Kris Kristofferson was always modest about his talent.

He did not like to be called a poet and preferred other people to perform his songs.

“I sing like a bullfrog,” he once told producer Fred Foster.

“Yes,” Foster replied, “just a bullfrog that communicates.”

Kristofferson’s distinct vocals may have lacked range, but they conveyed something more important: conviction.

When he sang about loss and love and sadness and drunken nights and mornings of regret, you believed every word.

That’s partly because he never created a song – “I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it,” he once said – but also because he could dig into the simple truth of a sentiment.

His songwriting wasn’t particularly complex, but what he could do with a few chords and a well-turned phrase revolutionized country music.

“You can look at Nashville before Kris and after Kris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan once said.

To mark his death, at the age of 88here’s a guide to some of his most memorable songs.

One of Kristofferson’s most enduring songs, Me and Bobby McGeestarted as a songwriting challenge.

Monument Records founder Foster was in love with his secretary, Barbara “Bobbie” McKee, and wanted a song that would impress her.

Kristofferson accepted the assignment, but finding inspiration took time.

“I avoided him (Foster) for three or four months because there were only thoughts going through my mind,” he said in 1973.

“I was driving back to New Orleans one night, the windshield wipers came on and it started coming together.”

He based the song on the final scene of the Fellini film La Strada (The Road), in which a broken, drunken man stares desperately out to sea at what his life has become and the love he has lost.

Kristofferson turned that story into the story of two wanderers, who find love along the way and are ultimately separated by death.

It contains one of his greatest texts: “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose / Nothing is worth nothing – but it’s free.”

Originally recorded by Roger Miller, it became a number one hit for Janis Joplin, who recorded it weeks before her death in 1970.

“Well, I woke up Sunday morning and couldn’t hold my head, which didn’t hurt.

“And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had another one for dessert.”

The desolation of Kristofferson’s somber performance tells you that this song is about much more than a bad hangover.

And as it progresses, the protagonist slowly reveals more about the causes of his booze-soaked existence.

The smell of fried chicken reminds him of “something I lost”.

And he stops in front of a Sunday school to hear the children sing.

The loneliness and self-loathing are vividly expressed – and Kristofferson said he wrote the lyrics as a struggling musician living in a tenement after his parents disowned him and his wife and child moved to California without him.

“Sunday was the worst day of the week if you didn’t have a family,” he said.

Legend has it that Kristofferson got the song into Johnny Cash’s hands by landing a helicopter in his backyard and refusing to leave until he listened to his demo tape.

Cash was impressed enough to play the song on his American TV show.

And the Country Music Association named his recording song of the year for 1970.

Kristofferson’s own version appeared on his debut album the same year.

Along with artists such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, Kristofferson was part of the “outlaw country” scene that fought against Nashville’s commercial and creative control.

Discussing his place in the nation’s firmament in 1970, he told the New York Times: “I’m no one’s best friend.

“People kept telling me that I would never make it in Nashville, that I should go to California or New York.”

He had roiled the establishment with songs like Blame It on the Stones and The Law Is for the Protection of the People, which took a swipe at American conservatism.

His most famous song also ruffled feathers for its unadorned portrayal of sexual desire, especially when recorded (and hit number one) by female country star Sammi Smith.

Kristofferson said the lyrics were inspired by an interview with Frank Sinatra.

When asked what he believed in, Old Blue Eyes replied, “Booze, girls or a Bible… whatever helps me get through the night.”

Smith’s sensual performance was a subversive step forward for country music, but Kristofferson’s own version – gravelly voiced and dripping with hunger – is just as electrifying.

“The first good song I wrote,” Kristofferson said Jody and the child, which he composed while working as a janitor at Columbia Records in the 1960s

Like me and Bobby McGee, it is steeped in nostalgia and loss, as the musician describes a girl who used to walk with him, “her little jeans rolled up to her knees.”

Over time, they fall in love and grow old, still holding hands everywhere.

At the end of the song, the narrator retraces their old paths with their daughter, but when the locals greet them, he laments that his wife is no longer there to join them.

Kristofferson’s somber, emotional voice is both enchanting and heartbreaking.

It’s also worth checking out his 1999 re-recording of the song (on the album The Austin Sessions), where his older, rougher voice gives it extra pathos.

If the character in Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down was at rock bottom, that means they are at rock bottom.

“Lord, what have I ever done / To deserve even one / Of the joys I’ve known?“

Kristofferson was moved to write the song after attending a service at Jimmie Snow’s church in Nashville.

“Everyone knelt down and Jimmy said something like, ‘If anyone’s lost, raise their hand.'” he said.

‘I don’t go to church often and the idea of ​​raising my hand was out of the question.

“I thought, ‘I can’t imagine who’s doing this,’ when suddenly I felt my hand go up.”

After speaking with the pastor, Kristofferson said, “I found myself crying in public” and felt a “forgiveness I didn’t even know I needed.”

The song works as a response to that moment: a slow, sad realization of his past behavior, and a soul’s cry for forgiveness.

Recorded with his wife-to-be Rita Cooolidge, the gospel-inspired ballad struck a chord with audiences in 1973, making the star his only number one on the country charts.

6) I hate your ugly face – The first song Kristofferson wrote when he was 11 years old. It is a sarcastic rejection of country styles and reveals the early development of his storytelling talent.

7) They killed him – A lament for Kristofferson’s heroes – Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King – later reinterpreted by Dylan. “When Dylan covers one of your songs, it’s like being a playwright and having Shakespeare in your play,” Kristofferson said.

8) Loving her was easier (than anything I’ll ever do again) – One of his most romantic songs and Kristofferson’s first hit, in 1971. He later re-recorded it with The Highwaymen, a supergroup of outlaw country artists that also included Cash, Jennings and Nelson.

9) Here comes that rainbow again – Inspired by a scene from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this moving ballad is about small acts of kindness that are repaid. Cash once said that it “might be my favorite song by any writer”.

10) Please don’t tell me how the story ends – Two lovers spend one last night together, holding on to their memories (and to each other) and hoping that the inevitable breakup will never come. Written in the early 1970s, Kristofferson initially gave it to Billy Bare, but later remade it with Rita Coolidge just as their marriage was about to dissolve. Their duet is devastating.