Loretta Lynn will release her highly anticipated new album Wouldn’t It Be Great on Sept. 28.
The country icon had postponed the album’s original 2017 release after suffering a stroke in May that year. Since then, she has been focusing on her health. She made her first public appearances post-stroke in October 2017 at her Tennessee Motorcycle and Music Revival and Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame induction to help formerly induct Alan Jackson.
Like her 2016 Grammy-nominated Full Circle album, Lynn mainly recorded the new 13-song collection at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tenn. with producers Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash.
The album includes new versions of “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” her first No. 1 “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin'” and “God Makes No Mistakes” from 2004’s Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose album, plus new songs “Ruby’s Stool,” “Ain’t No Time To Go” and “I’m Dying For Someone To Live For.”
The title track was released today (Aug. 22), and it is the last song Lynn wrote for her late husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn.
“Well, my husband liked to drink a lot, and that’s where that song comes from,” Lynn says in a release. “‘Say you love me just one time, with a sober mind’… I always liked that song, but I never liked to sing it around Doo.”
“That song just always meant so much to me,” continues their daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, “because of the lyrics, you know, ’when my fancy lace couldn’t turn your face,’ it was just so powerful and was a song that needed to be recorded for this album with Loretta. It shows just how masterful my mom is with writing down her feelings.”
Here is a complete track listing for Wouldn’t It Be Great:
1. “Wouldn’t It Be Great” (Lynn)
2. “Ruby’s Stool” (Lynn, Shawn Camp)
3. “I’m Dying for Someone to Live For” (Lynn, Camp)
4. “Another Bridge to Burn” (Lynn, Lola Jean Dillon)
5. “Ain’t No Time to Go” (Lynn, Russell)
6. “God Makes No Mistakes” (Lynn)
7. “These Ole Blues” (Lynn, Russell)
8. “My Angel Mother” (Lynn)
9. “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin'” (Lynn, Peggy Sue Wells)
10. “The Big Man” (Lynn, Camp)
11. “Lulie Vars” (Traditional, arrangement by Lynn)
12. “Darkest Day” (Lynn)
13. “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (Lynn)
By: Lauren Tingle on cmt.com