“IF YOU WRITE about what’s happening, it don’t hurt as bad.”
So says country music’s 83-year old matriarch, Loretta Lynn, in Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl. The new two-hour documentary—part of PBS’ American Masters series—premieres this week to coincide with the release of her first studio album in more than a decade, Full Circle.
Lynn’s music has an incredible ability to withstand time. Jack White famously produced her last album, 2004’s Van Lear Rose, which mixed her old-fashioned country with his electrifying rock ‘n’ roll. While it was an interesting experiment with modern production, Van Lear Rose sometimes felt like White had been given the keys to Lynn’s car. Full Circle returns her to the steering wheel—raw, unfiltered, Appalachian country with unapologetic lyrics, sung in her beloved drawl.
The self-described “Coal Miner’s Daughter” rose to fame in the early ’60s for blunt songs about being a blue-collar young mother and her turbulent relationship with an often-drunk, philandering husband. Lynn grew up “in a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler” in rural Kentucky, listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and idolizing female country singers like Kitty Wells. She married at 15 and moved to Washington State with her husband, Doolittle, while expecting their first child.