The Americana and roots music authority

Our greatest living American songwriter......

Kris Kristofferson,

http://acltv.com/artist/kris-kristofferson/

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by steviedal on March 14, 2012 at 11:31am

He's superb , or was years ago. But there's a lot more ...............

Tom Russell

Dave Alvin

Billy Joe Shaver

erm.............Bob Dylan was still alive last time i checked :)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by rudy molesworth on March 14, 2012 at 6:37pm

Bruce Springsteen

Steve Earle

Paul Westerberg

Ron Sexsmith

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Lost Hills on March 14, 2012 at 7:15pm

I could make the case for Mr. Dylan myself. I could make one for Tom Russell, Dave Alvin, Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen, too... I saw Kris on Austin City Limits a few days ago. I had already seen it a couple months ago. Steve played first, doing Townes Van Zandt songs and telling great stories about Townes. Kris really blew me away, though and I was reminded of how many truly great songs the man has written. They're real Country songs, but with more depth and reality than anything you normally hear on country radio. He didn't fall into the Nashville co-writing trap. It's all his own vision. And he made his reputation on the songs themselves, recorded by other people. Had bonafide bid-ass hits. And did the very best versions of those songs on his own albums with miimalist production. Them are some great songs, man. He never got tongue in cheek or silly, like Dylan has done too often.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Joe FitzGerald on March 14, 2012 at 8:52pm

Kris didn’t begin to gain traction as a songwriter until he was thirty-five-years-old. By the time he was that age Dylan had recorded Bob Dylan, Freewheelin, Another Side….,Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde On Blonde. These albums contained songs like Don’t Think Twice, Girl From The North Country, With God On Our Side, It Ain’t Me Babe, Mr Tambourine Man, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Like A Rolling Stone and Just Like A Woman. And he's continued to be a prolific songwriter throughout his lifetime.

Kris was a better actor, and more of a renaissance man, but a better songwriter? Ridiculous.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Lost Hills on March 14, 2012 at 9:04pm

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”

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Joe FitzGerald on March 15, 2012 at 5:41am

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Live 1975)

2. Abandoned Love
Golden Unplugged Album (Biograph)

3. Ain't Talkin'
Modern Times (Tell Tale Signs)

4. All Along the Watchtower
John Wesley Harding (Before the Flood)

5. Ballad of a Thin Man
Highway 61 Revisited (Live 1966)

6. Blind Willie McTell
Bootleg Series, Vol 1 (Outfidel Intakes)

7. Blowin' in the Wind
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

8. Crash On the Levee (Down in the Flood)
Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (Genuine Basement Tapes)

9. Desolation Row
Highway 61 Revisited (No Direction Home soundtrack)

10. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

11. Every Grain of Sand
Shot of Love (Bootleg Series)

12. Forever Young
Planet Waves (Biograph; The Last Waltz)

13. Gates of Eden
Bringing it All Back Home

14. Girl from the North Country
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Nashville Skyline)

15. Groom's Still Waiting At the Altar
Shot of Love

16. High Water (For Charley Patton)
"Love and Theft"

17. I Shall Be Released
Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (Bootleg Series)

18. I Want You
Blonde on Blonde

19. Idiot Wind
Bootleg Series (Blood on the Tracks; Hard Rain)

20. Isis (with Jacques Levy)
Desire (Biograph)

21. It Ain't Me, Babe
Another Side of Bob Dylan

22. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
Highway 61 Revisited

23. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Bringing it all Back Home

24. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Bringing it all Back Home

25. Jokerman
Infidels (Late Night With David Letterman rehearsal and performance)

26. Just Like a Woman
Blonde on Blonde (Live 1966)

27. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Highway 61 Revisited (Live 1966)

28. Lay, Lady, Lay
Nashville Skyline

29. Like a Rolling Stone
Highway 61 Revisited (Bootleg Series; Live 1966; Self Portrait)

30. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Bringing it all Back Home

31. Maggie's Farm

Bringing it all Back Home

32. Mama, You Been On My Mind
Bootleg Series, Vol. 1

33. Man in the Long Black Coat
Oh, Mercy

34. Masters of War
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

35. Mississippi
"Love and Theft" (all three versions on Tell Tale Signs)

36. Most of the Time
Oh, Mercy

37. Mr. Tambourine Man
Bringing it all Back Home

38. My Back Pages
Another Side of Bob Dylan

39. Not Dark Yet
Time Out of Mind

40. Obviously Five Believers
Blonde on Blonde

41. Odds and Ends
The Basement Tapes (The Genuine Basement Tapes)

42. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
Desire

43. One Too Many Mornings
The Times They Are-A Changin' (Live, 1966; Dylan-Cash Sessions)

44. Percy's Song
Biograph

45. Positively Fourth Street
Greatest Hits

46. Quinn the Eskimo (Mighty Quinn)
Self-Portrait (Biograph; Genuine Basement Tapes)

47. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
Blonde on Blonde

48. Sara
Desire (Live 1975)

49. She Belongs to Me
Bringing It All Back Home (Self Portrait)

50. Shelter From the Storm
Blood on the Tracks (Hard Rain)

51. Simple Twist of Fate
Blood on the Tracks (Live 1975)

52. Standing in the Doorway
Time Out of Mind

53. Subterranean Homesick Blues
Bringing it all Back Home (Bootleg Series)

54. Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Blonde on Blonde

55. Sweetheart Like You
Infidels (Outfidel Intakes; Rough Cuts)

56. Tangled Up in Blue
Bootleg Series (Blood on the Tracks; Real Live)

57. Tears of Rage (with Richard Manuel)
The Basement Tapes (Genuine Basement Tapes)

58. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
The Times They Are-A-Changin' (Live 1975)

59. The Times They-Are A-Changin'
The Times They Are A-Changin'

60. Things Have Changed
The Essential Bob Dylan

61. This Wheel's on Fire
Basement Tapes (Genuine Basement Tapes)

62. Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You
Nashville Skyline (Live 1975)

63. Tryin' to Get to Heaven
Time Out of Mind

64. Up to Me
Biograph

65. Visions of Johanna
Blonde on Blonde (Biograph)

66. When I Paint My Masterpiece
Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

67.Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)
Street Legal

68. Where Teardrops Fall
Oh, Mercy

69. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (Basement Tapes; Genuine Basement Tapes)

70. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
Blood on the Tracks

List compiled by David Yaffe

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by steviedal on March 15, 2012 at 11:45am

Enjoying this little spat fellas and i'm a massive fan of both artists.

Kris has written some all time classic songs , no doubt about that , but he did get sidetracked with films etc . Most of those songs listed are decades old though , Dylan has written great ones all the way through. He wins.

Much respect to Kris though , he recorded some of my very favourite songs. You listed 20 songs Lost Hills but still missed maybe my favourite "I May Smoke To Much" " once my future was as shiny as the seat of my pants are today, then old Mother Luck and all her daughters started duckin me ............" wonderful !

Oh , and "Josie" as well !

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Drew Taylor on March 15, 2012 at 4:58pm

Ha, ha. Keep dukin' it out, guys. Thanks, Joe, for putting 'Abandoned Love' way up there on your list. My favorite at the moment. Dylan's the better writer but Kris has maybe the best line ever, no. 4 on Lost's list.