FUN FACTS
- Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (1967) is the ninth album by country singer Loretta Lynn. The album was released through Decca Records on February 1, 1967.
- Raised in farming and mining family, Loretta Webb got married at 15 years old. Her husband (who was 21 years old at the time) was, in a way, a complicated instrument in her career. Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn bought Loretta first harmony guitar and encouraged her to start her own band. Loretta played her way into a steady career in Nashville doing gigs in bars and pubs, before eventually breaking into the recording charts with her self-written songs, including I’m a Honky Tonk Girl and Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On your Mind). The most poignant and popular of them were songs about being a wife and dealing with abuse and fidelity. Which she drew from her own experiences.
- Both the album and the eponymous single of Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (1967) peaked at number one on the Country charts.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (1967) is the 1960’s country music Lemonade. A lot of the songs are about domestic confrontation. The title track, Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On your Mind) is about a wife telling her husband that he needs to stop coming home drunk and expecting to have sex.
You never take me anywhere because you’re always gone/ Many a night I’ve laid awake and cried, dear, all alone/ And you come in a kissin’ on me it happens every time/ No don’t come home a drinkin’ with lovin’ on your mind
Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On your Mind)
In songs like I Really Don’t Want To Know and I’m Living in Two Worlds, Loretta talks about bearing the burden of a philandering husband and compartmentalizing her own feelings about it.
How many how many I wonder but I really don’t want to know/ So always make me wonder always make me guess/ And even if I ask you, oh darling, don’t confess/ Just let it remain your secret cause, darling, I love you so/ No wonder no wonder I wonder, no, I really don’t want to know
I Really Don’t Want To Know
When I’m in your world I just pretend that I’m really happy though I don’t fit in/ Then, I drift in my world so cold and alone I’m living in two worlds. Where do I belong?/ I’m living in two worlds, dividing my time/ Unhappy in your world and lonesome in mine
I’m Living in Two Worlds
The songs The Shoe Goes On the Other Foot Tonight and Saint To A Sinner examine what it’s like to turn the tables. Saint To A Sinner, in particular, reminds of Rihanna‘s Good Girl Gone Bad, which is an impassioned cry about crawling up the wall and watching yourself turn into something detestable in order to survive a difficult relationship.
How long did you think you could go on hurtin’ me/
The Shoe Goes On the Other Foot Tonight
And I’d be your fool and wait at home alone/
Well, you go out and have your fun like you are free/
Tonight I’ll have some pleasures of my own/ ‘Cause a shoe goes on the other foot tonight/
We’ll find out if two wrongs can make a right
You put a halo and wings around me now you say that I have gone bad/ But while you were busy with business and booze/ I lost the wings and the halo I had/ You say I went from a saint to a sinner but you can’t blame me for it all/ You were the teacher I was just a beginner. You don’t know how it hurt me to fall
Saint To A Sinner
I think Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (1967) is a fascinating album because of where it comes from. Loretta Lynn stayed with her husband until his death in 1992 and continued to write music with the same themes. She said that she wouldn’t be where she was without him and that she stayed with him through it all for the sake of their six children. She spoke about him being in every song she wrote without ever knowing “which line he was in”—which, to me, as an unmarried woman from another time and another place, is mind-boggling.
It’s easy to look at these stories and say, ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in a similar situation’. But the truth—and the humbling and empathetic thing to realize—is that you never know until it happens to you.
I think about FKA Twigs‘ story about her domestic abuse experience with Shia LaBeouf, and the stories of many other women, and how crushing it was, to find themselves in love and in a bad situation and without any knowledge of how to get out of it.
Loretta Lynn offers something grounded and honest. Something that certain women in certain situations might find helpful to hear because it comes from a genuine place. The album brims with anger and sadness and disappointment. And it also gives a stirring voice to a space otherwise ignored, as is the case in 2021 for women in the household—whether they’re homemakers or professionally providing care. Just last year, the pandemic highlighted a worrying rise in cases of domestic abuse, and the troubling disparity and pressures placed on women domestically, even when their partners are at home working alongside them.
It takes collective and generational work to tool women in the household, from promoting healthy conversations about labor parity ay home or fighting for the reduction of gender pay gaps in other places of work. The world still has a long way to go. Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (1967) embodies an important perspective reminding us that, perhaps, when it comes to changing the world, the best place to start is at home.
FAVORITE MOMENTS
I grew up with a bit of mainstream country music at home and listening to this album brought me back to my grandmother’s living room. At the same time, I was so surprised at how quickly I made connections with not Taylor Swift, but Beyonce and Rihanna‘s works. As a Rihanna fan, I naturally gravitated towards Saint to A Sinner. It reminded me so much of Good Girl Gone Bad. Musically, alongside I’m Living in Two Worlds, it falls in that crossover country-blues sweet spot that I love very much. I love how the mournful piano accompanies Loretta Lynn‘s emotional yet elegant singing. I think she really captures the emotions of putting up with something that really hurts, and the frightening loneliness of not being able to imagine any alternative.
FOR YOU
What did you think of the album? Send your thoughts to mxaboha@gmail.com!
- Do you like country music? I think I’m starting to like country music in a way that I never imagined I would.
- Which song from the album did you connect with the most?
- Do you follow any advocacy groups for women’s rights? I would love to learn more. I personally follow journalists and advocates for frontline issues that are essential to women’s rights, such as sex work and labor rights, immigration, and prison abolition. Let’s share tips and resources!
Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (1967) Copyright belongs to Loretta Lynn and Decca Rcords.
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