Kris Kristofferson’s 10 Best Songs
variety.comKris Kristofferson, who died Sunday at the age of 88, was truly one of the greatest songwriters of the past 60 years. No less an eminence than Bob Dylan said of him, “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.” And indeed he did: A Rhodes scholar who mortified his family by abandoning a promising career in the military to starve for five years before he made it as a songwriter, Kristofferson was a legendary hell-raiser who was every bit as badass as any of his contemporaries: He famously got Johnny Cash’s attention by landing a helicopter on his lawn.
Yet his songs often spoke of the darker side of that lifestyle, best embodied in one of his earliest hits, “Sunday Morning, Coming Down” (see below); a later song, “From the Bottle to the Bottom,” features the timeless line: “If happiness means empty rooms and drinking in the afternoon / Then I suppose I’m happy as a clown.” However, as much as the gods may have overpaid him with songwriting gifts, they short-changed him in the singing department.
Even on his early recordings, his voice was a deadpan alto that could barely carry many of the more-challenging melodies he’d written.
Hence, some of the definitive versions of the songs listed below were performed by others, yet his delivery and skill as an actor made him the perfect singer for many others.
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