Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn, who rose from a hardscrabble upbringing to become the most culturally significant female singer-songwriter in country music history, ...

Loretta Lynn, the "Coal Miner's Daughter" whose gutsy lyrics and twangy, down-home vocals made her a queen of country music for seven decades, has died.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner's daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of ...

The country singer brought unparalleled candor about the domestic realities of working-class women to country songwriting over the course of her 60-year ...

She also became the first female artist to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year award in 1972. In addition, she was a member of the ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner's daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of ...

In “The Pill,” a song about sex and birth control, Lynn sings about how she’s sick of being trapped at home to take care of babies: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill,” she sang. “I was singing when I was born, I think,” she told the AP in 2016. She won four Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008, was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. The dresses she was known for wearing are there, too. Her younger sister, Crystal Gayle, is also a Grammy-winning country singer, scoring crossover hits with songs like “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and “Half the Way.” Lynn’s daughter Patsy Lynn Russell also was a songwriter and producer of some of her albums. Lynn wrote her first hit single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” released in 1960. “Van Lear Rose” was a collaboration with rocker Jack White, who produced the album and played the guitar parts. Now they’re both in Heaven getting to visit and talk about how they were raised, how different country music is now from what it was when they were young. Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an Academy Award and the film was also nominated for best picture. Her honesty and unique place in country music was rewarded. [Lynn told the AP](/article/5c993e85d5bd40d8b01a6840c8ecdc78) in 2016. The Country Music Hall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers for material from which even rock performers once shied away.

Country music legend Loretta Lynn died on Tuesday, Oct. 4, in her Hurrican Mills, Tennessee home at the age of 90. Born in Butcher Hollow, Lynn was known as ...

A reflection of Loretta Lynn's highly anticipated, late-career album "Van Lear Rose," a collaboration between her and producer Jack White.

Loretta Lynn changed country music with "The Pill" in 1975. In a post-Roe America, its legacy is complicated.

Obviously, the shape of Lynn’s legacy will eventually be decided by her music more than her political endorsements, and that’s good, because her songs make the chronic problems in today’s country music industry feel so clear. [Coal Miner’s Daughter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoKThsOCjuU)” was Lynn’s hallmark, “The Pill” is her triumph, and its legacy in a post-Roe America has become more complicated than previously imaginable. In 1975, “The Pill” was a controversial hit about hard-won freedoms, Lynn’s playful twang conveying its liberated mood with levity and bounce.

The love for Loretta Lynn flowed freely Tuesday after news of her death at the age of 90 was announced.

I am so grateful that I got to know her, to spend time with her, laugh with her…..I was always a little astonished when she called me her friend.” Loretta Lynn was a great artist, a strong and resilient country music pioneer and a precious friend. May she rest in peace.” “We all loved her so much. The world lost a magnificent human being. “Today is a sad day.

Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner's daughter who became a pillar of country music, has died.

In “The Pill,” a song about sex and birth control, Lynn sings about how she’s sick of being trapped at home to take care of babies: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill,” she sang. “I was singing when I was born, I think,” she told the AP in 2016. She won four Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008, was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. “I could see that other women was goin’ through the same thing, ‘cause I worked the clubs. The dresses she was known for wearing are there, too. Her younger sister, Crystal Gayle, is also a Grammy-winning country singer, scoring crossover hits with songs like “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and “Half the Way.” Lynn’s daughter Patsy Lynn Russell also was a songwriter and producer of some of her albums. Lynn wrote her first hit single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” released in 1960. “Van Lear Rose” was a collaboration with rocker Jack White, who produced the album and played the guitar parts. Now they’re both in Heaven getting to visit and talk about how they were raised, how different country music is now from what it was when they were young. Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an Academy Award and the film was also nominated for best picture. Her honesty and unique place in country music was rewarded. The Country Music Hall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers for material from which even rock performers once shied away.

The country star sang about desire, cheating, heartache and righteous revenge in three-minute vignettes that depicted lives she knew and understood.

“You called me your wife to be,” she sings, with a bitter downward swoop on “wife”; she sings “You turned a flame into a blaze” with an upward leap on “flame” and a quaver on “blaze” that make the fire almost visible. [“Wings Upon Your Horns,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDKHspqZvHg) sung by an “innocent country girl” who was seduced and betrayed — with an overlay of religious imagery that was controversial at the time — has a placid midtempo backup. As a singer, Lynn applied what she learned from the twang and vibrato of Kitty Wells and the torchy intensity of Patsy Cline to her own voice: reedy and tart with steely underpinnings, ready to summon tearfulness or indignation, slyly eluding the beat to hesitate at one moment and blurt something the next. While mainstream country moved away from Lynn’s lean traditionalism toward arena-scale production, she persevered, touring through the decades and earning generation upon generation of new admirers. But it still held the ring of truth. “I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about. [desire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj4krt6-E5Y), cheating, heartache and righteous revenge. Lynn was the coal miner’s daughter who kept her Kentucky drawl and remembered clearly what it was like growing up poor in Butcher Holler. The Appalachian traditions Lynn had grown up on lingered in her music; she wrote tunes in the familiar forms of waltzes, ballads and honky-tonk shuffles. “You put your whole heart into a song when you’re hurting.” Drawing on the experiences of the turbulent 48-year marriage that she began in her teens, she sang about Her songs were terse, scrappy and so skillfully phrased that they sounded like conversation, despite the neatness of their rhymes.

While the majority of classic Loretta Lynn songs flowed from her own pen, this aching song of loneliness – from her 1964 album Songs From My Heart — features ...

Lynn’s album Van Lear Rose was a testament to the never-ending creative spirit of the singer. In 1994, Lynn re-visited the tune, covering it herself on her album Making More Memories. If you have copies of this Decca single with the title printed as “Here In Topeka,” chances are pretty good that you have a collector’s item. The singer was inspired to write this 1971 top 10 hit while traveling around the United States on tour. The song had none of the sassy spirit and fire that had been a part of such classics as “Fist City.” It was her story — about growing up poor in the mountains of Kentucky. Though the threat to “lay off my man if you don’t want to go to Fist City” probably wouldn’t fly today, she certainly makes her point that it’s hand’s off or there’s going to be trouble. It was the first of the singer’s songs to show the take-no-prisoners mentality that she became so famous for with her material. This song of warning to another woman who had designs on the singer’s man — inspired by a real-life incident — has become one of the most covered of Lynn’s songs over the years. The first of Loretta Lynn’s songs to top the Billboard country charts came with this feisty offering about a woman who was tired of her husband wanting to get romantic when he was intoxicated. She scored her first top 10 in 1962 with the aptly titled “Success.” Her first No. Fifteen years later, Emmylou Harris lovingly tipped her hat to Lynn with a faithful hit cover of this timeless tune. Though an unabashed country music traditionalist, there was nothing old-fashioned concerning her approach to a lyric.

Loretta Lynn, the country music star who brought unparalleled candor about the domestic realities of working-class women to country songwriting, died at her ...

"I miss her dearly," says the star, after fellow country singer Loretta Lynn dies at the age of 90.

Mr. Abdurraqib is a poet, an essayist and a cultural critic. If I wanted to interview Loretta Lynn, I was going to have to write her a ...

“Sitting right there, the first woman to win CMA entertainer of the year: Miss Loretta Lynn!” The audience at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville roared as Lynn, ...

Loretta Lynn, the country music legend whose music took her from the poverty of an east Kentucky coal town to the heights of fame, died Tuesday at her home.

While Lynn claimed not to be a 'big fan of women's liberation', her songs told a different story, documenting female pleasure, pain and physicality.