Nick Cave He often speaks openly about how certain topics helped him think about deep and personal topics such as his relationship with faith, crisis, and the place that music occupies in these processes. Throughout his career, the Australian singer-songwriter mentioned several songs that he believes accurately describe different emotional states. However, among all of them there is one that concretely summarizes what it understands as a moment of “spiritual collapse.”
The track in question is “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”, written by Kris Kristofferson in the late 60s and popularized by Johnny Cash in 1970. Cave highlighted the way in which Kristofferson recounts a morning marked by a hangover, loneliness and disconnection from his surroundings. When asked what his colleague’s music meant to him, he stated: “I love Kris Kristofferson, I always did. ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down‘ is one of the best songs about spiritual breakdown ever written”.
On the other hand, in Faith, Hope & Carnagethe book that Cave published with Sean O’Hagan in 2022, the musician explains that few songs manage to capture such a specific state of mind with such clarity. For him, “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” works because it presents a concrete situation without much makeup: a difficult awakening, a failed attempt to return to routine and the persistent feeling of emptiness that runs through the entire track.
