Country music legend Loretta Lynn dies at 90
Loretta Lynn, the legendary country music singer and songwriter known for hits like "Coal Miner's Daughter," has died. She was 90.
Lynn's family confirmed her death in a Tuesday statement to The Associated Press. "Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, Oct. 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills," the family said.
Lynn was born in Kentucky and her father was a coal miner, inspiring one of her biggest hit songs as well as her autobiography, Coal Miner's Daughter. The book was adapted into a 1980 film in which Sissy Spacek played Lynn and won an Oscar for the performance.
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Lynn's other hits include "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)" and "You're Lookin' at Country." She won three Grammys but was nominated for 18, and she was honored as the 1970s artist of the decade by the Academy of Country Music. Lynn also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama in 2013.
"By telling her own truths, and by writing about her experiences with a perspective and voice unlike any other Southern storyteller, Loretta Lynn has become an American hero and a country music standard-bearer," said the Country Music Hall of Fame, to which Lynn was inducted in 1988.
Lynn continued releasing music in recent years, even after suffering a stroke in 2017, and her 46th solo album Still Woman Enough debuted in 2021.
Speaking with the Today show in 2018, Lynn said she would "give anything in the world" for her father to have been alive when she released "Coal Miner's Daughter."
"But I think he hears me," she said. "And one day, I will sing it to him."
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