Jesus Was A Capricorn

About

Brighter and somewhat more expansive aesthetically than his prior albums, Kristofferson’s first No. 1 release on the country charts brought his songwriting into still more new worlds—namely, gospel, and not just via the whimsical title track. A spiritual crisis of sorts prompted by hearing Larry Gatlin’s “Help Me” in a church (which he sings here with the honey-voiced Gatlin) inspired “Why Me,” the biggest hit of Kristofferson’s career as a performer and his sole No. 1 song on Billboard’s country chart. The song, an improbably catchy plea to the heavens, has become something of a country gospel standard, favored by Elvis, George Jones, and dozens of others. “Jesus Was a Capricorn” falls at the other end of the album, and the religious spectrum—explicitly modeled after John Prine’s work, it was just the latest in a long line of songs to proclaim Jesus’ hippie bona fides. Though the rest of the album’s tracks are not explicitly religious, there is Sunday-tinted piano and organ on songs like “Give It Time to Be Tender” and “Enough for You”; duets with Kristofferson’s soon-to-be wife Rita Coolidge add sweetness. The album’s other major addition to the Kristofferson songwriting catalog is “Nobody Wins,” which also has organ as a backbone—Brenda Lee turned the song into a hit, and it was even recorded by Frank Sinatra. Kristofferson’s commercial zenith is occasionally frowned upon by critics, given that he traded in the stripped-down sound of his own voice and guitar for fully fleshed-out pop arrangements—as <i>Rolling Stone</i> noted derisively at the time, 37 different musicians are credited. But its range shows the songwriter-singer’s preternatural gift for melody, which unites this eclectic batch of sometimes existential-crisis-themed songs: Kristofferson could hardly help but add to country and pop music’s canon.

via Apple Music

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