Loretta Lynn, the ‘Queen of Country Music’, dies aged 90

Loretta Lynn, one of the iconic voices in country music, has died at the age of 90. In a statement, her family said she passed away peacefully at her “beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills” in Tennessee on the morning of 4 October. Lynn’s music was hugely influential in the country genre – her songs reflected her pride in her upbringing in Kentucky, and tackled subjects such as sex and love, cheating husbands, fighting other women, divorce, and birth control, leading to controversy and rewriting the rules of the genre.

Many of Lynn’s songs were rooted in real-life experiences. She was born Loretta Webb in a one-room log cabin in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky in 1932, the second of eight children. As she sang in the hit song ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’, the family struggled to live during the Depression. Her father earned a “poor man’s dollar” by working all night in the coal mines and all day in the fields “a-hoein’ corn”. The family made its own entertainment, and Lynn grew up on the songs of the Carter Family, to which the young girl would sing along.

At the age of 15, she attended a “pie social” – where local girls would bake a pie, and men would bid to win both the food and a meeting with the cook. Loretta’s pie was won by the 21-year-old soldier Oliver Lynn – a month later, they married and moved to Custer, Washington, where they raised four children. Her husband urged her to sing professionally and bought her a guitar – she started a band, Loretta and the Trailblazers, and by 1960, she had signed a contract with Zero Records.

Her songs often depicted broken relationships and unhappy homes

That year, she released her debut single, ‘I’m a Honky Tonk Girl’, which was inspired by a woman Lynn befriended in Washington whose husband had left her for another woman. She said she wrote the song in 10 minutes, leaning up against an old toilet in her house. She and her husband promoted it relentlessly, and the effort worked – it reached number 14 on the country charts, and Lynn relocated to Nashville. She released her first single (‘Success’) with Decca Records in 1962, beginning a string of hits that continued long into the 1990s. Her first number one came in 1966 with ‘Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)’, and she topped the US country charts another 15 times – she recorded 60 albums in total.

Her songs often depicted broken relationships and unhappy homes – they were unusual for expressing a female point of view that was unheard of at the time, but they also continued the genre’s spirit of honest reflection. She wrote about women left at home during the Vietnam War, and ‘The Pill’ was a frank celebration of reproductive choice. Many of her songs addressed her husband’s infidelity and alcoholism – ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)’ and ‘Fist City’ were feisty warnings to any woman who considered approaching her husband, while 1971’s ‘I Wanna Be Free’ fantasized about divorce. She confessed that the relationship was occasionally violent, although she stressed that she gave as good as she got – the couple stayed together for 48 years until Oliver’s death in 1996.

She became the first woman ever to be named entertainer of the year

Her autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, was published in 1976 – it was turned into a film in 1980, earning Sissy Spacek the best actress Oscar. Lynn’s output slowed in the 1980s, and she announced her retirement in the 1990s – she still released a handful of albums, as well as turning her attention to food. Her career was resurrected in 2004 by super-fan Jack White, and she experienced a renaissance of new material. She stopped touring in 2017 after a stroke and suffered a broken hip after falling at home the following year.

Friends with other country greats such as Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette, Lynn picked up accolades throughout her career. She became the first woman ever to be named entertainer of the year at the country genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later. Her awards include four Grammys, with a lifetime achievement prize in 2010 and her most recent win in 2019. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. 

Lynn is survived by four of her six children: Clara, Ernest and twins Peggy and Patsy, as well as 17 grandchildren and four step-grandchildren. And she leaves behind a legacy of iconic music and a down-to-earth candour that will forever mean she is one of the greats. As White said in an Instagram video: “She was such an incredible presence and such a brilliant genius in ways that I think only people who got to work with her might know about. What she did for feminism, and women’s rights in a time period, in a genre of music that was the hardest to do it in, is just outstanding and will live on for a long time. She broke down a lot of barriers for people that came after her.”