Repossessed

Repossessed is an album by Kris Kristofferson, released on Mercury Records in 1986 (see 1986 in music). It was Kristofferson's first full-length solo album since 1981's To the Bone, although the singer did collaborate with other artists in the meantime, most notably on Highwayman with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Background Kristofferson's career hit a wall at the start of the 1980s. In the second half of the previous decade, his recording career had been on a steady downward slope, and the release of the film Heaven's Gate in 1980 torpedoed his film career. His turbulent marriage to singer Rita Coolidge came to an end in December 1979, and his record label for ten years, Monument, went under. Kristofferson decided to take a sabbatical from his solo career and became much more politically active. He also contributed to three albums recorded with others: Kris, Willie, Dolly & Brenda ... The Winning Hand (1982) (with Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Brenda Lee); the soundtrack Music From Songwriter (1984) (with Nelson), which contained four Kristofferson solo tracks; and Highwayman (with Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings). The last was a major success, topping the country charts, and probably interested Mercury Records in giving Kristofferson a new contract as a solo artist. Recording and composition Chips Moman, who had produced the first Highwaymen LP and recorded the likes of Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, and Bobby Womack, was brought in to produce Kristofferson's debut on Mercury. Moman scored a massive hit with Willie Nelson's 1982 album Always on My Mind, and had topped the country album charts a year later with Pancho & Lefty, Nelson's duet album with Merle Haggard. After a string of commercial misfires in the second half of the Seventies, it was hoped that Moman's magic might revive Kristofferson's stalled recording career. Although the music had a loose, languid feel despite some synthesized sounds and superfluous echo on the vocals, performed by Kristofferson's backing group The Borderlords, it resembled a live recording without an audience – particularly when Kristofferson called out intros and lead breaks as he would in concert. The songs on Repossessed were heavily informed by Kristofferson's political activism. In the early 1980s his political activities – which also included appearing in concert for UNICEF and stridently protesting U.S.