The 2022 CMA Awards kicked off Wednesday night with a tribute to one of country music’s most iconic voices—the late Loretta Lynn, who died Oct. 4 at age 90.
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Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and Reba McEntire each performed some of Lynn’s most notable hits, “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “You’re Looking at Country.” For the finale, all three joined in Lynn’s signature “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

The powerhouse vocal performance followed a sweet vintage clip from 1972 in which Lynn was named CMA’s Entertainer of the Year. “I’d like to say that I won a lot of awards, but this is one that I have been nominated for but I never did get,” Lynn said in the clip. “I’m happy, but I’m kinda sad about it because my husband is gone hunting. He couldn’t make it back in to share my happiness with me.”

Lynn, who never let fame or success change her country sensibilities, was famously born into the family of a coal miner.

In 2021, Lynn told Parade‘s Walter Scott that she wrote one of her most famous songs as a “pep talk” for herself and hopes other women find inspiration in her words too.

“We as women sometime feel we are not enough—smart enough, pretty enough, on and on. I’ve had the same struggles. So I made the sayin’ “still woman enough” as my pep talk to myself. When I wrote the song, I wanted it to be about being strong and liking who I was as a woman.”

In 1966, her hit “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” made Lynn the first female country artist to write a No. 1 hit, and years later, as the ’70s neared the ’80s, the artist still dominated the charts.

At the peak of success, she had two dozen No. 1 singles and over 45 million albums sold.

Watch the first ladies of country’s heartwarming tribute to Loretta Lynn.