Loretta Lynn
"You're Lookin' at Country" (1971)
Among the earliest songs to proclaim its rural realness was Lynn's 1971 single, with its unrepentant refrain, "When you're lookin' at me/ You're lookin' at country." That song arrived during Nashville's "Countrypolitan" era, when many producers and musicians were striving to expand the genre's reach beyond its blue-collar base by using orchestral accompaniment, background choirs and other trappings of pop music.
