Five (maybe ten) of his best songs

Kris Kristofferson has always been humble about his talents.

He didn’t like being called a poet, preferring when others performed his songs.

“I sing like a bullfrog,” he once told record producer Fred Foster.

“Yes,” Foster replied, “but bullfrogs can communicate.”

Kristofferson’s forthright voices may lack range, but they carry something more important – conviction.

You believe every word as he sings about loss, love, grief, drunken nights and regret-filled mornings.

Partly because he never forced a song into existence—”I always had to wait until something hit me before I could write it,” he once said—but also because he could tap into the simple truths of emotion.

His songwriting wasn’t particularly complex, but what he could accomplish with a few chords and a clever phrase caused a revolution in country music.

“You can look at Nashville before and after Chris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan once said.

to mark him Passed away at the age of 88a guide to some of his most memorable songs.

One of Kristofferson’s most enduring songs Me and Bobby McGeestarted out as a songwriting challenge.

Monument Records founder Foster had a crush on his secretary, Barbara “Bobby” McGee, and wanted a song that would impress her.

Christopherson accepted the assignment, but finding inspiration took time.

“I avoided him [Foster] It lasted three or four months because I just had ideas in my head,” he said in 1973.

“I was driving back to New Orleans one night and the windshield wipers were turning and then it started falling all together.”

The song is based on the final scene of Fellini’s film The Road, in which a heartbroken, drunken man stares despairingly at the sea, despairing of his life and his lost love.

Kristofferson turns the story into a tale of two castaways who find love on the road but are eventually separated by death.

It contains one of his greatest lyrics: “Freedom just means there’s nothing to lose/nothing unworthy – but it’s free.”

Originally recorded by Roger Miller, the song became a hit for Janis Joplin, who recorded it just weeks before her death in 1970.

“I woke up on Sunday morning and couldn’t keep my head from hurting.

“And the beer I had for breakfast was pretty good, so I had another one for dessert.”

Kristofferson’s downbeat vocals tell you there’s more to this song than just a bad hangover.

As the story progresses, the protagonist slowly reveals more about the reasons for his alcoholic existence.

The smell of fried chicken reminds him of “what I lost.”

He stopped outside a Sunday school just to listen to the children singing.

Loneliness and self-loathing are vividly expressed – says Christopherson, a struggling musician living in an apartment after his parents cut ties with him and his wife and children moved to California without him After that, he wrote this song.

“If you don’t have family, Sunday is the worst day of the week,” he said.

According to legend, Christopherson got the song into Johnny Cash’s hands by landing a helicopter in his backyard and refusing to leave until he had listened to his demo tape.

Cash was so impressed by the song that he played it on his American television show.

The Country Music Association named his record its 1970 Song of the Year.

Kristofferson’s own version appeared on his debut album the same year.

Christopherson, along with artists such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, became part of the outlaw scene that rebelled against Nashville’s commercial and creative controls.

In 1970, while discussing his place in the countryside, He told the New York Times: “I’m not anyone’s best friend.

“People kept telling me I would never make it in Nashville and that I should go to California or New York.”

He angered those in power with songs such as “Blame it on the Stone” and “Laws Are Made to Protect the People,” which lashed out at American conservatism.

his most famous song The album also pissed people off for its earthy depiction of sexual desire, especially when it was recorded (and went to No. 1) by female country star Sammy Smith.

Kristofferson said the lyrics were inspired by interviews with Frank Sinatra.

When asked what he believed in, Old Blue Eyes replied: “Wine, women, or the Bible… anything to get me through the night.”

Smith’s sensual performance was a subversive step for country music, but Kristofferson’s own version – raspy-voiced and full of hunger – was just as exciting.

“The first good song I ever wrote,” Kristofferson said Jody and kids, He wrote the song while working as a janitor at Columbia Records in the 1960s

Like “Me” and “Bobby McGee,” it’s steeped in nostalgia and loss, as the musician describes a girl he once walked around with “whose little blue jeans rolled up to her knees.” .

As time goes by, they fall in love, and even when they grow old, they still hold hands wherever they go.

As the song ends, the narrator and their daughter retrace their old paths together – but as the locals greet them, he laments that his wife is no longer there to join them.

Kristofferson’s dark, emotional voice is both riveting and heartbreaking.

Also worth a look is his 1999 re-recording of the song (from The Austin Sessions), where his old, rough voice adds even more pathos to the song.

If the characters in “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” are at rock bottom, that means they’re at rock bottom.

“Lord, what have I ever done/to deserve/to be one of the joys I know?“

Christopherson was moved to write the song after attending a service at Jimmy Snow Church in Nashville.

“Everyone knelt down and Jimmy said something like, ‘If anyone’s lost, raise your hand,'” he said.

“I don’t go to church very often, so it’s impossible to raise my hand.

“I thought, ‘I can’t imagine who’s doing this,’ and suddenly I felt my hands go up.”

After speaking with the preacher, Christopherson said, “I found myself crying in public” and feeling “forgiveness I didn’t even know I needed.”

The song is a reaction to that moment—a slow, sad realization of his past actions, and a soulful cry for forgiveness.

Recorded with his soon-to-be wife Rita Coolidge Gospel ballads struck a chord with audiences in 1973 and made the star the only number one on the country music charts.

6) I hate your ugly face – Kristofferson’s first song written when he was 11 years old.

7) They killed him – Elegies to Christopherson’s heroes – Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King – later reinterpreted by Dylan. “Having Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play,” Christopherson said.

8) It’s easier to love her (easier than anything I’ll ever do again) – It is one of his most romantic songs and was Kristofferson’s first chart-topping song in 1971. Also among them are Cash, Jennings and Nelson.

9) The rainbow comes again – Inspired by a scene from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this touching ballad is about small acts of kindness that pay off. Cash once said that this “may be my favorite song of any writer.”

10) Please don’t tell me the ending of the story – Two lovers spend their last night together, holding on to their memories (and each other), hoping that the inevitable breakup will never come. Written in the early 1970s, Christopherson initially gave it to Billy Bare, but later reworked it with Rita Coolidge as their marriage was breaking up . Their duet is devastating.