Loretta Lynn Releases "Everything It Takes," a Duet with Elvis Costello

By Timothy Yap Jan 26, 2016 03:19 AM EST

Country music veteran Loretta Lynn has finally unveiled her new album Full Circle by releasing a new song. "Everything It Takes" is a folksy duet with backup vocals contributed by Elvis Costello.

Lynn first met Costello four or five years ago, for work on a different project and the pair ended up working well together. "We sat down in the studio to write a song. I had a piece of paper and a pencil, and he had a computer," Lynn remembers. "So we looked at one another like, 'What's going to come out of this?' He was laughing about it, but I didn't think it was funny because that's the way I write all my songs. When I write a song, I don't want to be on a computer."

"I wrote "Everything It Takes" real fast. I probably wrote it in 30 minutes," Lynn tells Rolling Stone Country. "Sometimes I can write a song real fast, and sometimes it'll take me two, three days. And I get so aggravated that I'll probably lay it down and go back to it later. But that song came easy. I'll come up with the title first and, when I come up with the title, I always know I got a good title."

Full Circle follows on the heels of her Gospel album released last year. Last year on April 14th, Gaither Music released Hymns and Gospel Favorites. The album gathers Lynn's recordings of hymns and spiritual songs she has had recorded throughout her lengthy career. Some of the highlghts include Lynn's touching autobiographical ballad "If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again," "Who Says God is Dead" and "I Believe."

This timeless collection captures the honest, colorful strains that have made Loretta Lynn a household name, trendsetter and recording icon. These treasured songs of faith highlight her unmistakable, heartwarming voice that has been bringing audiences to their feet for decades.

With Full Circle, Lynn offers 13 new songs with two covers from her own reportoire. The first is her own hit "Fist City" and the second being an updated take on "Whispering Sea," the first song Lynn ever wrote, which was originally released in 1960 as the B-side to "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl."

Recorded in the Cash Cabin Studio, which Johnny Cash built on his own spread of Tennessee countryside in the late Seventies, Full Circle was co-produced by daughter Patsy Lynn Russell and family friend John Carter Cash. The result is an album that doesn't necessarily stretch Lynn's legs, as the Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose did more than a decade ago, as much as celebrate her strengths.

For fifty years now, Loretta has fashioned a body of work as artistically and commercially successful-and as culturally significant-as any female performer you'd care to name. Her music has confronted many of the major social issues of her time, and her life story is a rags-to-riches tale familiar to pop, rock and country fans alike. The Coal Miner's Daughter-the tag refers to a hit single, an album, a best-selling autobiography, an Oscar-winning film, and to Lynn herself-has journeyed from the poverty of the Kentucky hills to Nashville superstardom to her current status as an honest-to-goodness American icon.

Here's the tracklist for Loretta Lynn's Full Circle:

Whispering Sea (Introduction)
Whispering Sea
Secret Love
Who's Gonna Miss Me?
Black Jack David
Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven
Always on My Mind
Wine into Water
In the Pines
Band of Gold
Fist City
I Never Will Marry
Everything It Takes (Featuring Elvis Costello)
Lay Me Down (Featuring Willie Nelson)