In the long, storied career of Kris Kristofferson, few facts are as quietly powerful as this one: out of all the legends he wrote for — Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Waylon Jennings, Ray Price — he penned only one song specifically for Jerry Lee Lewis.
Just one.
And if you know anything about either man, that single song says more than an entire catalog ever could.
Two Men from Different Worlds — Cut from the Same Truth
On paper, Kris Kristofferson and Jerry Lee Lewis looked like opposites.
Kristofferson was the polished poet — a Rhodes Scholar, a former Army helicopter pilot, a man who quoted William Blake as easily as he wrote country lyrics that could break your heart. He carried himself with a quiet intensity, the kind of artist who thought deeply and spoke carefully.
Jerry Lee Lewis, on the other hand, was pure wildfire.
Raised in the Pentecostal South, Lewis grew up believing rock ’n’ roll might send him to hell — and played it anyway, pounding the piano like he was fighting for his soul every night. Nicknamed The Killer, he lived loudly, loved recklessly, and never once pretended to be tame enough for polite society.
But beneath those surface differences, the two men recognized something familiar in each other: authenticity.
Neither man knew how to fake emotion. Neither knew how to sand down the rough edges to make life look prettier than it was. They had both seen too much, lost too much, and lived too honestly to bother pretending.
When they crossed paths in Nashville during the 1960s, Kristofferson was still struggling — taking odd jobs, crashing on couches, hustling to get his songs heard. Lewis was already infamous: scandal-scarred, controversial, but still undeniably brilliant. Fame hadn’t softened him; if anything, it had hardened him into someone even more uncompromising.
Their friendship, unlikely as it seemed, stuck. And it lasted.
Writing for Jerry Lee Was Different
Kris Kristofferson wrote dozens of deeply personal songs, but writing for another artist was a different challenge. When he wrote for Johnny Cash, there was room for reflection and redemption. For Janis Joplin, there was wild, poetic vulnerability.
But Jerry Lee Lewis?
He didn’t need poetry dressed in metaphors. He didn’t need clever wordplay or romanticized pain. Jerry Lee had lived too much of the real thing.
Writing for him meant stripping everything down to emotional bone.
No polish. No protection. No pretending.
Kristofferson understood that immediately. If he tried to get fancy, Jerry Lee would hear the dishonesty in a second. The song had to feel like something Lewis himself might have said at 3 a.m., sitting alone after the crowd had gone home.
That song became “Once More with Feeling.”
A Song That Felt Lived-In, Not Written
Penned in the early 1970s, “Once More with Feeling” is not a grand, sweeping anthem. It’s weary. Reflective. Bruised. The kind of song that sounds like it’s been through a few divorces, a few funerals, and more than a few bad decisions.
It speaks of emotional exhaustion, of trying again even when you know better, of carrying regret like an old coat you can’t throw away. There’s no dramatic redemption arc. No tidy moral lesson.
Just survival.
For Jerry Lee Lewis, those weren’t abstract ideas. They were biography. By the time he recorded the song, he had already lived through career collapse, public scandal, broken relationships, and deep personal loss. He knew what it meant to fall hard and get back up without ever really being the same.
That’s why the song worked.
It didn’t sound like Jerry Lee Lewis singing someone else’s words. It sounded like Jerry Lee Lewis confessing something he’d never said out loud before.
Why Kristofferson Never Recorded It Himself
Kris Kristofferson recorded many of his own compositions, but not this one.
And that wasn’t an accident.
He believed “Once More with Feeling” belonged to Jerry Lee Lewis in a way few songs ever truly belong to a single voice. Kristofferson knew that if he sang it, the song would become reflective and poetic. In Lewis’s hands, it became raw and exposed.
Jerry Lee didn’t smooth out the edges. He leaned into them.
His voice — cracked, fierce, and worn by years of living hard — gave the song a weight no studio trick could manufacture. You can hear the history in every line. The marriages that didn’t last. The bridges burned. The faith wrestled with and never fully resolved.
It’s not a performance. It’s a reckoning.
A Friendship That Outlasted the Spotlight
As years passed and trends shifted, both men saw their time at the top come and go. But their respect for each other never faded.
Kristofferson remained loyal to Lewis even when the world found him difficult to defend. He didn’t admire Jerry Lee because he was easy to explain — he admired him because he was impossible to fake.
In an industry built on image, Jerry Lee Lewis was stubbornly, sometimes disastrously real. And Kristofferson valued that above chart positions, radio play, or public approval.
That single song stands today as a quiet monument to that bond.
Not a blockbuster hit.
Not a crossover success.
Not a career-defining single.
Just one honest song, written by one man who understood truth, for another man who had no idea how to live any other way.
When One Song Says Everything
In music history, we often measure importance by numbers: chart positions, sales, awards. But sometimes the most meaningful moments leave almost no commercial footprint at all.
“Once More with Feeling” is one of those moments.
It’s the sound of a songwriter recognizing that only one voice in the world can carry a certain kind of pain convincingly. It’s the sound of friendship built not on similarity, but on shared scars. And it’s proof that sometimes the greatest tribute isn’t a grand gesture — it’s knowing exactly what to say, and exactly who should say it.
Kris Kristofferson gave Jerry Lee Lewis more than a song.
He gave him a mirror.
And sometimes, that’s the deepest form of respect one artist can offer another.