Album | Loretta Lynn – Full Circle

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Of all of the clichés that plague the ears since birth for the majority of us fine denizens of Earth, one old saying that rings the most true is “Age is just a number.” At 83 years young, Loretta Lynn is still crafting quality country music records just in the same organic, instant chestnut kind of way that she has been doing since the dawn of her esteemed, long-running career in 1960.

It’s not just her vocals that have kept in astoundingly pristine shape, amongst the slew of aeging artists whose chords have not been able to remained sustained as luckily — Tony Bennett perhaps being among the most notable who can join Loretta in terms of surprising vocal prowess in their golden years — but her winning personality, as well. This is evident straight away in the zesty and infectious verve carried by Lynn in her speaking step on the straightforwardly-titled ‘Whispering Sea Introduction’, in which she carries an exchange between herself and a few others on the background behind the song she had first-ever written (of course, ‘Whispering Sea’).

Maintaining that same winning formula of recent releases where she digs back into classic hits, both her own and those of artists with the same attentiveness to imbue a song with her intrinsic storyteller’s persona, Lynn truly comes Full Circle on this album of the same name with hearkening back to such days gone way by. She does so with the same liveliness that she had near the start of her career nearly 60 years back, but with the added bonus of 60 years of experience in the industry only having aged her much like (and we are entering cliché territory again) a fine wine. A precious gem in the world of country music with a legacy to revere, for every year that Lynn has been lucky enough to keep in tip-top shape, her fans around the world remain all that more blessed.