Over at the Website for 88.1 KDHX, the community radio station in St. Louis (I’ve got a show there on Wed mornings), I put together a list of my favorite Kris Kristofferson songs. Along with Merle Haggard, Kris will be playing St. Louis on March 9.
Kristofferson’s songs aren’t just well-crafted, clever, moving, clear, wise and observant. Taken all together, they embody the soul of what any good song could hope to be.
Check out the list and let me know what I missed!
The Top 20 Kris Kristofferson Songs (originally posted at KDHX.org)
20. Jesus Was a Capricorn: “Long hair, beard and sandals / And a funky bunch of friends / Reckon we’d just nail him up / If he came down again”
19. Jody and the Kid: “And it makes the old folks smile to see her tag along beside me / Doing things the way her Mamma did / But it gets a little lonesome, when I hear somebody saying: ‘Look yonder, there goes Jody and the kid.'”
18. Come Sundown: “And I cursed the sun for risin’ / ‘Cause the worst, Lord, was yet to come / ‘Cause this morning, she’s just leavin’ / But, come sundown, she’ll be gone”
17. Just the Other Side of Nowhere: “So give my best to anyone who’s left who ever done me / Any lovin’ way but wrong / Tell them that the pride of just the other side of nowhere’s / Goin’ home”
16. One for the Money: “‘Cause you’re caught like a clown in a circle of strangers / Who do you screw to get out of this place?”
15. Golden Idol: “They’ve dressed you fit for killin’ in your thrillin’ new disguise / Nailin’ artificial spangles to the diamonds in your eyes”
14. The Silver-Tongued Devil and I: “Some people swear he’s my double and some even say we’re the same / But the silver-tongued devil’s got nothing to lose / I’ll only live till I die”
13. Blame It on the Stones: “Mother tells the bridge club every day / Of the rising price of tranquilizers she must pay / And she wonders why the children never seem to stay at home / Blame it on the Rolling Stones”
12. Who’s to Bless and Who’s to Blame: “The moral doesn’t matter / Broken rules are all the same / To the broken or the breaker / Who’s to bless and who’s to blame?”
11. Broken Song of Freedom: “And its harder for a woman / With a baby on the way / That’s the price of bein’ human / When you’re poor enough to pay”
10. Pilgrim: Chapter 33: “He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction / Takin’ every wrong direction on his lonely way back home”
9. It’s Never Gonna Be the Same Again: “Lord I wish that I could say I could see a single way / That we could take it back to where it used to be / Before the daylight broke to pieces everything I used to make believe”
8. Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends: “Someday this may be all / That we’ll remember / Of each other / Please don’t tell me how the story ends”
7. Sunday Morning Coming Down: “Caught the Sunday smell / Of someone fryin’ chicken / It took me back to something / That I’d lost somehow / Somewhere along the way”
6. Best of All Possible Worlds: “If that’s against the law, then tell me why I never saw / A man locked in that jail of yours who wasn’t neither black or poor as me”
5. Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again): “Turning on the world, the way she smiled upon my soul as I lay dying”
4. Me and Bobby McGee: “I’d trade all my tomorrows / For one single yesterday / Holdin’ Bobby’s body next to mine”
3. Don’t Cuss the Fiddle: “If we ever get to heaven, boys / It ain’t because we ain’t done nothin’ wrong / We’re in this gig together / So let’s settle down and steal each other’s songs”
2. Help Me Make It Through the Night: “Let the Devil take tomorrow / Lord, tonight I need a friend”
1. For the Good Times: “Make believe you love me one more time / For the good times….”
