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Sunday Morning Coming Down, written by Kris Kristofferson - Review

Updated on February 11, 2017
Kris Kristofferson
Kris Kristofferson | Source

On the surface, the song Sunday Morning Coming Down sounds just like what it is: the story of a performer who had a gig on Saturday night and woke up the next morning hung over from too much booze and cigarettes. But it’s more than that: it resonates with anyone not plugged into a secure, predictable and steady social structure, to the lonely or disaffected who may feel themselves on the outside looking in. The song reveals author Kris Kristofferson’s talent as a poet, with lines like “… it took me back to something that I’d lost somehow somewhere along the way” and “somewhere far away a lonesome bell was ringing / and it echoed through the canyon / like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.” It is full of sensory images – a father with his young daughter, a solitary kid kicking a can down the street, the sound of Sunday school kids singing hymns, the smell of frying chicken, all of which serve to underscore the isolation of the singer, revealed in the chorus line: “cause there’s something ‘bout a Sunday / Makes a body feel alone.”

Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson

Kristofferson has written a lot of songs for a variety of artists -- including Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby Magee -- and has made his mark with his own hits, including Help Me Make It Though the Night, but his very best song may be Sunday Morning Coming Down, first recorded in 1969 by Ray Stevens and then by Kristofferson himself in 1970. The song really took off that same year when Johnny Cash got hold of it and took it to number 1 on the country charts. Here’s a rendition of Cash and a clearly pleased, perhaps somewhat awed young Kristofferson singing the song:

Trisha Yearwood and Kris Kristofferson

With all the hints of a dissolute life – “my cleanest dirty shirt,” “no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt,” a reference to two beers for breakfast -- it sounds like a song made to be sung by a man, and someone way down on his luck, at that, but Trisha Yearwood put the lie to that notion in her version of the song, sung at a Johnny Cash tribute in 1999, with Kris Kristofferson accompanying her on the guitar:

It’s hard to listen to the song without coming to tears – the raw honesty of every single line, including the ending lines of the refrain, “There ain’t nothing short of dying’ / half as lonesome as the sound / on the sleeping city sidewalks / Sunday mornin’ comin’ down” – and the song’s eternal association with Johnny Cash, whom the world lost in September of 2003. Maybe the best rendition of the song was given by Kris Kristofferson himself at a memorial concert for Johnny Cash in September of 2003, where he said about Cash, “Bob Dylan said, ‘John was the north star, and you could guide your ship by him.’”

Kris Kristofferson's Tribute to Johnny Cash

Lyrics

For the full lyrics to "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down, click on Cowboy Lyrics.

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