The song is “Why Me,” sometimes called “Why Me, Lord.” Kris Kristofferson wrote it after one church service in the early 1970s, and in July 1973 it reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart. It was the only time he topped that chart as a solo artist. His next country No. 1 came in 1985, as one of the Highwaymen.
A hit songwriter without a hit of his own
By then, his songs had been No. 1 records for others: “For the Good Times” for Ray Price, “Help Me Make It Through the Night” for Sammi Smith, “Me and Bobby McGee” for Janis Joplin. His own singles did far less. Larry Gatlin later said Kris “was not in good shape” back then, and it had been years since he had set foot in a church.
The morning at Evangel Temple
The night before, Kristofferson and Connie Smith had played a benefit together. The next morning she took him to Evangel Temple, the church led by the Rev. Jimmie Rodgers Snow, son of Hank Snow. Gatlin was there and sang his own song, “Help Me.”
When Snow asked whether anyone in the room felt lost, Kristofferson remembered wondering why anybody would admit that in public. Then his own hand went up, almost without his deciding it. Snow called those who wanted to be saved to the front. Kristofferson, who said he would never have walked up in front of strangers, found himself doing exactly that. Asked whether he was ready to accept Christ, he answered honestly that he didn’t know. Snow told him to kneel.
“Up goes my hand.” — Kris Kristofferson, to Playboy, 1975
He said he wept and felt a heavy load lift. He later told CMT that writing the song felt like he was “just holding a pen.” The finished song is a man asking the Lord what he ever did to earn the good things in his life, and asking for help with the rest.
The last song on the album
Kristofferson recorded “Why Me” in Nashville on July 8, 1972, with Fred Foster producing. Rita Coolidge, soon to be his wife, sang harmony. So did Gatlin. It went on the album Jesus Was a Capricorn as the final track.
Monument Records released the title track as a single first, then “Jesse Younger.” Both underperformed. Only then did the label put out “Why Me,” with Gatlin’s “Help Me” on the B-side. AllMusic’s review of the album goes further, saying a disc jockey had started playing the song before the label pushed it, and that Monument had not even wanted it on the record.
Where the accounts don’t match
Gatlin says Kristofferson wrote the song in the car on the way home from church, and that the two of them sang it on the Grand Ole Opry that Friday. Kristofferson’s own accounts don’t give that timeline; he only said the experience led him to write it. Wikipedia’s article on the song says he went “with friends,” while both Kristofferson and Gatlin name Connie Smith as the one who brought him.
The chart numbers vary too. Most sources give the pop peak as No. 16 on the Hot 100; one Wikipedia page says No. 20. The single’s release month appears as both March and April 1973.
What the song became
“Why Me” went gold, and it pulled Jesus Was a Capricorn back up the charts until the album reached No. 1 on the country albums list in November 1973. Elvis Presley began singing it in concert in January 1974 and kept it in his shows until his final tour. Connie Smith, the woman who took Kris to church that morning, cut her own version in 1973.
When Kristofferson died on September 28, 2024, at 88, listeners went back to his catalog. The song whose streams jumped the most that week, according to American Songwriter, was not one of the hits he wrote for others. It was the one that started with a hand going up in a pew.
Do you remember the first time you heard it?