Introduction:
In May 2017, Loretta Lynn had a stroke, then suffered a fractured hip in her home in January of 2018, but continued working on her forty-fifth album, Wouldn’t It Be Great. “This new record means so much to me, but this last year I had to focus on my health and decided to hold up the release,” said Lynn at the time. “It’s been a tough year, but I’m feeling good now and look forward to it comin’ out. It was really important to me to be a part of it being released, and I’m excited to celebrate it with y’all.”
Once Wouldn’t It Be Great was released in 2018, Lynn took a hiatus from work in 2019 and 2020 to tend to her health, before releasing her final album, Still Woman Enough, in 2021, a year before her death on October 4, 2022, at age 90.
Linked to Lynn’s 2002 memoir of the same name, Still Woman Enough was co-produced by her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, and John Carter Cash, and the title track was an update or response to Lynn’s 1966 album You Ain’t Woman Enough, which she rerecorded for Wouldn’t It Be Great with Tanya Tucker.
“It dates as far back as the book,” said Patsy Lynn Russell about the album title in 2021. “I said then, ‘Mom, that sounds like another song.’ I mean, it just sounds like another song. We just talked about it; I think I maybe wrote a couple lines.”
When Patsy Lynn and Cash were looking through songs for Lynn’s next album, which would become her last, its title track was already written on a sheet of paper, so she started writing portions of the song. “We got to talking about it, and I went home and I finished this chorus, and I brought it back in, and she’s [Loretta] like, ‘You know, I like that, ’cause I’ve been through some bad times,’” recalled Patsy, “and I was like, ‘Well, right there’s your first line.’”
From 2016 onward, Patsy Lynn also co-produced all of her mother’s albums with Cash, including Full Circle, White Christmas Blue, and Wouldn’t It Be Great. Patsy Lynn also co-wrote a few songs with her mother, including “These Ole Blues” from Full Circle and “Ain’t No Time to Go” from Wouldn’t It Be Great.
Together, Patsy and Loretta pieced together one more song, “Still Woman Enough.”
Well, I’ve been through some bad times
Been on the bottom, been at the top
And I’ve seen life from both sides
It’s what you make with what you’ve got
There’s been times life’s got me down
Picked myself up and bounced right back around
I wasn’t raised to give up
And to this day, you know what?
I’m still woman enough
Still got what it takes inside
I know how to love, lose, and survive
Ain’t much I ain’t seen and I ain’t tried
Been knocked down but never out of the fight
I’m Strong but I’m tender
Wise, but I’m tough
And let me tell you, when it comes to love
I’m still woman enough
I was raised in Oklahoma
Hey, I’m country proud to say
I’ve seen a lot of changes
Oh, but I ain’t never changed
Well, this here girl’s been there and done that
They call me hillbilly, but I got the last laugh
Standing here today proving in every way
Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood
Initially, the song wasn’t meant as a duet or trio—until Loretta suggested bringing in Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood. “I didn’t mean for it to be a duet, but my mom did,” said Patsy Lynn. “When she was tracking the song, she said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna have Reba come in here and sing this with me. And it was kind of like, Okay, okay.’ Nobody really paid any attention—we were just trying to get the track down.”
She continued, “And then she said when she went into cut her vocals, ‘I want Reba to come in and sing it with me,’ and she had just seen Carrie do ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough’ on [an awards show].”
Recorded at Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Still Woman Enough was the fourth of a planned five albums Patsy and John Carter Cash planned to produce for Lynn.