

It was a rare foray into the topic of women’s reproductive rights for country music. In a similar vein, Lynn, who claimed that her songs about wayward husbands were inspired by her fraught marriage to Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, confronted the “other woman” in songs such as 1966’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough” and 1968’s “Fist City.” A lasting legacyįully aware that her personalized accounts became political messages for her fan base of women, Lynn co-wrote and recorded “ The Pill” in 1975. You’d been out with all the boys and you ended up half tightĪnd don’t come home a drinkin’ with lovin’ on your mind Well, you thought I’d be waitin’ up when you came home last night With her assertive and resonant voice, Lynn, in her 1966 track “ Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” warns men not to expect women to be waiting at home, sexually available for them after they’d spent the night drinking:

This provided a sound of strength and conviction to accompany Lynn’s bold and forthright songs as she laid bare the double standards of gender roles. He combined the edgier sound of honky-tonk instrumentation – electric guitars, pedal steels and fiddles – with the polish of the Nashville sound by including the smooth sounding vocal harmonies of the vocal quartet the Jordanaires, as heard in numerous country, gospel and rock ‘n’ roll recordings. Meanwhile, the song arrangements of Owen Bradley of Decca Records directed Lynn’s musical talents to a broad audience. She did this through clever and witty songwriting and lyrical techniques that combined the vernacular of her audience with her resonant voice. Loretta Lynn made the concerns of everyday American women a focal point of her work. Specifically, for a generation of predominantly white women in the 1960s and 1970s who did not identify as urban or college-educated feminists, Lynn’s music offered candid conversations about their private lives as wives and mothers.Īs Lynn stated in her autobiography, her audience recognized her as a “mother and a wife and a daughter, who had feelings just like other women.” It railed against those who idealized women’s domestic roles and demonized outspoken feminists. She aimed for her music to articulate the fears, dreams and anger of women living in a patriarchal society. Lynn’s songs defied societal expectations by connecting her musical representations of working-class and rural women to broader social issues affecting women across the U.S. In contrast, Lynn’s songwriting continued the legacy of Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard and other women in country music who were willing to speak up about the concerns of American women. It was a time when Merle Haggard’s “ Okie from Muskogee,” with its attacks on counterculture, marijuana and draft-card burning, became a populist anthem for the country’s cultural conservatives. Lynn’s rise in the 1960s took place when country music appeared tied to conservative politics.

She grew up in poverty in a small Kentucky mining town, marrying and starting a family as a teenager before reaching unprecedented heights of commercial success as a recording artist of modern country music.īut as a scholar of gender and country music and author of “ Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls: Women’s Country Music, 1930-1960,” I know that Lynn represented more than just star power and fame in country music – she spoke to the concerns of women, especially white working-class women in rural and suburban America. Her dramatic life story – retold in the 1980 award-winning film “ Coal Miner’s Daughter,” based on Lynn’s 1976 biography – made Lynn a household name. Loretta Lynn’s death at the age of 90 marks the end of a remarkable life of achievement in country music.
