Song of the Day 10/5: Loretta Lynn, “The Pill”
It’s hard for those born later to understand the profound change the oral contraceptive pill brought to society in 1960. Some Christian conservatives haven’t gotten over it yet.
Loretta Lynn, who died yesterday at 90, was a conservative Christian, but in 1972 she recorded this paean to The Pill, and she sang from personal experience — married at 15, she had her fourth child a month after her 21st birthday. Yet the subject matter was so risque to rural audiences that her record company held back its release for three years, and a number of country stations wouldn’t play it. The lack of airplay hurt sales; the single only reached No. 5 on the country charts.
It wasn’t the first time Lynn courted controversy by standing up for women in a genre not known for its tolerance. In 1973 she raised eyebrows with “Rated X,” a divorcee’s lament at the stereotypes society held about divorced women. The irony was that Lynn never divorced her alcoholic, skirt-chasing husband.
Lynn was a country institution but was never a crossover chart success — “The Pill” reached No. 70, the highest she ever charted on the Hot 100. She became an icon in the broader culture with the 1980 Hollywood biopic “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Most of her hits were in the past by then, but she stayed active until the past few years. She introduced herself to a new generation in 2004 with the LP “Van Lear Rose,” recorded with longtime fan Jack White, who produced the album and played on every track. He also sang on this one, a rueful ode to the sloe gin fizz and a resulting one-night stand.
“conservative Christian” seems like a strange thing to call someone these days. Republicans in Georgia seem to regard Trump and H. Walker as conservative christians. It is as if words stopped having meanings.
Old enough to remember when “The Pill” was a big deal to the old fools of the time, then as now religion was a big part of it. Problem is that women loved it, so did a great many men. Still banning contraception is on the far rights hit list, as the fools live in the past. Suggest they try it, as it will doom them to the ignominy they so well deserve.