- Honky Tonk Angels · 1993
- 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn · 1987
- Coal Miner's Daughter · 1971
- The #1 Hits Collection · 1971
- Don't Come Home a Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind) · 1966
- Blue Kentucky Girl · 1965
- I Fall to Pieces - Single · 2020
- Full Circle · 2016
- Honky Tonk Angels · 1993
- All Time Greatest Hits · 1970
- 20 Greatest Hits · 1987
- The Definitive Collection: Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn (Remastered) · 1981
- You're Lookin' At Country · 1971
Essential Albums
- When Loretta Lynn wrote “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in late 1969, it was about three times longer than the version she would eventually record. After all, this was her life on the page—once she started, there was no holding back. The song not only became her signature, it helped introduce America to the conditions of life at the margins in Appalachia. Country music had always embraced working-class pride. But Lynn’s images—of reading the Bible by oil light, or watching her mother scrub laundry until her fingers bled—were something else. This wasn’t just hard work; it was abject poverty. She later said that the song didn’t tell the half of it—but that if she had told the whole story, people wouldn’t believe her. The 11 tracks on Lynn’s 1971 classic Coal Miner’s Daughter are all rich with details from her life. Like any woman in a country song, she was subject to wayward men and the women who seduced them (as evidenced by tracks like “The Man of the House” and “What Makes Me Tick”). But where Dolly Parton represented purity and tolerance, and Tammy Wynette the comforts of self-pity, Lynn was an inveterate fighter, like a honky-tonk hero reborn for the 1970s. She wasn’t too proud to admit she’d been the other woman (“Another Man Loved Me Last Night”, “Any One, Any Worse, Any Where“), nor did she avoid responsibility when she knew she was wrong (“Hello Darlin’”). In other words, she was a woman with agency, and she knew it—a message that felt especially resonant at a time when feminism was starting to ripple through the American mainstream. And if you come for her man, she’ll shoot you and nail your hat to the wall (“It’ll Be Open Season on You”). Of course, that might be a metaphor—but by the way she sings, it doesn’t sound like it.
- 1965
- 2021
- 2018
- 2016
- 2016
- 2013
- 2012
Artist Playlists
- This honky-tonk icon brought a gritty, feminist perspective to many of her songs.
- Fierce, fun jams by artists filling some of the biggest boots in country music.
- Certified country classics from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War.
Singles & EPs
Live Albums
- 2004
More To Hear
- The story behind her hit record “You Ain’t Woman Enough.”
- A focus on Loretta Lynn with granddaughter, Tayla Lynn.
- Loretta Lynn talks about meeting Waylon Jennings.
- Pharrell produced the band's new album.
About Loretta Lynn
Kentucky legend Loretta Lynn may not have been the first female country star to elbow her way into Nashville’s boys’ club in the early ’60s, but she was the first to make the female experience—and all the social pressures and double standards that come with it—central to her songbook. Lynn’s bold and soulful voice was matched by her eagerness to smuggle countercultural notions about birth control (“The Pill”) and divorce (“Rated ‘X’”) into the Grand Ole Opry, establishing the archetype for the taboo-breaching Music City provocateur that endures through the likes of the Chicks, Kacey Musgraves, and Miranda Lambert. And those eyebrow-raising lyrics were delivered with outsized swagger: On the 1968 woman-scorned screed “Fist City”, Lynn exuded an attitude that rivalled the sneering garage rockers of the day. So it was no surprise that, long after the 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter made her a star beyond the heartland, Lynn was embraced by a younger generation as a protopunk icon, with her most effusive fan—Jack White—ushering in her 21st-century renaissance on 2004's Van Lear Rose.
- HOMETOWN
- Butcher Hollow, KY, United States
- BORN
- 14 April 1932
- GENRE
- Country