Loretta Lynn, “Still Woman Enough.”

Country icon Loretta Lynn is about to release her 50th solo studio album and one thing that remains obvious, at 88-years-old, is that she’s still a reigning queen in country music. She sets out to prove just that on Still Woman Enough, inspired by the title of her 2002 autobiography and the concept of her signature 1966 single “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man).” The album serves as both a collection of covers and re-workings of some of Lynn most well-known recordings. 

The album—produced by her daughter Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash—works as a full-fledged effort to bring together women in the country industry. Songs dating back decades, or even over a century, are reframed or styled in a more modern context, with several as duets. Such versatile and talented country women help Lynn sound as fresh and boisterous on the covers, arrangements and collaborations as ever. 

The title track—and only original song—opens the album and features both Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood, helping underscore Lynn’s legendary status. McEntire, who became popular in the early ‘80s, and Underwood, who won “American Idol” in 2005, were inherently influenced by the autonomy and originality Lynn flexed as a songwriter at the beginning of her career.

Penned by Lynn and her daughter, the song tells of staying relevant for 60 years.

“Been at the bottom been at the top/ And I’ve seen life from both sides/ It’s what you make with what you’ve got,” Lynn sings. Starting with a single guitar strum and building into the style of a country standard, the women’s voices work well alongside and over one another. It feels ceremonial, like the influence of Lynn is physically being passed to younger generations. 

Throughout, Lynn covers a series of songs popularized by the Carter family, including “Keep on the Sunny Side,” which works particularly well as the United States begins to pick itself up from a devastating pandemic; and “Where No One Stands Alone,” whose opening verse brings forth a shakier voice than we’re used to hearing from Loretta Lynn. This takes nothing away from the song. In fact, it heightens it, and as it progresses, Lynn’s rural, Kentucky twang still hits with clarity and ease.

“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” the song Lynn has said she’s most proud of writing, is done as a spoken-word recitation. Though it’s not upbeat and swinging like the original, a single banjo accompanying Lynn’s aged voice adds newfound nostalgia and emotion to the song. Despite being stripped and slowed down, it’s still a standout without even trying to be. 

There are covers of other classics that still define her career. On “I Saw the Light,” Hank Williams’ snarky lyrics praising the Lord and Lynn’s age add another layer of knowledge and experience to the album’s tone. There’s “One’s on the Way,” a hit on her 1971 album of the same name but now performed as a duet with Margo Price. A poem originally by Shel Silverstein, the song is a satirical take on the unacknowledged labor it takes to carry a child. Written as a one-sided conversation with her husband at the bars, it’s both snide and relatable.  Sings Lynn: “One of them’s toddlin’ and one is a crawlin’/ One’s on the way/ Oh gee, I hope it ain’t twins, again.”

Coming full circle to close out the album is another re-working, this time of “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” sung with Tanya Tucker. Tucker, whose cover of “Delta Dawn” at just 13 years old reached the of the charts, revitalized her career in 2020 and won her first Grammy’s at 60. This comeback alone emulates Lynn’s approach to collaborating and revisiting pieces from her iconic career on her latest, but certainly not last album.