In March 1977, Rita Coolidge heard her own voice on the radio while standing at the kitchen sink of her home above Malibu. The song, “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher,” was climbing the charts. But the breakthrough arrived during a painful period in her personal life: her marriage to Kris Kristofferson was coming apart.
Two months earlier, Coolidge had miscarried the second child the couple had hoped for. Their relationship had already been strained by touring, drinking and infidelity, and Coolidge later wrote that she had reached a point where she was crying almost every day. The radio moment held two realities at once: a long-awaited career success and a marriage moving toward divorce.
Coolidge had spent years singing alongside prominent musicians, including Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills and Kristofferson. Though respected, she had not yet found the commercial success she wanted as a solo artist. For “Higher and Higher,” producer and arranger Booker T. Jones helped shape the song around her voice, and it became the biggest single of her career.
The track eventually peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its album, Anytime…Anywhere, also became Coolidge’s commercial breakthrough. The success gave her a new foothold as a solo performer, even as the relationship that had helped define her public image was nearing its end.
To the public, Coolidge and Kristofferson remained a prominent musical couple. They had made three duet albums, won two Grammy awards for their performances and had a daughter, Casey. But those milestones did not prevent their marriage from moving toward divorce.
Coolidge later resisted presenting Kristofferson as a villain in her memoir, and decades after their separation she described their connection as something that never entirely disappeared. The kitchen-radio scene is striking not because the hit resolved the difficulties in her life, but because the professional turning point came amid them. As “Higher and Higher” reached listeners, Coolidge’s solo career was beginning to stand apart from the marriage that had been central to her public story.
