“Sunday Morning Coming Down” by Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson wrote "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and other singers picked it up: Ray Stevens was first to record it, in 1969, and Johnny Cash would carry it to number one on the country chart. But the writer kept a reading of his own too, on his album Kristofferson, and it's the version with his fingerprints all over it.

It's also the song that changed his fortunes. In a 2013 interview he said it opened a lot of doors for him, that the artists he looked up to loved it too, and that it was the song that finally let him quit working for a living.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.