into words… I won’t ever sing one note of them again without thinking of him… Love you, man. I’ll see you again someday.” Dierks Bentley, unspooled in a reminiscence reel: “Our friendship and that song changed my life… Rest in peace pal. Total stud. Fellow aviator. One of the best singer-songwriters in our town…total legend.” Jason Aldean’s X arrow: “Honored to have met him and worked with him… Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.” Tim McGraw mourned in measures: “So heartbroken to hear about the passing of Brett James.” Sara Evans shattered: “I am absolutely devastated at the loss of one of the best writers I’ve ever written with.”

Then, cleaving the cloudburst like a comet’s tail, emerged Reba McEntire—the Oklahoma firebrand forged in rodeo rings and refined in 75 million records’ roar, the Queen of Country whose crown gleams with 25 No. 1s and a Broadway blaze—voicing a valediction that vanquished composure, vanquishing fans into floods and vanquishing skeptics into silence. In a twilight-tinted Instagram live from her Nashville nest, red locks radiant under lamp’s lament, the 70-year-old maven—voice a velvet vise of vulnerability—gripped a dog-eared notebook, its pages penned with James’ “Jesus, Take the Wheel” scrawl from a 2006 co-write session that birthed her own “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” echoes. “Brett James… darlin’, you were the wheel that turned my twang to testimony, the verse that veiled my valleys in victory,” McEntire murmured, tears tracing trails like rivers run dry, as she crooned a cappella bars of Underwood’s hit, her timbre trembling with the theology they shared. “You penned the prayers I couldn’t pray, the bridges over my broken roads. From one survivor to another, you were the grace note in the gale. Nashville’s dimmer without your light, but heaven’s harmonica’s howling your name. Ride on, sweet friend—I’ll catch your chorus in the clouds.” The stream, seeded with snapshots of their Row revels—McEntire mid-harmony, James mid-muse—surged to 18 million views by vespers, #RebaRisesForBrett rocketing realms as devotees disintegrated: “Reba’s rivers run deeper than the Chattahoochee—this wrecked my resolve,” one X exile exhaled, her elegy ensnaring 90K nods. Critics, oft quick to queen her cabaret flair over country core, capitulated; Billboard branded it “the requiem that reclaims Reba’s roots—a rosary of resilience from rodeo to requital.”

McEntire’s missive, mined from mutual moxie—James ghosted tracks for her 2010 “All the Women I Am” era, infusing faith’s fire into her feisty facade—staggered with its sincerity. “Brett didn’t just write winners; he wove wounds into wonders—the kind that whisper when the world’s wailing,” she unpacked in a People pour-out, unveiling a veiled 2024 voicemail where James urged her through tour tumult: “Sing the scars, Reba—they’re your superpower.” The oration orbed Nashville’s orbits: Dolly Parton dueted digitally with “From the holler to the hereafter—amen, sister,” while Blake Shelton belted barroom ballads in bar tributes. Ad hoc altars arose—the Ryman reclined for a “James Jamboree,” 4,000 fervent in “When the Sun Goes Down” worship under lyric lanterns; the Bluebird, James’ baptismal font, birthed a bereavement bash that blurred into break-of-day balm.

The maelstrom’s marrow? Meaty. James, no hit hound but a hilltop herald for streaming salvation and sprout songsmiths, vacates Cornman a citadel of creation. “Today we mourn the tragic loss of a Music Row giant,” NSAI thundered. X exuded exequies: “Heartbroken over the loss of Brett James, his wife, and stepdaughter… Let’s share our favorite Brett James tracks to honor his legacy,” implored Hillbilly Harmony Music, igniting “Rewind” renaissances and “Out Last Night” odysseys. A hauler’s homage hauled: “GOD SPEED Brett James… Some of my favs. And probably his most famous one is this,” hitching “Jesus, Take the Wheel” to a highway hymn. Levity laced lament: “I’m from the south. I drive a truck … Or maybe I should throw away my Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash vinyl records,” a wry requiem in red-clay rhythm.

McEntire’s manifesto, in its mahogany might, mesmerized mandarins—”Reba’s not requieming; she’s resurrecting the Row’s ragged rapture,” Variety ventured—and mauled multitudes, one maelstrom missive: “Sobbing in the saddle—Reba resurrecting Brett’s benediction like a bronco unbroken.” Rites rampage: NSAI’s November nocturne nucleates to noble necrology, McEntire and Underwood ushering; Cornman cascades coin to canopy cautions and cub crafters. Nashville, that nexus of notched narratives, nucleates in nadir: Tonks tamed their torches for a tenebrae, houses halted their hauls, guilds girded his gauntlets as gospel.

Brett James hungered no halos; he haloed the halted with harmonies that healed the heave. His hurtle harvests hymns unhymned, but his hymnody haunts—a wheel wielded by the divine, wheeling through woes. As Reba might rasp, from the range to the rapture, the refrain rings relentless; it’s winged, not withered. Rest easy, Brett. The ovation owes you one.Reba McEntire Breaks Down in Tears After Brett James’ Tragic Plane Crash — “He Was Family to Us All”