Sissy Spacek, Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire Remember Loretta Lynn as Artist Who Paved the “Rough and Rocky Road” for Women
Hollywood stars and country music's biggest names took to social media to remember and pay tribute to the legendary musician, who died Tuesday at the age of 90.
Loretta Lynn
Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Americana MusicSissy Spacek, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire were among those in Hollywood and the music industry who shared their remembrances, tributes and condolences Tuesday following the news of country legend Loretta Lynn‘s death at 90.
The acclaimed singer and songwriter, whose journey from a small Kentucky coal-mining community to becoming a national country music icon was the subject of the 1980 Michael Apted-directed Coal Miner’s Daughter, died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, according to her family.
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Lynn’s career was marked by her groundbreaking presence, having recorded 16 No. 1 country singles and winning three Grammy Awards, while doing so at a time when male voices dominated the country music genre.
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Hit singles like “You Ain’t Woman Enough” and “What Kind of a Girl (Do You Think I Am?)” along with “Blue Kentucky Girl,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “The Pill” — released amid the 1970s women’s liberation movement — built a musical catalog that captured Lynn’s music and storytelling talent as much as her appreciation of identity and womanhood.
In a statement, award-winning actress and Coal Miner’s Daughter star Sissy Spacek told The Hollywood Reporter, “Today is a sad day. The world lost a magnificent human being. Loretta Lynn was a great artist, a strong and resilient country music pioneer and a precious friend. I am heartbroken. I send my deepest sympathies to her wonderful family, her friends and her loyal fans.”
In her own message, fellow country music legend Dolly Parton expressed her condolences over Lynn’s passing and remembered their close bond. “So sorry to hear about my sister, friend Loretta. We’ve been like sisters all the years we’ve been in Nashville,” Parton wrote. “She was a wonderful human being, wonderful talent, had millions of fans and I’m one of them. I miss her dearly as we all will. May she rest in peace.”
Tanya Tucker paid tribute to her friend and collaborator, writing in a statement, “Today, my world changed, and it will never be the same again. My hero got her wings last night, and it’s been a day filled with tears. Many memories, so much gratitude and thanking my God above for blessing me first with her music and her guidance through the perils of the music world way before we ever met. I looked up to Loretta always. Then when we became friends, she brought me flowers always, and I brought flowers to her.”
Tucker continued, “Time has let me share many special moments with her, but now time has taken her from me forever! But she’s left me with so much to remember and cling on to. I thank God above that I got to sing with her on her latest record. I’ve been waiting a long time for that to come to pass. I was busy planning a much-needed trip to Mexico when I got the news, but for now, Mexico will have to wait because my childhood hero Loretta Lynn has caught the train and she’s ‘On Her Way to Heaven.’ Mexico will always be there, but my friend has gone on to glory. I will see her there someday! I miss you so Retti! I think you know how I feel! Your girl always.”
Actress, singer and “Queen of Country” Reba McEntire shared a photo of herself and Lynn and noted that she loved and appreciated the singer for “paving the rough and rocky road for all us girl singers” and recalling similarities between McEntire’s mother and Lynn.
“They always reminded me a lot of each other. Strong women, who loved their children and were fiercely loyal,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “Now they’re both in Heaven getting to visit and talk about how they were raised, how different country music is now from what it was when they were young. Sure makes me feel good that Mama went first so she could welcome Loretta into the hollers of heaven!”
Carrie Underwood, former American Idol winner, Soul Surfer actress and Grammy-winning country musician, wrote a lengthy post recalling her first meeting with Lynn at the start of her career while at the Grand Ole Opry. She went on to call the late singer “a cantankerous little pistol…friendly and sweet…never afraid to be herself and speak her mind.”
“She is irreplaceable. She will be incredibly missed…but her legacy lives on in those of us whom she has influenced,” Underwood added. “I am truly grateful to have known such an amazing woman and artist.”
In a tribute to Lynn published in Billboard, country singer Garth Brooks called the late artist “the first female [artist] for me.”
“I know her contemporaries and I know there were women that came before Loretta, but Loretta was the first Reba. She was the first Dolly. She was the first of the female stalwarts that you built a foundation on and she never gave that throne up. For me, Loretta Lynn’s name is as powerful today as it ever was,” he wrote. “How Loretta Lynn thought with “The Pill” and songs like “Fist City” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” those were universal thoughts. Everyone was thinking them at the time, they just needed somebody to have the balls to say it. And that somebody was Loretta Lynn.”
Actress Lynda Carter expressed appreciation that Lynn was “able to share her wisdom and talent with the world for as long as she did,” while fellow music icon Carole King called her an “inspiration.”
And in a statement on behalf of the Country Music Hall of Fame, CEO Kyle Young wrote on Twitter: “Loretta Lynn’s life was unlike any other, yet she drew from it a body of work that resonates with people everywhere. In a music business that is often concerned with aspiration and fantasy, Loretta insisted on sharing her own brash and brave truth.”
Read more Hollywood tributes below.