Kris Kristofferson died on Saturday, September 28, 2024, at his home in Maui, with his family around him. He was 88. By Monday, fans were streaming his music in huge numbers, and most of them kept returning to one song. It wasn’t one of the famous hits he wrote for Johnny Cash, Sammi Smith, or the other stars who made his songs famous. It was a prayer he once sang about himself.
A Man Who Lived Several Lives
Kris Kristofferson had already lived a full life before Nashville ever heard his name. He was a Rhodes scholar and an Army helicopter pilot with a bright military future. In 1965 he gave all of that up to write songs in Nashville. To pay the bills he took odd jobs, including working as a janitor, while he pitched songs that nobody wanted yet.
Then the songs started to land. Johnny Cash took “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” to the top of the country charts, and it won CMA Song of the Year in 1970. Sammi Smith reached No. 1 with “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Before long, Kris Kristofferson was more than a songwriter. He starred opposite Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born, and he later rode alongside Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings as one of The Highwaymen.
The Quiet Years
His later years were gentler and harder at the same time. For a long time he struggled with his memory. After years of being told it was Alzheimer’s, he learned it was actually Lyme disease. His wife Lisa said that once he got the right treatment, it felt like he had come back. He retired from performing in 2021 and lived quietly on Maui, where he and Lisa had made their home for more than thirty years.
He did walk onstage one more time. In April 2023, at 86, Kris Kristofferson joined Rosanne Cash at the Hollywood Bowl for Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration. She helped him to the microphone, and together they sang “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again).” When the song ended, they held each other and walked off together. It was his last public performance.
A Sunday Morning That Changed Everything
The song fans turned to after his death began in a church pew in the early 1970s. After a benefit show one night, his friend Connie Smith invited Kris Kristofferson to Sunday service at Evangel Temple, the church led by Reverend Jimmie Rodgers Snow just outside Nashville. Kris Kristofferson rarely went to church. That morning Larry Gatlin sang his song “Help Me,” and it moved Kris Kristofferson more than he expected.
Then the pastor asked whether anyone in the room felt lost. Kris Kristofferson raised his hand. He later said he wept in front of everyone and felt a release he could never fully explain.
He described feeling “this forgiveness that I didn’t know I even needed.”
According to Larry Gatlin, Kris Kristofferson wrote the song in the car on the way home. He wasn’t asking for anything. He was asking what a man like him had ever done to deserve so much grace.
How He Sang It
He recorded it with Rita Coolidge, who would soon become his wife, and Larry Gatlin singing harmony. His own voice was rough and close to speaking, nothing like a polished gospel singer’s, and that is exactly why the song works. Rita Coolidge and Larry Gatlin lift it up while Kris Kristofferson keeps it close to the ground. The song was released in 1973 as “Why Me”, often called “Why Me, Lord.” It became his only solo No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart and crossed over to No. 16 on the Hot 100. Elvis Presley later sang it in his live shows.
Why Everyone Pressed Play
In the days after Kris Kristofferson died, his catalog came back to life on streaming services, and “Why Me” led the way, well ahead of any of his other songs.
The reason may be simple. In 1973 the song sounded like an outlaw’s surprise confession. In 2024 it sounded like something else. After a soldier’s discipline, a songwriter’s hunger, fame, struggle, illness, and a peaceful ending surrounded by family, it sounded like a thank-you said at the end of a long road. People weren’t only mourning him. They wanted to hear him say grace one more time.
Which Kris Kristofferson song have you been playing since he passed?