Loretta Lynn: They've Killed Country Music

Country music is dead, according to a legend of the genre. "I think it's dead. I think it's a shame," Loretta Lynn tells fellow country singer Martina McBride on the latter's podcast Vocal Point, per People. "I'm getting mad about it. I am. Because it's ridiculous," says the 87-year-old, whose career has spanned 60 years. "I think that they're completely losing it. And I think that's a sad situation." This isn't the first time the singer has offered her take on modern country music. "Some of these new country singers aren't really country ... I think some of them should be singing pop music and leave country alone," she wrote in the introduction to her memoir, Coal Miner's Daughter, when it was reissued in 2010, per the Boot.

But all hope isn’t lost. "I think that every type of music should be saved, and country is one of the greatest. It's been around, as far as I’m concerned, longer than any of it," Lynn tells McBride. And at 87, "I'm here to start feeding it." Though the singer has suffered health issues in recent years—including a stoke in 2017 and a broken hip in 2018—her 2018 album hints at more gas in the tank. "Spring is just around the bend/Ain't no time to go darlin' … The children need your guiding hand/Ain't no time to go darlin'," Lynn sings in "Ain't No Time to Go" from Wouldn't It Be Great. (More Loretta Lynn stories.)