No, Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” Is Not Still Banned (& other issues)
The Pill. THE PILL!
Even before the unfortunate passing of the great Loretta Lynn on October 4th, there was nothing that exposed one more as a political apparatchik larping as a journalist within the country music space than shoehorning a reference to Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” into your misguided think piece about the intersection of country music and politics.
It’s not that the release of “The Pill” was not an important moment in Loretta Lynn’s career, or an important moment in country music. It most certainly was as a song released in 1975 about contraception that pushed the boundaries of what was socially acceptable in country music at that time. “The Pill” definitely deserves to be mentioned in any retrospective upon Loretta’s career, such as an obituary published after her passing. Saving Country Music made sure to reference the song it its obituary, and the fact that the song was banned by certain stations, despite it still eventually becoming a Top 5 hit.
However, making this one song the centerpiece of attention on Loretta Lynn’s legacy runs the risk of giving “The Pill” outsized importance, while overshadowing Loretta’s primary contributions to country music and culture. Until recently, “The Pill” has always been considered more of a secondary or tertiary song in Loretta Lynn’s repertoire when put beside songs such as “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” or even “Rated X,” which like “The Pill” was also initially banned by some stations, but unlike “The Pill,” still hit #1. Referencing “The Pill” has become an element of style and trend, and like its own version of a cause célèbre in media and academic circles.
After the passing of Loretta Lynn, The Washington Post published an article specifically centered around “The Pill,” and so did Billboard , Taste of Country, The Boot, and Wide Open Country. Features in Vulture and Slate also used “The Pill” as a significant centerpiece.
Far and away, of all the moments and contributions of Loretta Lynn’s career that the media could have focused on following her death, “The Pill” specifically, along with Loretta Lynn’s politics, were the most covered aspect of her career by a wide margin, with Billboard publishing another article beyond their specific piece on “The Pill” delving into Loretta’s politics more generally (while of course still mentioning “The Pill”), and Reuters calling Loretta country’s “leading feminist,” citing “The Pill” and “Rated X” in their obituary before any other songs. The same applies to Salon‘s take. NPR ran two separate articles about Loretta’s political leanings.
But one of the most popular and widely-shared articles in the aftermath of Loretta Lynn’s death published in one of the biggest outlets in the United States was the feature in TIME magazine titled Country Radio Still Won’t Play Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill”. Unlike other outlets such as Billboard and the Washington Post that ran separate obituaries for Loretta Lynn along with their dedicated articles on “The Pill,” for TIME, this was the totality of their Loretta Lynn death coverage.
In the article, journalist Andrew R. Chow asserts,
…as conservative social norms have ossified around the country music establishment, “The Pill” is still forsaken nearly fifty years since it was released. According to Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music), the song was played just once by a country radio station in the U.S. in 2022, even though it’s a classic of the genre. The song—and Lynn’s career as a provocative lyricist—serve as a reminder that the conservative values touted by the country music establishment don’t always match those of their artists or listeners.
This paragraph is so full of misnomers and false information, it would almost render it intellectually fascinating if it wasn’t so offensively effective in spreading outright verifiable lies. Even the most passive of country music fans will immediately be able to point out the gross inaccuracies this paragraph and the title from TIME asserts.
First, and most importantly, Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” is most assuredly not currently “banned” at country music radio whatsoever, meaning there is no industry-wide or even moderately supported concerted effort underway to not play the song due to some sort of moral panic. Despite TIME not citing any human source for their assertion, they made this false accusation the very title of the article, which was widely shared and read.
Second, one of the reasons we know there is no current ban on “The Pill” at country radio is the fact that the original “ban” in 1975 was virtually ineffective itself and sort-lived, and had no real teeth to begin with. It’s hard to verify just how many stations may have originally refused to play the song, but many relented when the song became popular, and better understood. Songs that are truly “banned” from country radio don’t go Top 5.
When the [Dixie] Chicks were wholesale removed from the country radio format in 2002, their next single after the #1 “Travelin’ Solider” called “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)” peaked at #48. That is what a song ban looks like. Despite the Wikipedia page for “The Pill” and many of the articles cited above asserting, “…its ban from a number of radio stations caused the record to stall at number five on the charts at a time when a Loretta Lynn record was almost guaranteed to be a top three hit…” this is false information. The very next single from Lynn called “Home” stalled at #10. And though the single after that “When The Tingle Becomes a Chill” went #2, Loretta’s first single in 1976 “Red, White, and Blue” stalled at #20.
Again, “Rated X” by Loretta Lynn also initially received push back from some radio stations, and it still went #1. The supposed “banning” of “The Pill” is important to recognize as historically accurate, but it was also ultimately ineffective, and in some respects, only moderately significant, since its ultimate effects were minimal, maybe even perhaps irrelevant, or potentially the initial ban was even counter-productive since it brought attention to the song that was eventually reciprocated back to radio.
Third (and most obviously), the idea that any major mainstream Top 40 country radio station would ever play any song from Loretta Lynn in 2022—let alone any song from any classic country artist whatsoever—shows the headlong ignorance of the TIME magazine article as a whole about the country music landscape.
Mainstream country radio won’t play a single from 2019, let alone one from 1975. So when TIME says, “the song was played just once by a country radio station in the U.S. in 2022, even though it’s a classic of the genre,” they’re showing their complete lack of depth on country music. In fact, what might be remarkable about what TIME cites is that there was actually a mainstream country station that did play “The Pill” in 2022. That is what is newsworthy.
Fourth, when TIME says, “According to Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music), the song was played just once by a country radio station in the U.S. in 2022,” they’re showing their ignorance on how spins on country radio are reported to charting companies. Luminate does not track the entirety of spins of songs across country radio. They only report on the radio stations they have been selected to represent the Luminate country radio panel. There are over 15,400 radio stations in the United States. Luminate only monitors 2,000 of them. There are roughly 2,100 country radio stations in the United States. Luminate only tracks 159 of them.
Similar to how the Dow Jones that measures the stock market only accounts for 30 actual stocks that have been selected to represent the broader market, this is also how radio panels work. Yet unlike the Dow Jones, the radio stations Luminate selects focus specifically on mainstream country as opposed to the broad spectrum of country stations. This means that the classic country radio stations, independently-owned country stations, and certain regional stations like the ones in Texas that have their own radio chart are excluded from this reporting.
This misnomer that radio panels represent the entirety of country music as opposed to just mainstream country radio playlists that cover less than 5% of the country artist population has been spread throughout Academia and media, primarily through the misguided work of Canadian-based PHD Jada Watson, who has used radio panels as de facto census data to make numerous false assertions about country music for years, and is a favorite of the media and other academics.
TIME citing Luminate as false verification of a current ban on “The Pill” speaks to the perniciousness of Jada Watson’s work, which also doesn’t take into consideration the rise of independent country artists autonomous of radio. Zach Bryan’s song “Something in the Orange” is the most-streamed song in all of country music at the moment, sitting at #1 on the streaming charts. Last week it was at #55 on the radio charts. Radio charts don’t represent country music, they only represent country radio.
Later in the TIME article on “The Pill” it states, “But as the song is hailed in many circles as groundbreaking, it has basically been abandoned by the country establishment. According to Luminate, the song has received 95 spins on U.S. radio since the start of 2022, with most of those coming from Triple A and College Radio formats; only one of those spins was on a station classified as Country format. By contrast, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” has 1.3K spins so far this year on U.S. radio.”
But this is where the TIME article gives up the entire game. Along with the issues citing Luminate data addressed previously, by zooming out to asses the entirety of radio, this data proves two things: 1) That it’s not just country radio that is supposedly ignoring “The Pill,” but the entirety of radio, if we’re to believe the data. 2) It proves is that “The Pill” is just not that important or popular as a Loretta Lynn song, at least not compared to “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and by all radio formats, not just country.
Again, “The Pill” was a secondary song of the Loretta Lynn catalog, which makes the outsized attention upon it unwarranted, and symbolic of more underlying issues with American media, specifically the political lens in which the media views most everything in culture, but especially in country music. TIME and others said about “The Pill” that it illustrates how Loretta Lynn was a “provocative lyricist.” But “The Pill” was one of the few important songs in Loretta Lynn’s career that she didn’t write alone. It was co-written with Lorene Allen, Don McHan, and T. D. Bayless.
Meanwhile, how many retrospectives did “Coal Miner’s Daughter” receive, which Loretta Lynn wrote herself? Very few, despite it being Loretta Lynn’s signature song, and the title of a movie on Loretta Lynn’s life, which resulted in seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and won Sissy Spacek Best Actress. Though many media outlets called Loretta Lynn the “Queen of Country Music” upon her passing, this is a moniker historically assigned to Kitty Wells. Loretta Lynn has always been known as “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” in country, because it is indisputably her signature song.
There are other issues with the TIME article as well, specifically that it says that Loretta Lynn was married at 13 instead of 15, when this misnomer was corrected many years back.
But why are so many media outlets obsessed with the story of Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” to begin with? There are a few reasons for this. First, due to the echo-chambered nature of the journalist fraternity thanks to the prolific use of Twitter, ideas and information get parroted from one outlet to another, often carrying many of the same misnomers along with them as writers and editors unfamiliar with Loretta Lynn’s work or country music in general simply regurgitate the piece published right before theirs as opposed to doing original or autonomous research, and reaching out to experts in the field. So when one outlet deems that “The Pill” is what should be the centerpiece of Loretta Lynn’s life or a focal point of coverage, many come to this same conclusion.
For example, Slate‘s article on Loretta Lynn cites TIME‘s article as the source as to why “The Pill” is not played on mainstream country radio today, spreading that false assertion. One of NPR‘s Loretta Lynn articles uses Dr. Jada Watson as a primary source, who was behind TIME‘s poorly-conceived idea of using radio panels to prove that “The Pill” is still currently banned at country radio. Meanwhile, the writer of the TIME piece, Andrew R. Chow, had previously reached out to Saving Country Music as a source for quotes and clarification on a couple of stories, including one on Lil Nas X from 2019.
However, the practice of reaching out to journalists intimately familiar with country music, or any subject matter for expertise seems to have become deprecated in media. If outside sources are spoken to or cited at all, they’re usually selected to reinforce the preconceived notions of a story before it’s ever written as opposed to canvassing for the truth, or to get both sides of a perspective. This was most certainly true for multiple articles posted about Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill,” and her political leanings.
The TIME article concludes that “The Pill” was a “reminder that the conservative values touted by the country music establishment don’t always match those of their artists or listeners.” But this is the biggest misunderstanding of them all. Though much of the coverage of Loretta Lynn and “The Pill” specifically did well to spell out the complicated nature of Loretta Lynn’s politics, others used it as an opportunity to assign the legacy of Loretta Lynn political motivations or leanings that she just did not posses.
Though Loretta was certainly animated about women’s rights—from contraception and abortion, to other issues—she also went out of her way to say she did not consider herself a feminist, despite what Reuters and others asserted. And as some of the better researched articles from Vulture, Salon, and the Washington Post pointed out, Loretta Lynn was a strong supporter of President Trump. NPR dug even further, and verified how Lynn had also campaigned for George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
In the week after the death of Loretta Lynn, a reckoning within the mindset of the media and the political mother brain has been forced to take place as initial proclamations about Loretta Lynn’s politics have proven to be false. Originally looking to use Loretta Lynn as an example of a liberal artist in the conservative world of country music, now the tide has turned to re-correcting the misnomer that the media got wrong in the first place by over-correcting in the other direction, and characterizing Loretta Lynn as an imperfect heroine and poor role model due to her complicated role espousing feminist issues.
An article written by another academic in the journalism space named Amanda Marie Martinez for NPR published on October 9th accurately sets the table by stating, “After Lynn died earlier last week, reports often identified her as the template for strong, even progressive, women in the genre. Many stories have fixated on the impact of the artist’s most notorious song, ‘The Pill,’ using it to define her as a feminist, albeit a reluctant one.”
But despite, Martinez’s best efforts to hide her agenda and be complimentary of the commentary in some of Loretta Lynn’s songs, she also attempts to establish Lynn as more of a savvy marketer as opposed to an authentic personality, and not just imperfect due to her political beliefs, but ineffective in helping her fellow women in their representation in country music. In the article itself, this sentiment comes across as more muted and pragmatic. But on Twitter, Amanda Marie Martinez spelled it all right out saying, “If country music is about ‘fabricating authenticity,’ then no one has ever done it better than Loretta Lynn.”
But country music is not about “fabricating authenticity,” so perhaps the entire premise of the opinion falls apart right there. Maybe that’s the aim of radio country. But again, radio country does not represent the entirety of country music.In the above quote and the NPR story itself, Martinez actively works to portray Loretta Lynn as basically a phony. Because Lynn makes an imperfect political icon, her entire legacy must be called into question. This is a favorite sport of academia, to erase the validity of Southern and agrarian heroes, in an action that doesn’t result in any meaningful political change, and only helps usher in the proliferation of fentanyl use, violence, and white supremacy in the vacuum of role models and meaning in rural lives.
The underlying reason “The Pill” has received so much outsized attention is because entertainment media and country media specifically has been seeding in the years after the election of President Trump with political functionaries who’ve been indoctrinated in academia to believe the way to shift the political demographics in the United States is to embed themselves in country music culture, and get artists to espouse their political beliefs, tout artists that share their political beliefs, and attempt to erode the popularity or credibility of artists that do not share their political beliefs.
But having never spent their 1,000 hours understanding the country genre from beyond their intellectual echo chambers, and while inherently bias with an agenda, these academic journalists not only do a poor job covering country music, they quickly expose themselves in situations such as the death of Loretta Lynn, hoping to gain ground in a culture war that puts them in diametric opposition to the country music population they’re supposedly tasked to serve. Country fans aren’t reading long-winded think pieces about Loretta Lynn’s complex political identity in NPR, Salon, and Vulture. This is all an exercise of intellectual flexing and moral preening journalists and academics are doing for each other, and others in the elitist classes of American society that love to use the poor agrarian population as a refraction point to virtue signal.
This is a media issue, much more than it is a cultural or political one. None of the discourse in any of these think pieces on “The Pill” will have any significant effect on the importance of Loretta Lynn’s legacy, or the political makeup of the country music listening population. But the extremely out-proportioned emphasis on “The Pill” could result in a misnomer in country history that this song was anything other than a secondary hit that was banned for a short period, but ultimately powered through to be one of many important moments in the legendary, and most certainly not “fabricated” legacy of Loretta Lynn.
What some of the coverage of “The Pill” got right though, is that Loretta Lynn’s legacy is complicated from a political standpoint. In February of 2020, after Jason Isbell asserted that conservatives could not be good songwriters. One of the reasons Saving Country Music often gets falsely accused of being right leaning is due to the excessive need to clean up the misnomers of the many left-leaning perspectives that are reporting and commenting on country music. Saving Country Music responded to Jason Isbell with a list of songwriters who self-identify as conservative, including Loretta Lynn.
“Loretta Lynn’s song ‘The Pill’ is the go-to example in progressive think pieces about how country music is and has always been more liberal than it’s portrayed,” the article stated, 2 1/2 years before this recent flood of think pieces on “The Pill.” It goes on to state, “But the problem with this assessment is that women’s rights are not just the ownership of the left … Though she’s always been a strong voice for women, she’s also been a strong voice for the right, which despite the characterization of some, are not mutually exclusive.”
Loretta Lynn may have been a conservative from a political standpoint, but she refused to fit into any political binary, which as we’ve seen in the week after her death, confounds the media to no end. She had friends from both sides of the aisle, collaborating with Margo Price for example. If Loretta Lynn had any fealty to any cause, it was that of women. And beyond that, her legacy should speak for itself, and should not be compartmentalized into one camp or co-opted by anyone for political purposes, on the left, or on the right.
Ultimately, Loretta Lynn wasn’t a conservative, a liberal, a feminist, or a conformist. She was Loretta Lynn, and left a legacy so rich and enlightening, it has proven to be impossible to pigeon hole, except for being wholly authentic, reverberative, and one of the most important lives lived by a rural American woman in history.
October 11, 2022 @ 9:12 am
Alleged “bannings” of songs from country radio are just that–“alleged.” If one person declined to play a song on one program, someone will call that a banning.
I was watching a Tracy Lawrence youtube-cast where he says that his song “If The World Had a Front Porch” was banned from radio because the lyric said that his granddaddy “taught me how to cuss.”
Really. I’ll bet Lawrence wishes in his wildest dreams that he’ll have one more record in his life that’s “banned” as much as “Front Porch” was. That record made it to #2 on the chart and was the #10 single of the whole year 1995. And was still played for the rest of the decade.
October 11, 2022 @ 9:22 am
“Girl Crush” by Little Big Town was also supposedly “banned,” but somehow still went #1, and won two Grammy Awards, and two CMA Awards, specifically BECAUSE it stirred controversy, not because it was in any way a significant song. One of the members of Little Big Town confided that they knew it might cause a stir, and that’s one of the reasons they released it. You want to rocket to the top of the charts, get “banned.” Ask Morgan Wallen. It was the best thing that ever happened to his career.
Sure, the [Dixie] Chicks can tell a different story, and they have a fair beef. But the “ban” of “The Pill” was ineffective at best, and probably a boost to Loretta and the song.
October 11, 2022 @ 10:07 am
The Dixie Chicks were right. I wish the Bush-era Republican tinged country music of the 00’s would just go away forever. ‘Courtesy of the Red White and Blue’ and ‘Have you Forgotten’ look so bad in hindsight. if you still think they “hated us for our freedom” your mom needed the Pill.
October 11, 2022 @ 9:58 pm
Big & Rich too? awful awful stuff
October 11, 2022 @ 4:01 pm
And Little Big Town was very disingenuous about what the song was about in interviews, it’s brazenly about repressed or latent lesbianism which they repeatedly denied. I guess if Loretta had said “The Pill” wasn’t really an endorsement for contraception radio would have been more comfortable with it but Loretta always told the truth about her music, this is something these modern cardboard acts can not do. They’re the anti-Lorettas.
October 11, 2022 @ 9:17 am
One of my coworkers deleted all of her Loretta Lynn songs from streaming when she found that Lynn supported former President Trump and wasn’t the American Helen Reddy (if I spelt her last name wrong I don’t care because I can’t stand her version of Delta Dawn) she thought she was. It’s pretty silly how politics can cause stupid things like that and Jason’s comments but sadly there are those who deal in absolutes.
October 11, 2022 @ 9:25 am
Limiting the music you listen to due to the political alignment of an artist is an undue burden on your musical experience and enjoyment. Jason Isbell has called me out by name. I’ll still to “Southeastern,” because it’s one of the greatest albums released in the modern era.
October 11, 2022 @ 9:59 am
Yeah I would second that Southeastern is probably the best country album in the past 15-20 years. Isbell can’t manage to push his beliefs without coming across is obnoxious and slimy. I think all artists should have plenty of leeway to be big stupid idiots. Same with Jamey Johnson cancelling a show because he couldn’t open carry a gun on stage. (how the hell are you gonna potentially defend yourself without shooting innocent people in the crowd) Time usually reveals that the most self righteous people have the most skeletons in their closets that they couldnt survive if they got out.
October 11, 2022 @ 10:35 am
Dimebag Darrell might still be alive if he or his bandmates were packing on stage.
October 11, 2022 @ 10:57 am
I’ve grown up with guns and own over 10 of them. You are responsible for whatever that bullet hits Even in a self defense situation you can’t fire willy-nilly at someone when there is a crowd of innocent people behind them. There is an argument for more armed security at music events, but there are obviously restrictions to this
October 11, 2022 @ 9:40 am
“Despite TIME not citing any human source for their assertion, they made this false accusation the very title of the article, which was widely shared and read.”
What’s the big deal?
TIME has been known as one of the leading perpetrators of false/made up/fairytale/lying journalistic drivel/”think” pieces, for decades.
Biggest State/Nation(al) propaganda publication, out there. Followed closely by Washington Post, Readers Digest, NOAA, etc.
Are we going to talk, or are you going to shut this comments section down, as well?
October 11, 2022 @ 9:58 am
I’m starting a petition to demand that Shay and Dan cover “The Pill”. Who’s with me?
October 11, 2022 @ 10:25 am
Only if we get Jason Alden to cover three little lies by David Alan Coe
October 11, 2022 @ 10:27 am
Before social media, we were Americans first. We could talk and debate with each other. I never heard any Republican say anything bad about Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson and their music because they supported Obama. It’s hilarious, sad, and scary that the same emotionally fragile people who can’t handle the idea of anyone supporting Trump, are expecting us to hand them the keys to running this nation and culture.
October 14, 2022 @ 8:48 am
This goes for those supporting either “side.”
October 11, 2022 @ 10:28 am
……”The underlying reason “The Pill” has received so much outsized attention is because entertainment media and country media specifically has been seeding in the years after the election of President Trump with political functionaries who’ve been indoctrinated in academia to believe the way to shift the political demographics in the United States is to embed themselves in country music culture, and get artists to espouse their political beliefs, tout artists that share their political beliefs, and attempt to erode the popularity or credibility of artists that do not share their political beliefs.”……
Trigger,
What you’ve just described here, is called, ‘Gramscian Communism’. You actually explained it pretty good. Well done.
October 11, 2022 @ 11:59 am
It is amazing when trigger said how people who misuse the word facism, it is also amazing how many people who misuse the words communism and socialism, when obviously these uneducated people have no clue what those words really mean.
October 11, 2022 @ 12:44 pm
@Counryfan68 if you’re left-leaning the ‘Hammer & Sickle’ symbol is permissible. Deaths under Communism: 100+ Million.
Communism is cool if you are part of the far-left (for some reason I don’t fucking know why)
To most people the Swastika is the worst symbol ever.
Deaths under Nazism: 4-16 Million.
Nazism is reviled by overwhelming majority of the population.
I don’t understand anyone being in defense of either ideology. I also don’t understand arguing the true definition of Communism or any semantics around it when the body count total is very well documented in the 20th century
October 11, 2022 @ 10:44 pm
Just so you know, the hammer and sickle symbol is cool to leftists because THEY ARE TROLLING YOU. They know you can’t tell the difference between Scandinavian style socialism and Soviet style communism, so they’re having a laugh at you because they know that’s how you view them. It’s like when you do your Let’s Go Brandon thing.
October 11, 2022 @ 3:08 pm
I know, I know, you graduated from a public school, blah, blah, blah.
October 11, 2022 @ 3:54 pm
Are you so dense as not to realize every time you post here the comment section gets shutdown?
Is this just an act our are you this obnoxious in person?
October 11, 2022 @ 4:39 pm
He’s just being a horse’s ass.
Skip over it.
October 11, 2022 @ 10:50 am
According to Luminate, the song has received 95 spins on U.S. radio since the start of 2022, with most of those coming from Triple A and College Radio formats; only one of those spins was on a station classified as Country format. By contrast, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” has 1.3K spins so far this year on U.S. radio.”
As you pointed out “Coal Miner’s Daughter” is her signature song I imagine it would be played more based on that merit alone, I mean when I first got the news she passed that was the first song I put on…It just seems to me & it’s sad to say we have reached a new low in this political melting pot our culture has become when we now got liberals & conservatives fighting over dead people like 2 dogs over a bone cause they were legends in their profession. To be honest I don’t think Loretta Lynn was making a political statement with “The Pill”…I mean I might be saying this wrong but I don’t think Loretta seen this as a political issue in her mind. This shouldn’t be an issue as you pointed out the song wasn’t banned long & it became a top 5 hit. This is the last thing we should be talking about music is made for all of us & is good for the soul, politics shouldn’t matter when it comes to music… Loretta Lynn is a true icon it’s a shame that her status as one is being fought over like a trophy so one side can flaunt it & say “Look what we have in our arsenal” I don’t want to delve into my politics not that you or anyone else who might read this would care but life has taught me that not everything is black & white… I think conservatives are right about some things & Democrats are right about other things 50/50. But while we may have political songs in Country Music & most may lean in the conservative category it shouldn’t matter… I mean besides “Rated X” & “The Pill” what other songs had Loretta Lynn done that would be considered “political”? Not many I would imagine & I doubt any of them were hits for her. All of this is just more nonsensical political garbage.
October 11, 2022 @ 11:19 am
Love the song, but the pill was nothing compared to Johnny Cash’s DEALA’S GONE, sorry if I misspelled it, but CMT And GAC both banned the video and I don’t know how many radio stations banned the song. To me both songs are story telling songs, and should not be banned, the pill song may not be, but I wonder if the Cash song still is.
October 11, 2022 @ 1:44 pm
Which is awkward because its an old folk song. I know it by the Kingston Trio, I think its called ‘One More Round’ but same song.
If it was ok back then, does that mean we’re getting more conservative?
October 11, 2022 @ 4:04 pm
The original of “Delia’s Gone” was by Jimmy Gordon and his Vip Vop Band in 1939, but it’s rather tame. Delia’s definitely gone, but Jimmy’s not all that up-front about how she died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l15GeAv_iss.
The first psycho version by a prominent singer was by Harry Belafonte, of all people, in 1959. Released on an LP called “Love Is a Gentle Thing,” for some reason. Well, Harry does sound kind of gentle when he mentions the shooting. Over and over again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqMlpKD0CQw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqMlpKD0CQw
October 11, 2022 @ 8:20 pm
“The thunder rolls” with the third verse was also banned. It won cma video of the year. His team just mailed it personally to all cma voters.
October 11, 2022 @ 12:16 pm
Academia- alleged journalist. Empty suits with over sized ego’s pretending their pseudo intellectual drivel matters-
Keep up your objective analysis of things, Kyle- YOU do good work- fuck the ass clowns.
October 11, 2022 @ 1:27 pm
“First, and most importantly, Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” is most assuredly not currently “banned” at country music radio whatsoever, meaning there is no industry-wide or even moderately supported concerted effort underway to not play the song due to some sort of moral panic. Despite TIME not citing any human source for their assertion, they made this false accusation the very title of the article, which was widely shared and read.”
Why would you put “banned” in quotes, when TIME did not say that the song is currently banned, in their title or elsewhere? Why would they have a human source to back up an assertion they are clearly not making?
October 11, 2022 @ 2:27 pm
Hogwash. The Time article clearly states in the title that country radio is still not playing “The Pill,” attempts to validate this by canvassing radio panels (which as it states in this article, is problematic), and then directly ties this to “conservative social norms [that] have ossified around the country music establishment,” and claiming the song is, “still forsaken nearly fifty years since it was released.”
Absolute bullshit. If it was “forsaken,” why did so many dedicated articles about it end up in mainstream country music periodicals like “Taste of Country” and “The Boot”?
October 11, 2022 @ 4:09 pm
Your self-proclaimed most important point is that the song is not banned as Time supposedly put in the title of their article. The title of the article is “Country Radio Still Won’t Play Loretta Lynn’s ‘The Pill’”, which, in addition to not stating that the song is banned, is not actually contradicted by your understanding either. Country radio isn’t playing “The Pill”, which is a statement of fact your piece agrees with. You just wanted to defend country radio as simultaneously not anti-feminist but also not feminist. Well done.
October 11, 2022 @ 4:25 pm
With all due respect Richard, that is absolute bullshit, and you’re playing semantics in order to attempt to defend an article that should be stricken from the internet, and a public apology should be put in its place. The entire premise of the article is false, which is that you can use radio panels from Luminate to determine whether as song that was released in 1975 is currently being stricken from play due to underlying conservative values of country fans. Yes, “The Pill” is not being played on mainstream country radio. Neither is ANY song from ANY classic country artist, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Merle Haggard, NONE of these artists are ever played on country radio ever. We all know this. That is why a site like Saving Country Music exists.
“You just wanted to defend country radio…”
Are you fucking kidding me? You think I want to defend country radio? I’ve devoted the last 15 years of my life trying to clean up the mess country radio has made of country music, especially the way it’s treated country women. But lying about how country radio still is not playing “The Pill” because of some strident political ideology is not helping the cause, it’s hurting, because it’s a lie.
October 11, 2022 @ 5:08 pm
You’re the one who put “banned” in quotes, and then criticized the article for not quoting anyone to defend an adjective you invented. You called that your most important point. What if I titled my response No, Trigger, Loretta Lynn is not “Anti-Feminist”? It may seem like semantics to you, but it is misleading and goes to the motivation behind your post.
I agree that the reasoning of the Time article is bad. It’s clearly an interloper who heard that the song was Lynn’s most popular and checked that against their only metric for evaluating radio bias. By that logic, basically every pre-2022 country song has been forsaken in favor of the current hot artists. If that was your only point, you wouldn’t need to quote something Time didn’t write or defend country radio for not playing this particular song. Instead I suspect it’s actually frustration over know-nothings with platforms who are co-opting a right-leaning singer as a left-leaning ally.
October 11, 2022 @ 5:30 pm
I was using air quotes around banned because I think it’s fair to question just how banned “The Pill” was since it still charted at #5. This was part of the broader discourse about the song, and how it was being covered by multiple outlets.
And just in case you’re wondering if anyone is really asserting if “The Pill” is still banned, go read Tom R.’s comment below, because he sure is.
October 14, 2022 @ 9:44 am
“using air quotes”
If it’s in writing, they aren’t air quotes. It’s unethical to use quotes when referring to articles like that.
October 14, 2022 @ 10:04 am
This article refers to nearly a dozen articles about Loretta Lynn’s political beliefs and her song “The Pill.” Most of them refer to her song “The Pill” be banned. The reason I put quotation marks around the term “banned” is because just how “banned” it was is under dispute, or in the eye of the beholder. According to some accounts, the banning actually drew more attention to the song, and helped it as opposed to hurt it. That is why “ban” is being put in quotations. There is nothing “unethical” about that. It is semantic argument. And stupid.
Would love to have a more substantive discussion about the merits of the arguments made in my article. This is dumb.
October 14, 2022 @ 10:40 am
“Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” is most assuredly not currently “banned” at country music radio whatsoever…”
This is very clearly not referring to how banned it was in the past, but rather criticizing the articles’ mention of modern plays.
Even if the quote was referring to the past ban, I think it’s poor use, since you don’t challenge whether it actually was banned, just the efficacy.
If you don’t defend your unethical behavior while validly criticizing others’ unethical behavior, a discussion of your strong arguments would be great. I’m especially interested in what radio stations were used and what the one that played the song was. Is there a way to see if the song is played on classic or independent country stations? In all, it was a strong breakdown for why the articles failed and were political BS. I just have issue with your first argument, and to a lesser extent your title.
October 11, 2022 @ 1:31 pm
I’ll bet the people who co-opted Mrs. Lynn’s death to justify an agenda are the same people who say the Beethoven was the first “rock star” to make him (and themselves) seem “cooler”.
October 11, 2022 @ 3:47 pm
““The Pill” has always been considered more of a secondary or tertiary song in Loretta Lynn’s repertoire”
Sorry but this is not true at all. It has always been from year one considered a milestone in her career. Ok, it did not hit number one. That means absolutely nothing. Many songs are far more important in a singer’s career that chart peak would suggest. Lefty Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil” only hit the back of the top ten but it’s probably his most famous and celebrated record. Tammy Wynette’s “Apartment #9” is one of her most iconic songs yet it didn’t even crack the top 40 for several reasons, it was her first record (although many have big hits with their first), there was a competing version (that didn’t stop several records though from being big hits at the same time as a rival), etc. A great record like these three can live above and beyond their initial peaks. And most every superstar has had several number ones that are all but forgotten within a few years so topping the charts does not a classic make.
“The Pill” absolutely was banned on many country stations at the time. The local ones in my area in the deep South would not play it and never did. Yes, many stations did play but considering how promoted and famous it was, the fact that it stopped in the charts at number 5 (a lowish number for Loretta at this time) underlines many weren’t playing it. To this date, I’m not even sure if I’ve EVER heard it on the radio. It’s certainly not something that gets played during oldies hours alongside “Stand by Your Man”, “Coat of Many Colors”, “Rose Garden”, “Crazy”, or “The End of the World”. So yes, it’s still banned considering how important it was to Loretta’s career and yet you still can’t hear it on country radio but then good luck hearing Loretta at all on the radio now.
From the moment of its release it’s clear “The Pill” was more than just another single for Loretta. It attracted more attention than any other song she ever recorded outside the country market (her most successful solo crossover song) was written about and discussed at a level few number one songs ever have been. And the wide comments about it in her obituaries underlines how important it is to her recorded legacy.
An unpopular record is not banned, it is just not played. “The Pill” was a popular record but not played. And still is not. So that’s definitely a “ban”.
Loretta sung “The Pill” in virtually every concert she did since 1974. It’s clear she – and the public – loved the song but it was too hot for radio to touch. If her fans didn’t like it, Loretta would have pulled it from her show. Loretta mentioned many times she had to fight to be able to sing the song on television and while she couldn’t make radio play her record she sure could make tv producers let her sing it – or not sing at all.
“The Pill” is absolutely one of the five or ten most essential recordings in Loretta Lynn’s career; the very fact that you take almost forty paragraphs to argue against the fact kind of proves it more than anything.
October 11, 2022 @ 4:13 pm
“An unpopular record is not banned, it is just not played. “The Pill” was a popular record but not played. And still is not. So that’s definitely a “ban”.”
You must not listen to Willie’s Roadhouse, on Sirius, XM
October 11, 2022 @ 5:46 pm
A Sirus XM station is hardly a conventional country music radio station potentially answering to local residents and advertisers. Of course, somebody is playing it as in the case of every “banned” record. Just not a sizable amount of them. If totally shunning is the qualification for a banned record then there’s no such thing as a banned record.
October 11, 2022 @ 4:26 pm
@Tom–That’s a fair analysis and summation. “The Pill” made an impact and endures because it was so brazen. No metaphors or suggestions.
If a few major reporting stations refused to play the record, that would be a reason why it did not make it to #1.
October 11, 2022 @ 4:36 pm
Yeah Tom, I appreciate you chiming in, but I couldn’t disagree with you more, and it seems like you have bought into the propaganda behind “The Pill” to the point that anything I say will fall on deaf ears.
But just to clarify a couple of points:
1) I’m not saying that “The Pill” is not an important song. I went out of my way to say it was, both in my Loretta Lynn obituary, and in this article where I stated
“It’s not that the release of “The Pill” was not an important moment in Loretta Lynn’s career, or an important moment in country music. It most certainly was as a song released in 1975 about contraception that pushed the boundaries of what was socially acceptable in country music at that time. “The Pill” definitely deserves to be mentioned in any retrospective upon Loretta’s career, such as an obituary published after her passing. Saving Country Music made sure to reference the song it its obituary, and the fact that the song was banned by certain stations, despite it still eventually becoming a Top 5 hit.”
2) I agree whether a song hit #1 or not is not an indication of whether a song is significant. I feel like that goes without saying. But my knock against it is not that it didn’t go #1. What I am saying is that political functionaries embedded within the media are making a huge deal about this song in a disproportionate manner to its impact and influence. If you don’t want to take my word for that, then take the word of Amanda Marie Martinez who wrote a detailed article on Loretta Lynn on this very matter for NPR (linked in the article), and came to the same conclusion I did, which is that the media was overblowing “The Pill” to attempt to portray Loretta Lynn as something that she wasn’t.
3) If you think that “The Pill” is still “banned,” meaning there is an active and concerted effort by radio programmers to not play the song due to some sort of political opposition, man I feel sorry for you. That is a ludicrous statement. Nonetheless, please jump into the discussion with Richard Petty above, who is busting my balls for saying that I said anyone implied a ban was still in place. So either he’s wrong, or you’re wrong. You both can’t be right, yet you both disagree with my assessment here.
October 14, 2022 @ 10:52 am
I’ve heard “The Pill” dozens of times and always on the radio, and always in the midwest and small towns. If banned means unavailable or not played, well, it was never banned.
October 11, 2022 @ 5:51 pm
That was a lot of words to not mention “Cocaine & Rhinestones” and/or TMC. Ya know most of em probably started there. Or at least skimmmed it.
October 11, 2022 @ 6:21 pm
Agreed. I had listened to that podcast about this song and it was good.
October 11, 2022 @ 7:41 pm
The podcast may have helped initially seed some of the conversation around “The Pill” that started around the election of Trump. But when you have journalists who are calling Loretta Lynn a feminist when she rejected that label, a progressive when she was clearly a conservative in regards to who she voted for, and people asserting that there is still an active ban on “The Pill” as opposed to just knowing that the last thing a pop country station is going to do is play a song from 1975, assuming these same journalists have listened to an in-depth podcast about any subject surrounding country music I think is giving them way too much credit. Ignorance is the issue here.
October 11, 2022 @ 8:59 pm
I am completely shocked that this happened.
October 12, 2022 @ 4:27 am
Eerie. I just wrote about this subject in my blog post honoring Loretta. You are so right on.
October 12, 2022 @ 7:49 am
The mainstream media lying to promote cultural genocide upon a genre they care not for?
Absolutely shocking.
Facts be damned. They don’t care. They got what they wanted. A bunch of misinformed readers.
October 12, 2022 @ 8:51 am
Not holding my breath for the day Progressives will suffer the discouraging word that the “Pill” could be bad for the environment. Priorities are priorities, after all.
October 12, 2022 @ 1:50 pm
I’m sticking by my previous assessment on this subject. Media is creating an artificial world where this song was the biggest thing Loretta ever did. Glaringly false. Evidence? Again, go to her core audience, people who are from the Country and or lived the Country lifestyle. The 4H folks, people in the heartland, etc. The folks who paid to see her play the County Fair in their little towns, the people who go to Branson, maybe used to attend CMA Fan Fairs and stood in line to meet her. How often do you hear these folks talking about The Pill, as their favorite song? Ever go to honky-tonks to hear cover bands, or Karaoke or open mic nights? How many times do you think this song comes up by way of request? Answer: ZERO.
Look, I’m not saying her Country fan base doesn’t know the song or even that they dislike it. Not at all. I think most fans are aware of it, and most have zero problems with it. Personally, I had no problem with it. I think that’s largely the case these days. But, frankly the song after all these years and the initial hoopla died down, it just doesn’t begin to resonate with people in the same way, Coal Miners Daughter, Fist City and Dont Come Home A Drinkin do. It’s not the first thing people think of when talking Loretta Lynn.
But the music media? It’s the ONLY thing they wanna talk about, for the reasons Trig laid out. And it speaks to the echo chamber cultural divide big time.
October 25, 2022 @ 7:09 am
Only a small minority of radio stations did not play The Pill in 1975. Most were not located in the bigger cities that reported their playlists to the trade magazines that compile the charts. If a SIGNIFICANT number of country reporting radio stations had not played the record it would never have even made the top ten much less the top FIVE on any chart. The supposed “ban” ultimately became more of a publicity tool than anything else. It made people more interested to hear it once they became aware of the controversy. Clearly only a a few key radio stations failed to play it.
Truth be told, Loretta herself was apprehensive about releasing the song. She recorded it in December 1972 but the single was not issued until two years later in February 1975. The day she recorded it “Rated X” was her brand new single. That record initially received some negative pushback due more to the title than the lyrics so that may have influenced her feelings about The Pill. In her Coal Miner’s Daughter book Loretta said she was very concerned that people would not accept The Pill. But she discovered that her female fans overwhelming embraced it although she believed that many men were threatened by the topic including several that made programming decisions at radio stations. Loretta stated that the lyrics were a “challenge to the man’s way of thinking.”
A significant point that is usually overlooked whenever The Pill is discussed is what Loretta actually states in the lyrics. The song is told from the perspective of a MARRIED woman that has tired of being continually kept “barefoot and pregnant.” The Pill provides a way out of her endless loop of pregnancy and dirty diapers. It does not advocate unwed promiscuity. However in the final verse she uses The Pill to warn her husband that The Pill could allow her to have the same “freedom” that he has had ala “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Also it’s important to recognize that The Pill was a song of the times. Birth control pills were still relatively new in 1972 when Loretta composed the song. The Pill was often linked to the Women’s Lib movement that also dominated the cultural news of that era. 50 years later the topic seems irrelevant. Today the Pill is taken for granted. The topicality of that song is likely why it has not worn as well as many of Loretta’s other compositions.
Regarding another woman’s issue, Loretta was also a supporter of abortion rights. The Coal Miner’s Daughter book was written just a few years after the Roe v Wade decision and includes several pro-choice comments made by Loretta that you can check out in her book if you are so inclined.