Kris Kristofferson – Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore

“Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore” is a song co-written by Kris Kristofferson and Billy Swan and released in 1981 as a single from Kristofferson’s album To the Bone. The album was issued in early 1981 on Monument Records and was recorded during sessions at Caribou Ranch and other studios. The track is one of the new compositions on an album that marked the end of Kristofferson’s first run with Monument and reflected a period of personal and professional transition.

Kristofferson wrote the song with Billy Swan, a fellow songwriter and musician who also appears on the album as a performer. The collaboration produced a compact song that fits with the overall tone of To the Bone, an LP whose material frequently addresses relationship strain, regret and the difficulties of personal life in the wake of long-term commitments breaking down. The record was the first Kristofferson album released after his separation from Rita Coolidge, and several tracks, including this one, take a more reflective and sometimes austere approach to love and loss.

Musically, “Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore” is presented in a restrained country style that foregrounds the lyric and the singer’s delivery rather than instrumental flourish. The arrangement supports Kristofferson’s conversational vocal approach: spare guitar work, modest rhythmic backing and unobtrusive accompaniment allow the words and their emotional content to remain central. The production is straightforward, matching the song’s direct phrasing and economical structure.

Lyrically, the song reads as a succinct lament about the end of a relationship and the sense of emotional desolation that can follow. Lines in the song emphasize disappointment and a recognition that what once felt meaningful has lost its hold. The lyric does not offer elaborate metaphor or narrative complication; instead, it states the core sentiment plainly and leaves the listener to infer background and consequence from the compressed details Kristofferson supplies.

Released as a single, “Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore” had a modest commercial showing. It entered the country singles chart in 1981 and peaked outside the top 60 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles listing, spending several weeks on the chart. The single’s chart performance was limited compared with Kristofferson’s earlier hits, and the album as a whole did not achieve major commercial success at the time, though it has since been noted as part of a transitional phase in his career.

The song has also been heard in live settings and has appeared on later compilations and reissues that collect material from Kristofferson’s Monument years. Live recordings from the early 1980s include the song in set lists, and its inclusion on retrospective collections has helped preserve its availability for listeners interested in the later-phase material that follows Kristofferson’s early 1970s breakthrough.

Today “Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore” is generally treated as a representative piece of the To the Bone era: a short, direct song that reflects the album’s themes of relationship decline and personal reckoning. While not among Kristofferson’s best-known chart hits, it is part of the documented arc of his songwriting career and illustrates the plainspoken narrative style he continued to employ into the 1980s.