Loretta Lynn's new record honors a lifetime of writing women into the country music canon

Still Woman Enough is the country icon's 50th studio release

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From Mar 19, 2021

Andrea Warner is an author, a writer with CBC Music and a regular member of the Day 6 music panel.

In 2016, I interviewed country music icon Loretta Lynn for the first time. She told me: "When I was recording, I recorded for us girls. I didn't record for men. I fought for the women and I recorded for the women."

My Grandma is the one who introduced me to Loretta Lynn and her music has become extra special to us since I interviewed her. 

Lynn was Grandma's first big concert. She won tickets and it was a huge deal because she could never have afforded to go on her own dime — and because she never really won anything before — but I think it was also because of how deeply Gram identified with Lynn as a songwriter. She was seeing parts of herself in popular music for the first time thanks to Lynn's songs.

Now, more than six decades into her career, Loretta Lynn is still doing the work. 

Her new album, Still Woman Enough, is her 50th studio release. The record doesn't just honour Lynn's legacy, but rather enriches it with new songs, new recordings, and collaborations with some of the biggest stars in country music to follow in Lynn's steps. 

Still Woman Enough, the title track, is a call back to Lynn's 1966 classic song, You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man), but it's also a rousing 2021 feminist anthem co-written by Lynn and her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, who also co-produced the record. The song also features Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood, who, like Lynn, have found massive success in the industry and yet still struggle for radio play. 

Bringing together three generations of country superstars is a great idea in theory, if a bit messy in execution. But as they belt out the chorus together, there's this sense of joyful catharsis and suddenly it feels like we're all at a karaoke bar or a concert, participating in the kind of statement singalong that becomes a shorthand between so many women and girls. 

Like the Chicks' Goodbye Earl or Leslie Gore's You Don't Own Me or Aretha Franklin's Respect, Still Woman Enough is a statement and a declaration, two staples of Loretta Lynn's songwriting from the very beginning.

Revisiting hits

In March 1960, Loretta Lynn wrote herself into country music history with her very first single, I'm a Honky Tonk Girl. Tenacity was her strong suit, as was the partnership she had with her husband Oliver Lynn, known as Doolittle.

Doolittle mailed out 3,500 copies of her song to radio stations all over the United States and they didn't hear back from anyone. So the pair got in their car and drove to every radio station they could for three months. The single eventually became a hit. 

Lynn's debut carried on the conversation of Kitty Wells' 1952 classic, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. Wells' song was rueful and almost resigned, while Lynn couched her tears-in-my-beer lament inside a playful two step. 

Lynn, left, and Kitty Wells, right, pictured in 2004. (Rusty Russell/Getty Images)

What Wells made universal in her lyrics — "It's a shame that all the blame is on us women/It's not true that only you men feel the same," she sang, "From the start most every heart that's ever broken/Was because there always was a man to blame" — Lynn made personal: "So turn that jukebox way up high/And fill my glass up while cry/I've lost everything in this world/And now I'm a honky tonk girl." 

As a songwriter, Honky Tonk Girl is one fractal on the spectrum of ways in which Lynn has feminized the country music canon herself, and Still Woman Enough reaffirms these tremendous achievements, including a blistering new version of her breakup hit, I Wanna Be Free and a moving spoken word recitation of her most-beloved classic, Coal Miner's Daughter.

But it's also about the songs Lynn has chosen to cover throughout her career.

Among those featured on Still Woman Enough's tracklist is the brilliant One's On the Way by Shel Silverstein. A huge hit for Lynn in 1971, this new recording features contemporary country music great Margo Price and the two have a blast as they inject some lived experience into this tongue-in-cheek account of women, class differences, motherhood and pregnancy.  

Still recording for 'us girls'

This is what it looks and sounds like for Loretta Lynn to record for "us girls." And it's how numerous generations of women have found their experiences reflected back to them in her songs, including me and my Grandma. 

After I interviewed Lynn in 2016, the record label sent me a signed copy of her album because they loved hearing about Grandma's story. I took her to see Lynn in concert later that year, more than 50 years after her first experience, and she sang along to every song. 

So did the rest of the audience, mostly multiple generations of mothers and daughters, sisters and aunts, grandmothers and granddaughters, witnesses to each other's best and worst moments thanks to the musician's music.

Grandma is 87 now, and she broke her hip almost two months ago. She's been living with us for the last six weeks as she recovers. We listened to Still Woman Enough for the first time together, which seemed fitting, and we sang along to the songs we knew and learned the words to the ones we didn't. 

Each time we got to the album's final track, You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man), which has been re-recorded as a fiery duet with country legend Tanya Tucker, we pressed "play" again. 

Loretta Lynn is 88 years old, and she's still recording for "us girls," and Grandma and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Record Store Day: Why music streaming will never replace the quest for vinyl

This audio clip originally aired April 18, 2018, and you can listen to it via Day 6. The below article is courtesy of Day 6.

These days, most music is available online at the click of a button.

But for diehard music fans, heading to the record store to track down elusive recordings and decades-old songs will never go out of style.

In honour of World Record Store Day, the Day 6 music panel — Maura Johnston, Andrea Warner and Nate Sloan — came together to celebrate record stores and talk about the vinyl they've had the most difficulty tracking down.

Maura Johnston on the original soundtrack for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

The original soundtrack for the film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (Cleopatra Records)

Maura Johnston still remembers buying records at the local grocery store as a kid.

Now, after many years of collecting and buying albums on vinyl, Maura Johnston's record collection numbers in the hundreds.

But her quest to find one record in particular still stands out: the original soundtrack for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the 1970 film directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert.

"I just fell in love with music, and it was really hard to find the soundtrack," she says, adding that it she spent months searching for it in the '90s.

"I finally did find it in Chicago, and it was $35 for the original pressings."

According to Johnston, the record was in perfect condition, with the jacket "beautifully preserved."

She was surprised to find that the vocals on the record versions of the songs were different from those in the movie. But she remembers the album fondly.

"It was awesome because I could sing along whenever I wanted to without having to hit fast forward on the VCR," Johnston says.

"In the years that have ensued, the soundtrack has been reissued over and over and over again, but I still have my copy and I still have that price tag on it."

Maura Johnston is music writer and journalism instructor at Boston College.

Andrea Warner on Loretta Lynn's I Remember Patsy

Loretta Lynn's 1977 record, I Remember Patsy. (MCA Records)

Growing up, Andrea Warner recalls living in small apartments where her family owned a giant record player. But when her parents split up, she parted ways with the player.

It was only five years ago that her interest in vinyl records was reignited after she was gifted with two record players by her husband and her in-laws.

Since then, Warner has been frequenting record shops everywhere she goes. In Montreal, she stumbled on what's since become an all-time favourite record: Loretta Lynn's 1977 I Remember Patsy.

"It's so beautiful," Warner says. "Patsy died very young, and so Loretta made this record as a tribute to her best friend."

Finding the record was personal for Warner, as it made her feel closer to her grandmother, who she describes as one of her own best friends. Warner's grandmother also happened to be a big fan of Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline.

"I bought this record, I brought it home and I saved it until [my grandma] came over to my house and we sat and listened to it like all afternoon," Warner says.

Warner says the tactile experience of playing records brings back memories of her childhood.

"I really do love the sort of interaction with it," she says. 

"I hear the click of the static of the vinyl connecting with the needle and I just immediately remember being a kid and all the records ... that my parents had, like Michael Jackson and Corey Hart."

Andrea Warner is a Vancouver-based writer with CBC Music and the co-host of Pop This.

Nate Sloan on Eddie Hazel's Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs

Eddie Hazel's 1977 record, Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs. (Universal Music Canada)

Nate Sloan recalls being fixated on finding a copy of Eddie Hazel's 1977 record Game, Dames & Guitar Thangs.

"Eddie Hazel was the guitarist for Parliament-Funkadelic and also co-wrote The Temptations song Shakey Ground," Sloan says.

"This was a time in my life when I was consumed by the pursuit of the funk and Eddie Hazel was the holy grail, the kind of missing link in my otherwise complete Funkadelic discography."

Sloan waded through music stores and dusty record jackets looking for the record for years before he finally stumbled on it at Grooves Records in San Francisco.

"It was probably $9 or $10," he says. "It was very beat up, very poor condition but it was there, I got it, I brought it home, I put it on the turntable — and it wasn't very good."

Still, he says the experience made him love collecting records even more.

"I like that random element of chance that you can discover within the dusty halls of a record store," he says.

"Maybe it's something you never listen to again. But maybe it's something that kind of changes your whole perspective on music forever."

Nate Sloan is a musicologist based in Detroit and the co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop.

To hear more from Maura Johnston, Andrea Warner and Nate Sloan, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page.