The Post-Rockist

Loretta Lynn - One’s On The Way
Loretta Lynn - The Pill
(from The Definitive Collection)

Loretta, where have you been all my life?  I’ve seen you in your whack-ass crazy dresses escorting Jack White to various events.  I heard about that Van Lear Rose album but, meh, I just brushed it off and assumed that that Jack White had just gone off the deep end of crazy.  I, too, snuffed my nose at “country.”  Well, I owe you a big fat apology because you are awesome.

I must say that I am partial to your old music from the 1970s.  I love, love, love “The Pill.”  I mean, as a feminist and a history buff, how could I not love this primary document?  The popularization of the birth control pill must have been such a monumental event for women everywhere and I love that you sing about it so unapologetically.  It must have been such an empowering time to be a woman; I can picture women all around the country feeling freed by your sassy, brass-tack songs.   On the other hand, I’m sure women from all walks of life identified with the humorous, yet poignant, Shel Silverstein-penned tune “One’s On the Way,” a song about a woman with way too many children on her hands and an unsupportive husband at the bar.

I can only imagine how women must have felt like you really understood their experiences back in the 1970s – the dichotomy between the societal pressures of what it meant to be a good woman, wife, and mother, and the newfound sexual freedoms of the pill.   The perfect example of this is the song “Rated X,” where you belt out in your best, fed-up Kentucky twang, “Well, if you’ve been a married woman and things just didn’t work out, then divorce is the key to being loose and free so you’re gonna be talked about / Everybody knows that you’ve loved once they think you’ll love again / You can’t have a male friend when you’re a has been or a woman – you’re rated X.”

Of course, you also sing some good old-fashioned country love songs like “Mississipi Man, Louisiana Woman,” not to mention the title-says-it-all classic “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind).”  Can I get an AMEN sistas?

Loretta Lynn is tough – I wouldn’t ever want to cross her or fool around with her man.  She would rough me up in a second.  Yet she is both fiercely independent and loyal.  She is sexy and respectable.  She walks all the fine lines that society expects women to walk.  She is completely relatable and I only wish it didn’t take me so long to discover her.

-Posted by Kim