Banned Songs: The Pill

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Happy Thursday, and welcome to another day of songs that were banned on the radio. For the second time we’re venturing into the world of country music (meaning Linda? NO!!!! ) for a song that was refused airplay on country radio stations. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s another woman making those male program directors angry!! The Pill - Loretta Lynn No, it wasn’t the sex. Tanya Tucker, all of fifteen at the time, had covered David Allan Coe’s “Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone)” without too many complaints. Back in the late 60s there was Johnny Darrell’s recording of the Dallas Frazier song “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp,” about a woman who’d been abandoned with 14 kids and turned to prostitution to feed the family. It wasn’t even the notion of birth control offending Catholic listeners (we’ll get to the song that did get banned for offending Catholics later ). Nope. Loretta Lynn was doing what she’d always done: stood up for herself as a woman. Remember Hillary Clinton getting into trouble for quoting Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”? Loretta proved over and over again in her lyrics that she was not that kind of woman, either. So she co-wrote this funny song (remember when people could laugh at a joke at face value without trying to over-analyze it?) about having too many kids and turning to medical science to stop the baby factory. She’s not going to be an adulteress, she makes clear in the final verse: sex is going to be fun because she doesn’t have to worry what’s coming along in nine months (“tonight’s too good to be real, ah, but daddy don’t you worry none ‘cause mama’s got the pill”). How. DARE. She. You guessed it: the same male-dominated system that took offense to Kitty Wells 23 years earlier were back on the warpath. While it was fine and dandy in “One’s on the Way” (“the pill may change the world tomorrow, but meanwhile today”), when she took a more “looking out for #1” (yes, JJ, I know that’s a BTO song ) approach, the program directors had a fit. So they banned it on several country radio stations. It still made the country top ten. The news of the controversy even helped it crack the “Hot 100” pop chart, too! Loretta Lynn died last year, a certified legend. Her willingness to tackle subjects that had been only whispered about is one of the reasons. The Pill Written by Lorene Allen, Don McHan, T. D. Bayless, and Loretta Lynn Recorded by Loretta Lynn From Back to the Country, 1975 Reason banned: sexually suggestive I’m tearing down your brooder house: