The legendary country singer Loretta Lynn passed away at the age of 90. Her songs about heartache and poverty have inspired many over the years.

On 4 October, Lynn’s family confirmed that she had passed away in her home located in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

Beginning with 1966’s Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind), country singer Loretta Lynn topped the US charts 16 times and was nominated for 18 Grammy awards, winning three. She recorded 60 studio albums in all.

Lynn was born Loretta Webb in a one-room rural Kentucky cabin in 1932, the daughter of a coal miner, and one of eight siblings.

At only 15 years old, she married 21-year-old Oliver Lynn—merely a month after they had first met. Though her husband was unfaithful and frequently drank alcohol to excess, the pair stayed together for nearly half a century. They had six children over the course of their marriage; three were born before Lynn turned 20 years old.

Lynn was a housewife in Washington state when she formed a band with her brother Jay Lee, Loretta and the Trailblazers, after getting an electric guitar as an anniversary present from Oliver in 1953. Lynn began writing her own songs while living as a homemaker now in Washington state. The song was released on a tiny independent label, and she and Oliver committed themselves to selling it by going from one country radio station to the next. “Because we were too poor to stay in hotels, we slept in the car and ate baloney and cheese sandwiches in the parks … we were on the road three months,” she recalled. The song’s popularity led to her getting signed by a major label, Decca, after it reached the Top 20 country charts.

Lynn’s debut album, I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl, was inspired by the tale of a girl Lynn met and bonded with, as well as its themes – a woman devastated by a breakup who would be revisited again and again by Lynn, whose songs frequently depicted broken hearts or damaging relationships, and frequently featured feisty heroines. Her second No. 1 song was Fist City, which warned other females not to get too close to her husband; Rated X discussed the stigma of divorce in 1975; The Pill went pop in 1975 with its controversially explicit depiction of birth control.

Between 1964 and 1976, she released at least two albums each year on average. She collaborated with country singers such as Conway Twitty, recording 10 duets with him, and Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette for the 1993 album Honky Tonk Angels. She recorded songs with kd lang, and formed a friendship with Patsy Cline that resulted in the 1997 album A Woman’s Worth (A Tribute to Patsy Cline).

After Lynn’s release rate slowed down in the mid-1980s, she had a resurgence in 2004 with her album Van Lear Rose. The album was produced by Jack White of the White Stripes, and it became Lynn’s best-performing album up to that point in the US charts. She followed it up with Full Circle in 2016, which featured duets with Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello. Her most recent album is 2018’s Wouldn’t It Be Great.

In 1976, she wrote an eventful autobiography called Coal Miner’s Daughter. Her life story then became increasingly popular and inspired a 1980 biopic with the same title. Sissy Spacek played Lynn in the film and did an outstanding job- so much so that she won the best actress at The Oscars that year.

Lynn had six children, four of whom survived her: Clara, Ernest and twins Peggy and Patsy.