#419: Loretta Lynn - Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind) (1967)

Zack: My slowly growing appreciation for some types of country music has been an occasional refrain on this sonic driveway. Loretta Lynn really captures a great deal of what I have come to like about the genre on this album. Growing up, my exposure to country music was whatever crap the bus driver would play every morning. It was terrible. But what I’ve learned is that some artists have used country music as a means of telling really interesting and engrossing stories. That’s what’s drawn me to artists like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Drive-by Truckers, Jason Isbell, and a few others. On Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’, Loretta Lynn tells 12 brief, but captivating, stories right from the precipice of heartbreak. Some are angry. Some are regretful. Some are guilt-laden. And most, it turns out, are covers. But even if the words aren’t originally hers, she makes those songs sound almost as deeply personal as the three she did write (which happen to be the tracks that stood out to me the most anyway). It’s all album filled with poignant and beautiful lyrics over simple, if a bit twangy, music. It’s great to see the storytelling carrying the day.

Favorite Tracks: Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’; I Got Caught; Get What‘cha Got and Go

Emily: Spurned-lover country music could be a genre unto itself, especially spurned-woman-lover country. From Dolly Parton's Jolene to Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats, the women of Nashville and beyond have been pouring the sadness, guilt, regret, anger, and relief caused by men who screwed them over into classic anthems of heartbreak. Many of the songs on Loretta Lynn's Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind) fall squarely into that category. She plaintively tells stories of a man (or men) who spurned her with little fuss or embellishment. The music may be simple, but she delivers the stories in the lyrics with weighty emotion. I think that this sort of storytelling really embodies the heart and spirit of country music, and Loretta Lynn proves herself to be one of the finest of the spurned-lover storytellers. 

Favorite Tracks: Don't Come Home A-Drinkin'; There Goes My Everything; I Really Don't Want to Know