8. Lynn Anderson

Lynn got the bug for performing at a young age, and her musical interests were helped by her parents who were aspiring songwriters themselves. Lynn’s other passion was horse riding, which she soon became a champion of. Once she was an adult, she would spend a lot of her time riding in equestrian competitions. And then when she would watch her daughter ride, Lynn would also spend that time writing songs. One of her songs made it to Merle Haggard, who recorded it in 1964. This convinced her to travel to Nashville, where she would be offered a recording contract of her own. She got her first big hit in 1967, and became one of country music’s biggest performers throughout the 1970’s. In 1970, Lynn recorded what would be her signature hit, entitled “Rose Garden”. It was a huge country-pop crossover song, even becoming a hit in almost 20 countries. The song itself went platinum, became a country music standard, and began the 70’s trend of having big country-pop crossover songs. It is now thought of as one of country music’s greatest songs ever. It also helped the album it was on become the biggest selling female country album for 27 years. After that, Lynn would continue a streak of hits for the rest of the 70’s and into the early 1980’s. Once radio moved onto other artists, Lynn was one of country music’s biggest female artist successes ever. She had 5 Grammy nominations, 7 ACM award nominations, 7 CMA award nominations, and certainly deserves a spot in the Country Music Hall Of Fame soon.