Van Lear Rose

2005 Best Country Album Grammy Winner. 2005 Best Country Collaboration With Vocals Grammy Winner. Featuring members of The Greenhornes, The Raconteurs, and Blanche. For fifty years now, Loretta Lynn has fashioned a body of work as artistically and commercially successful—and as culturally significant—as any female performer you’d care to name. Except it was her song craft that established a sweet, clever, and combative lyricism that, when paired with her effortless melodies, inevitably helped define any and all relevant country music that emerged in its wake. Her music has duly confronted many of the major social issues of her time and ours, while her life story is a rags-to-riches tale familiar to pop, rock and country fans alike. The Coal Miner’s Daughter—the tag refers to a hit single, an album, a best-selling autobiography, an Oscar-winning film, and to Lynn herself—has journeyed from the poverty of the Kentucky hills to Nashville superstardom, to her current status as an honest-to-goodness American icon. Her most recent album, the Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose, has reminded the world yet again of Lynn’s power as a vocalist and her prowess as a songwriter. As she puts it on “Story of My Life,” the new album’s closing track: “Not half bad for this ol’ KY girl, I guess… Here’s the story of my life. Listen close, I’ll tell it twice.”