Mandy Barnett Brings a Kris Kristofferson Classic Back Into the Light
Hard to believe this hit is now 50 years old.
Mandy Barnett revives a true classic on her upcoming album, covering the immortal “Help Me Make It Through The Night.”
Leaning on her rich vocal expression and little else, the traditional-country devotee gives the Kris Kristofferson penned favorite new life — helping celebrate the track’s 50th anniversary in the process. Although it’s been recorded by countless artists, the song was first made famous by Sammi Smith in 1970, and in Barnett’s capable hands its poetic sophistication shines once more. Vulnerable and pleading as she begs for something (or someone) to guide her through the troubled waters of another lonely night, Barnett focuses the song’s emotional gravity like a prism.
“Sometimes you just sing a song and it seems to fit like a glove,” she tells Sounds Like Nashville. “I did a performance with just a guitar at a little club in Kentucky and there was a woman sitting alone at a table crying. I didn’t want to lose that kind of feeling, so we went sparse with the instrumentation on the recording.”
Featuring just Barnett’s voice, a piano and delicate swells of strings, she wrings every ounce of heartbreak from one of the genre’s most enduring standards.
“We had a full band on most things,” she says of the track’s production. “When you do performances like this, it’s important to capture it in its entirety — not splicing lines together. The performance as a whole is what really matters, not perfection. It’s capturing that emotion in that moment.”
Looking ahead, fans will have a full album of emotional moments like that to savor. Barnett’s cover of “Help Me Make It Through the Night” will be included on her next studio release, which is expected to arrive sometime this summer.
