Loretta Lynn

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 ...

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 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.

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

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

NEW YORK — Loretta Lynn, America's groundbreaking country titan whose frank lyricism delving into women's experiences with sex, infidelity and pregnancy ...

Loretta Lynn, the coal miner's daughter and moonshiner's wife who became one of American country music's biggest stars and a leading feminist in the genre, ...

Country singer and songwriter who was the defiant voice of the ordinary woman over a career that spanned six decades.

Loretta Lynn, the coal miner's daughter and moonshiner's wife who became one of American country music's biggest stars...

"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, ...

Country music legend passed away in her sleep. Sad news from the entertainment world with the passing of one of the most well-known singers of country music ...

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.

The 1976 book (and its 1980 film adaptation) helped the world see the country star's remarkable resilience. The writer who worked by her side remembers his ...

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.

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.

Lynn, who died Oct. 4, grew up in poverty in eastern Kentucky and went on to have 16 No. 1 hits. Her life story was portrayed in the 1980 film Coal Miner's ...

Martina McBride speaks to TODAY's Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie about Loretta Lynn's legacy and how she helped many women in the music industry.

Opinion. Another queen is dead. Long live Loretta Lynn. Image without a caption. By ...

Country music star Loretta Lynn died Oct. 4 at the age of 90. Her life story was made famous in the film Coal Miner's Daughter. She had 16 No.