Loretta Lynn chronicled women’s lives, from the new freedoms to defiant songs of survival

If you wanted to pick a single Loretta Lynn song to encapsulate the country star’s life, career, spirit and the particular way she wove all three together, the choice would not be easy. You might reach for Coal Miner’s Daughter, her signature track, which told of her upbringing in Butcher Hollow, a mining community in Appalachian Kentucky – its poverty, love, perseverance. This was, after all, the root of her storytelling, and that famed vibrato that long carried a backwoods flavour. Or you might lean toward her first No 1 hit, 1966’s Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind), that cemented some of the singer’s presiding themes – relationships, and how a woman might handle her wayward husband’s