Natural Act

by William RuhlmannKris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge inaugurated their musical partnership in 1973 (also the year of their marriage) with Full Moon, which topped the country charts, and they quickly followed with 1974's Breakaway, another album with healthy sales. By the time of their third and final duo LP, Natural Act, a little more than four years later, much had changed. At the time of their earlier efforts, Kristofferson was the dominant force in the partnership, coming off his gold records of the early '70s, his movie stardom, and his songwriting renown, while Coolidge was a developing artist who benefited from the exposure the albums brought her. By the start of 1979, the positions were reversed. Coolidge's 1977 album Anytime...Anywhere had generated two gold singles and gone platinum, and its follow-up, 1978's Love Me Again, had gone gold. Kristofferson's albums, on the other hand, struggled to get into the Top 100 bestsellers of the pop chart. Still, Natural Act, like its predecessors, came off as a busman's holiday for Kristofferson and his band with Coolidge along for the ride. The song list was dominated by contributions from Kristofferson cronies like Billy Swan and Donnie Fritts, and he himself brought in three songs, as usual two of them old items from his catalog. "Loving You [sic] Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" was an old hit of his that he used to dedicate to Coolidge; now they performed it together perfunctorily. "Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends," which had been a hit for Ray Price, and the previously unrecorded "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" seemed to hint at the couple's dissatisfaction with each other; they were divorced within a year of the album's release. Much of the material seemed inappropriate for this vocal team, especially a reading of the Bobby Fuller Four hit "I Fought the Law," and unlike the first two albums, Kristofferson didn't seem to be making much of an effort as a vocalist, while Coolidge just seemed listless. Natural Act sounded like a contractual obligation record from a musical act that had lost the chemistry that fueled it early on, just as the marriage apparently had. It was the duo's last album together.