What Kind of a Girl (Do You Think I Am)

Album: Fist City (1967)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this Top 10 country single, Loretta Lynn refuses to go all the way to prove her love to a boy. Lynn wrote the song with Teddy Wilburn, of the country duo The Wilburn Brothers, while they were on tour together. Some radio stations refused to play the tune, assuming it was racy because of the title.
  • After a preacher came backstage and praised Lynn for writing a song with such a positive message for young girls, Lynn saw her songwriting in a whole new light. She explained in her 2012 book Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics: "I realized my songs could do more than make people happy or sad, they can make people think. Songs can make people change the things they do. I passed this song around to my own daughters, and I know a lot of daughters that it helped. All I have to say is: any young girl that has a problem with a boy that she goes with should be able to say to him, without any problem, 'What kind of girl do you think I am?'"
  • Lynn was way past the dating stage when she recorded this. She married Doolittle Lynn nearly 20 years earlier, at just 15 years old.

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