Loretta Lynn's song "Coal Miner's Daughter" has been ranked 185 on the Recording Industry Association of America's list of Songs of the Century and No. 13 on the TV special CMT's 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music.

In 2010 the Library of Congress put "Coal Miner's Daughter" on the National Recording Registry.

The soundtrack reached No. 2 on Billboard's country album chart and 40 on the overall Top 200 chart. The single of Sissy Spacek singing the title tune from the soundtrack reached No. 23 on the Billboard country singles chart.

Sissy Spacek was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her recording of the title song. She was up against Loretta Lynn's sister Crystal Gayle. They lost to Anne Murray.

On the 2010 album "Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute To Loretta Lynn," Lynn re-recorded the song with guest vocalists Miranda Lambert and Sheryl Crow. It was also released as a single, reaching No. 55 on the Hot Country Songs chart. The music video of the song was a Country Music Television top ten hit. The trio was nominated for Country Music Association, Academy of Country Music, and CMT Video awards.

Lynn collected many of the props, costumes, and set pieces from the movie and created a museum and tourist attraction called the Loretta Lynn Ranch at her home, Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. The site contains a rebuilt version of the Butcher Hollow house from the movie, the Cadillac where she wrote many of her songs, and all the dresses. The white-columned mansion featured in the movie, where Lynn and her husband lived until his death in 1996, has been opened to tourists, who complain if anything is different from the way they remember it on screen. Lynn now lives in a separate house on the property for more privacy.

A fictionalized character based on Loretta Lynn was featured in Robert Altman's film Nashville (1975), played by Ronee Blakley as a fragile woman recovering from a nervous breakdown.

During the Opry Country Classics show in May 2012, Lynn announced there would be a Broadway version of her story, then introduced the actress who would play her, Zooey Deschanel. The two sang together, but since then not much has been heard about the project.

There was talk for a few years that a movie biography of Patsy Cline would be made with Beverly D'Angelo, who made such an impression as the late country singer in this film. When it was eventually made, as Sweet Dreams (1985), Jessica Lange had the lead, lip-synching to Cline's recordings, as opposed to D'Angelo's own much-praised performance of Cline's music in this picture.

Country greats Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, and Ernest Tubb made cameo appearances in the film.

By Rob Nixon