Loretta Lynn comes Full Circle but 'ain't through yet'

Loretta Lynn’s return to her childhood, career, and gospel favorites earned her the highest charting album of her career, according to Billboard. Her new offering, Full Circle, debuted at 19 on the Billboard 200, only her second album to ever crack the top 40 all-genre list. For an 83-year-old coal miner’s daughter who has recorded more than 50 albums since her early days in 1930’s Butcher Hollow, Ky., the feat is astounding.

Full Circle is the country legend’s first studio album in more than a decade. The 14-song collection includes new songs and covers of previously recorded tunes, including “Fist City” (a 1968 hit she wrote about a real-life encounter with a woman flirting with her husband) and “Whispering Sea” (the first song she ever wrote, “while fishin’”).

The country icon’s Appalachian roots echo through the speakers much like they did through her childhood “holler,” as she pronounces it.

“Some of them were songs I sang when I was just a little girl,” Lynn said. “Daddy used to come out on the porch where I would be singing and rocking the babies to sleep. He’d say, ‘Loretta, shut that big mouth. People all over this holler can hear you.’ And I said, ‘Daddy, what difference does it make? They are all my cousins.’”

Other tunes include two childhood folk music favorites from The Carter Family: “Black Jack David” and “I Never Will Marry.” Lynn recalled hearing those songs through the family Victrola at 2 or 3 years old while “climbing up on daddy’s legs.”

One song is even older.

“In the Pines” is an Appalachian folk song dating back to the 1870s. The storied train song has been sung by everyone from Bill Monroe to Lead Belly to Nirvana.

Lynn penned one new original for the album: “Who’s Gonna Miss Me?” The violin- and banjo-soaked tune is a query to the Lord about the legacy of kindness she hopes to leave in this life.

Another biblical tune is “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven,” about the fear of death even professing Christians face. The upbeat song is a country two-step that begins with Hezekiah’s bargaining for more time in 2 Kings 20 to the suffering of Christ in Gethsemane.

Christian themes pervade the Decca Doll’s life and work. In a 2010 USA Today interview, Lynn described herself as “an old Bible girl.” While recording and preparing songs for Full Circle two years ago, Lynn told Billboard about her Christian upbringing, when she sang in Sunday school and went to church in a one-room schoolhouse built by her great-grandfather.

Full Circle includes guests aplenty. Willie Nelson blends voices with Lynn on “Lay Me Down”—an affecting duet about the Christian’s resurrection hope—but not on her cover of his “Always on My Mind.” British new wave and pub rocker Elvis Costello makes an appearance on “Everything It Takes.”

Lynn told NPR in an interview earlier this month that one of her favorite cuts on the album is “Wine Into Water”—a prayer to Jesus for deliverance. Written from the perspective of an alcoholic, it’s a song she wished she could have sung to her late husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, who struggled with the addiction, Lynn mournfully told the interviewer.

Despite the album’s heavenly focus, the Queen of Country Music is in no hurry to trade in her earthly crown. Lynn said she plans to keep working “for a long time.” She told Rolling Stone she recorded 90 songs while working on Full Circle. She plans to write more.

“I ain’t through yet,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.