Loretta Lynn – “One’s On The Way”
Loretta Lynn built her career singing about real life, especially the parts of women’s lives that country music didn’t always talk about. But one of her funniest—and smartest—songs wasn’t written by Loretta at all. “One’s on the Way” came from the wonderfully offbeat mind of Shel Silverstein.
Yes, that Shel Silverstein—the poet, cartoonist and author who became famous for children’s books like Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree. Silverstein was also an accomplished Nashville songwriter whose country catalog included songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Bobby Bare and many others.
“One’s on the Way” was practically tailor-made for Loretta.
The song follows an overwhelmed housewife in Topeka, Kansas, who keeps hearing about the glamorous lives of celebrities while dealing with the decidedly less glamorous reality inside her own home. Elizabeth Taylor is getting her hair done in France. Jackie Kennedy is out dancing. Raquel Welch has landed a huge contract. Meanwhile, back in Topeka, the faucet is dripping, the kids are crying, the coffee is boiling over, the laundry needs attention—and another baby is coming.
That contrast is what makes the song so funny, but underneath the comedy was some pretty sharp social commentary.
Silverstein even worked the women’s liberation movement and birth control into the song. While women in New York were marching for liberation and “the pill” was changing attitudes about sex and motherhood, Loretta’s character was still surrounded by children and household chores. In the middle of it all, she has to take a phone call from her husband, who announces he’s bringing some Army buddies home—from a bar, naturally.
Loretta could sell that kind of material because she understood the character. She had married Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn as a teenager and became a mother at a very young age. Long before Nashville made her a star, she knew what it was like to raise children, run a household and stretch a dollar.
Produced by the legendary Owen Bradley, “One’s on the Way” was released by Decca in November 1971. Interestingly, some early copies of the single were mistakenly issued under the title “Here in Topeka,” taken from a memorable line in the song. The mistake was corrected, but Loretta reportedly continued receiving requests from fans to sing “Here in Topeka.”
The record became another major success for Lynn. In February 1972, “One’s on the Way” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country singles chart, where it spent two weeks at the top. The album of the same name followed in March and reached No. 3 on Billboard’s country albums chart. Loretta’s official discography describes the project as another Top 10 album that continued the momentum she had built following “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Decades later, Loretta showed that the song still had something to say. She recorded a new version with Margo Price for her 2021 album Still Woman Enough. Price pointed to the song’s references to birth control and women’s rights as part of what continued to make it relevant.
That’s the brilliance of “One’s on the Way.” On the surface, it’s hilarious—a frazzled mother trying to survive another chaotic day. But underneath the laughter, Shel Silverstein and Loretta Lynn captured a snapshot of American womanhood at the beginning of the 1970s, when the world was talking about women’s liberation while plenty of women were still at home changing diapers, hanging laundry and wondering how they were going to handle one more baby.
And Loretta delivered the whole thing with a wink, a smile and that unmistakable Kentucky voice.
