| The more you hurt, the better the song is. | |  |  | | Loretta Lynn in February 1975. | | (CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | "The more you hurt, the better the song is." | | - Loretta Lynn, 1932 – 2022 | |
| | rantnrave:// | Rated LL
If you have time for only one LORETTA LYNN story this morning, read these two: NATALIE WEINER on how one of the most impactful singer/songwriters of the past 60 years "made the mundane incendiary" by combining plainspoken women's wisdom with an unrelenting drive to make sure plainspoken women like her had a place at country music's table. And MARISSA R. MOSS on the fearlessness and independence that allowed a feminist who didn't see herself as a feminist and a progressive who'd probably choke on the very word to unleash songs like "THE PILL," "RATED X" and "ONE'S ON THE WAY" on a world that was simultaneously ready and not ready to hear them.
Lynn, who died Tuesday at home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn., was more complicated and less contradictory than she may have seemed at first (or second) glance. "She sang about the pill but didn't take it herself," Moss writes. She befriended JIMMY CARTER, supported abortion rights, stumped for DONALD TRUMP, and was called both a liberal and a conservative depending on who was doing the calling. "It is easy to simplify all this into contradictions, but it was only a contradiction if you thought you knew and understood women, specifically rural, Appalachian, or southern women. Lynn was complex, not a contradiction. And so are the women who love and are inspired by her songs."
"Her radicalism," argues Weiner, "was a personal one, hinging on the observations of one very tired wife and mother who could depict in intimate detail the dual weights of poverty and systemic sexism. To bear witness to that specific experience on a grand scale not only invented a specifically feminine perspective in popular country music, it also seemed to give the entire genre a dose of truth serum."
Loretta Lynn was, in other words, the essence of country, or, at least, *an* essence of country. Ask PATSY CLINE, who immediately befriended her when she came to Nashville as a country bumpkin—from Kentucky coal country via the state of Washington—and aroused the suspicions of pretty much everyone in town, from the GRAND OLE OPRY on down. Ask CHARLEY PRIDE, who she was told not to kiss at the 1972 CMA AWARDS, and who, therefore, she did. Ask KACEY MUSGRAVES, another country outsider she stood side by side with at the same awards show in 2014. Ask her descendants MIRANDA LAMBERT, MAREN MORRIS, MICKEY GUYTON and so many others who Lynn not only influenced but also, you could argue, made possible.
"I wasn't the first woman in country music," Lynn told Esquire magazine in 2007. "I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about. The rest were afraid to."
Thorough obituaries in the Tennessean (by PETER COOPER) and the New York Times (Bill Friskics-Warren) trace the life story, for anyone who's not already familiar, of a singer whose twin breakthrough hits were one that threatened any woman who tried to move in on her husband that she would succeed only "over my dead body" and one that redirected the threat at the husband. TYLER MAHAN COE, in an episode of his Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast from 2017, has the best explanation of why Lynn was one of the most banned artists on radio in the 20th century. Her most notorious song, "The Pill," "wasn't banned from country radio because it was a song about birth control. It was banned because the woman in the song proudly and happily sings about the freedom birth control gives her to live her life on her terms, regardless of what men think about it." Sound familiar? Half a century later, Time's ANDREW R. CHOW reports, "The Pill" remains effectively banned at country radio.
When I was first falling in love with country music, I went on a road trip to Nashville with my friend ANDY. Our soundtrack for the 15-hour drive was two mixtapes which between them had Loretta, PATSY, HANK, GEORGE, JOHNNY, DOLLY, MERLE and two then-current obsessions, DWIGHT and WYNONNA & NAOMI. My Country 101 intro course. We played those tapes obsessively. There was enough Loretta on there for the truth and fearlessness to come through, but I wasn't necessarily zeroing in on that part at first. She had a Hall of Fame gift for humor and wordplay and, even more important, hooks (pun intended). That's what I heard and that's why I kept listening. Everything else came later. The layers. The depth. The thrills. The bills. The pills. The hollers. Those final albums with JACK WHITE and JOHN CARTER CASH, which brought one of the great artists of the 20th century into the 21st fully intact, honest and fearless to the end. RIP.
Rest in Peace
Inglewood, Calif., rapper HALF OUNCE, who on Monday became at least the 23rd rapper murdered in the US in 2022, and the third in Los Angeles County in less than a month... Portland, Ore., punk bassist/guitarist CHRIS CAREY, who played in bands including Poison Idea, Religious War and Dead Conspiracy... JOE CHAMBERS, a country guitarist/songwriter who founded the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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| | Loretta Lynn Made the Mundane Incendiary | | By Natalie Weiner | | There was no big picture angle or mission to the singer and songwriter's work besides telling her story over and over and over again with the kind of honesty and wit that made it feel not just fresh but revolutionary, every single time. | | | |  | | Slate |
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| | Gayle, and the Rise of Meta-Pop | | By Carrie Battan | | The musicians in the latest micro-generation are more TikTok-savvy and self-promotional than their predecessors, but also more winking about this approach. | | |  | | Cocaine & Rhinestones |
| | The Pill: Why Was Loretta Lynn Banned? | | By Tyler Mahan Coe | | Maybe you already know Loretta Lynn's 1975 song about birth control, "The Pill," was banned from radio upon release. But do you know why? The real answer is not what many would assume. | | | | what we're into | | | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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