"Portland, Oregon" (Loretta Lynn feat. Jack White)

I'll be frank: I've never been a fan of contemporary country music.  Too many songs seem like they were inspired by an empty 12-pack of Natural Light and the kind of wisdom one would glean from a slogan on a sun-faded t-shirt in a Myrtle Beach gift shop window.  
However, I always have enjoyed classic Country & Western: the outlaw/outsider/storyteller stuff of artists like Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Hank Williams, and one Mrs. Loretta Lynn—a true original.
I guess I shouldn't have been shocked when Lynn paired up with Jack White of The White Stripes in 2004 to craft the album Van Lear Rose.  She always was a risk taker (listen to the controversial 1975 track "The Pill" for proof).  But I never expected the final product to blend Lynn's style and personality with White's signature lo-fi grit so well.  In fact, it's as if White provided a kind of safe haven for her to write the pithy, brutally honest songs that she wanted to write—songs that delve into her brush with death as a child, her rocky 50-year marriage, and her warm memories of her mother, the titular "Van Lear Rose."
As Lynn told NPR's Melissa Block in 2004, "I like true life things, I like real things...I think that's why people bought my records, because they're living in this world, and so am I.  So I see what's going on, and I grab it."
One of the standout tracks on the collection is a vocal duet with White, "Portland, Oregon."  It's a frank song (with words and music by Lynn) about a no-regrets one-night-stand after getting wasted on a pitcher of Sloe Gin Fizz.  
White's arrangement of the song perfectly mirrors the story in Lynn's lyrics: it opens with a freewheeling instrumental section with abstract splashes of steel guitar over a vaguely rumba beat (the night of flirting and fun) before settling into a steady, booming wall-of-sound (the hangover and afterglow).  Their voices blend astonishingly well; Lynn's sounds as strong as it did in 1960.  Plus, their backing band (which Lynn affectionately dubbed the "Do Whaters," because "they got in there and did whatever we needed them to," as she says on her website) absolutely roars beneath them with this tight-but-loose, Detroit garage rock-meets-Music City twang.  (That scorching pedal steel guitar hurts so, so good.)
It's brash, witty, and unapologetic.  It's everything that great Country & Western should be.