In 1975, country music legend Loretta Lynn released what would prove to be the most controversial song of her career. Despite becoming her highest-charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, Lynn’s “The Pill” has been banned from country music radio for more than 50 years.
The song — which was penned by Lorene Allen, Don McHan, T. D. Bayless, and Loretta Lynn — is an ode to the sexual revolution of the decade.
“This incubator is over-used because you’ve kept it filled / But feeling good comes easy now since I’ve got the pill,” Lynn sings.
Country radio stations refused to play the song due to its focus on the taboo topic of birth control.
“If I’d had the pill back when I was havin’ babies I’d have taken ’em like popcorn,” Lynn previously told People. “The pill is good for people. I wouldn’t trade my kids for anyone’s. But I wouldn’t necessarily have had six, and I sure would have spaced ’em better.”
Following her death in 2022, “The Pill” was played by a country radio station for the first and only time, according to Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music), Time reported.
“It’s just a wife arguin’ with her husband,” Lynn explained to People. “The wife is sayin’, ‘You’ve kept me barefoot and pregnant all these years while you’ve been slippin’ around. Now you straighten out or I’ll start, now that I have the pill.'”
Despite its radio ban, “The Pill” was “selling 15,000 copies a week” simply through word of mouth, the outlet reported.