Kris said in an interview, "This song probably was the most directly autobiographical thing I had written. In those days I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was 25 dollars a month in a condemned building, and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing. One time, some people broke into that place, and I had to call the police station to answer some questions about it, and the guy said, "Yeah, they really trashed the place when they went in there." But I hadn't noticed that it was any different. There were holes in the wall bigger than I was. It was quite a place, so "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is kind of more or less what I was living at that time. I guess it was depressing, I don't know, but the chorus was kind of uplifting. ... What I was really trying to do was to keep the feeling of loss and of sadness. For me at that time, it was the loss of my family and looking at a little kid swinging on a swing and his daddy pushing him. That was the feeling I wanted to get for the whole song. I think Sunday was the choice because the bars were closed in the morning and nobody was at work, so if you were alone, it was the most alone time..."