Goodbye Loretta

Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. She was 90.

Most know her story, a coal miner’s daughter, born into the remote Appalachian town of Butcher Hollow, Van Lear, Ky., in 1932. The second of eight children (her siblings include fellow country singer Crystal Gayle), Lynn got her start in music, after her husband gave her first guitar. Her writing style started simple, whatever she did that day, she wrote about. But soon, she would touch on stronger topics.

She was fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers. She signed with Decca and over the next 30 years released more than 50 records for the label. She cut 16 chart-topping country songs, many of which — like 1967's "Don't Come Home a' Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)," 1968's "Fist City," 1969's "Woman of the World (Leave My World Alone)," and the autobiographical "Coal Miner's Daughter" from 1970.

That song spurred Lynn to release her autobiography in 1976, which was later made into a movie of the same name. It starred Sissy Spacek, who won the Oscar for Best Actress.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Lynn slowed down with recording, partially to take care of her husband who died in 1996. The icon had been adamant that she wrote lyrics every day and, in 2004, gained a fresh new generation of fans — and her only solo Grammy — with her Jack White collaboration Van Lear Rose.

What she means to country music is beyond measurable. There would be no Margo Price or Tanya Tucker or Miranda Lambert without Lynn. She took the lumps and set the stage for all to follow. In 2021, she released her 50th studio album, Still Woman Enough, which celebrated women in country music.

Loretta Lynn was an icon.