33: From The Inside Out - Hillsong

It's a pretty ruthless game, putting together a top forty. Songs you'd automatically think should be included - such as Don Henley's 'Boys of Summer' - suddenly look shaky when you start whittling the list down, and other songs that on the surface look unlikely somehow manage to keep their place and suddenly, bam, there's the final list and that unlikely song is still there.

So when putting together the long-list for the top forty, 'From The Inside Out' made the inital list and relatively early on faced the chop. Then I listened to it again and realised no - this has to stay, and for two main reasons, both musical. First is the refrain ("Everlasting, your light will shine when all else fades") where the first two lines begin their chord sequence in the relative minor (A minor) before proceeding through F, C, G - pretty normal. The third line, however, doesn't go back to the minor, it instead goes to the major chord - C - before heading elsewhere. Something about that sequence - 'minor, minor, MAJOR' always feels somehow to me like 'hard work, hard work, DONE IT' and this song really brings that out - a weird but definite sense of accomplishment.

Secondly the final line of the refrain - "from the inside... out, Lord my soul cries.. out" goes from F up to G, F up to G again - real sense of building but also of something spiritual coming OUT of me, out of my innermost being, flowing up and out with tremendous light and power. Or something.

So this song made the cut, and 'Boys of Summer' lies sprawling on a pile of rejections. It's my list.