24: Bridge of Spies - T'Pau

Yes, seriously.

T'Pau have a bizarre distinction in the history of one-hit-wonders: the country you are in determines what that 'one hit' is. If you're in the UK you think "China In Your Hand, duh" and if you're in the US you think "Heart and Soul, duh". I fell into the former category from the time it was a number-one hit (1987) through until the time I eventually got around to buying the album (1991). At which point I listened to the whole thing and went "oo, I wasn't expecting that." While on the surface - the first few tracks you listen to - they sound like typical 1980s pop with Carol Decker doing vocals that sound like they're from that old 'Bodyform' commercial, you work out after a while that the lyrics are unusual enough to be at least slightly interesting, and after a little more listening you realise that whoever produced the record either took a lot of time, was very good or got very lucky with the arrangements for most of it. T'Pau saw themselves as a heavier rock-type band (as their frankly rubbish follow-up albums clearly show) but the way Heart and Soul and the rest were mixed was surprisingly subtle, and even things like the gaps between the tracks - Bridge of Spies into Monkey House, then Monkey House into Valentine - show why you should always buy the original album and never the compilation.

And there in the middle is the title track from the album. Starting off keyboard-driven with some guitars coming in to pad things out (listen to a live version without the guitar effects over the first verse and it's nothing like as good, it's basically just Decker and Paul Jackson the bass player, who's only playing one note), it starts off as a typical track on the album, Decker hitting the vocals just right (Gary Barlow you should know better) and off we go, another decent-quality track from a well-mixed 1980s pop album.

But in the Top Forty At Forty? Seriously? Yes, seriously.

Because after the guitar solo (and Dean Howard does a better job on the live versions after he joined the band) it goes into a bridge, as many songs do. Decker's at full vocal here - the melody line almost always on the same note despite the chord changes, somehow making her portrayal quite intense, and the lyrics (as the best lyrics do) going way beyond the song and becoming something for people to relate with and find expression for their own feelings, whatever the circumstance:

I don't know if I could go through it all again
For what's the point if you are never free to say:
This is what I believe
This is a part of me
No hero
No regrets
But only meant-to-be

Back into the chorus and the song winds down. Then (album version only, never heard a live version where they did this), drum kicks in and we're into a reprise of the chorus chords, which actually are only two chords (Bb and F). And while the solo over the reprise is good to listen to (actually it's really good), there's something about those two chords repeated with that rhythm, at that speed, that is inherently relaxing. In fact it sounds like breathing to me - Bb = breathe in slow, F = breathe out slow, and repeat. The song is in F, so that's 'home', and Bb works with it like the pendulum on a clock or the up-and-down of a see-saw, and again for whatever reason the arrangement, the tempo, the instruments just allow this to come out.

Maybe it's just a lucky accident, but this is a very special song. Yes, seriously.

25: Revelation Song - Jennie Lee Riddle/Kelanie Gloeckler

Although a relatively recent song - 2009 or so depending on which version you prefer, Jennie Lee Riddle wrote the original - the concept is as old as any music we know about today. Howard Goodall's generally excellent 'Story Of Music' TV series explored what we know about ancient music, which is actually quite a lot in terms of instruments, performance and even competitions - but nothing about what it actually sounded like. The earliest music where we actually know how it sounds seems to be from the late Roman period, when 'plainchant' - monastic singing of various scriptures set to straightforward tunes - began and has been handed down through the generations prior to written or recorded music, so we actually know what it sounded like and what the tunes were.

Which isn't to say that the Revelation Song is plainchant, far from it - musically it's based on western chords and harmonies - but I love the idea that the concept hasn't changed. Take some words (inspirational if possible) from an ancient source, set it to a simple, repetitive, memorable tune and bam, there's your song. In this case, most of the words are taken from the book of Revelation at the end of the Christian New Testament. The music itself is interesting, however, and that's why it's in this list.

It starts (depending on the version you listen to) with a D major chord, and off you go thinking the song is in D. Second line, however, it shifts to A-minor of all places, not one you associate with D (A major perhaps, but not A minor), then up to C, then down to G... aaah I see, we were in G major the whole time! Next phrase, we're back to D and the thing repeats. In fact, that four chord sequence continues for the entire song - that's it, nothing else - but the curiousity of feeling like you're in D when you're actually in G holds it together surprisingly well.

Meantime the vocal soars in the chorus, another one of those that feels like your soul is welling up and exploding out (see 'From The Inside Out' at number 33), and the version in the video above by Kelanie Gloeckler (who had a couple of her own songs on the long-list that didn't quite make it) has a step-up from A-minor to C via an A-B-C bassline walk that again feels like the gear-shift thing from Like You Promised (number 27). The whole thing simply adheres together to give you the idea of what it would be like to catch a glimpse, just a glimpse, of a glorious heavenly other-world which is as beautiful as it is different.

26: Love Is - David Roach

No relation to Steven Roach (as far as I know) from number 37. This is one of those 'Landscape Channel' tracks which I mentioned in a blog entry long, long ago. In fact remember it from the Channel 4 'Art Of Landscape' show they used to put on during weekday mornings in the school holidays in 1990 or so when there weren't any schools programmes to show.

This was one of the more memorable ones - not just because of the scenery (made me long to go to the beach, as I still do most days today) but because I remember listening to it and thinking it was about to finish, and then it carried on with another ending and another ending. I don't know if that's some kind of musical trick or just a feature of David Roach's music, but if you watch the above YouTube version of it you'll notice that it ends at 4:53 and then carries on ending for almost an entire minute after that before it does, eventually, stop.

Somehow that made the track memorable enough to stay in my mind for years and years, and when the Landscape Channel in its various internet guises popped up again a few years ago it was probably the first track I looked for. The sax melody is strong, strong enough that I don't want to call it jazz (although I know it is really), and there's even an electric guitar section by none other than the late Alan Murphy, the guitarist who worked with Kate Bush for many years. But it all fits with the video, and you can almost hear the waves gently crashing on the beach at the conclusion and smell the clean, salty air in the chilly sunshine.

Love is... a deserted coastal resort. And a sax song that spends all its time ending.

27: Like You Promised - Amber Brooks

Here's one you're less likely to have heard of, although Amber Brooks herself as a songwriter contributed a song to a Grammy-award winning album last year - 'You Are Good' from Tye Tribbett's album 'Greater Than' which won the 2014 Grammy for Best Gospel Album. I came across her music due to visiting MorningStar church in South Carolina back in early 2011. I'd been there before - on the round-the-world trip in 2002 - and since then had followed their musical output, and a lot of what I listen to today is from musicians who've been through their school such as Josh Baldwin and Kelanie Gloeckler.

This one stands out - particularly on the studio version - as being one to listen to over and over. Of course, that's not enough to make the Top Forty At Forty, since tracks like Cavatina, Fanfare For The Common Man and Here Comes The Sun all patently failed to make even the long-list. What stands out here is one very specific section right in the middle of the song. The song itself starts easily enough, meandering through a couple of verses with the building chorus following on both occasions. Then it jumps to the bridge for the first time. There's a lyrical strength in that section itself that stands out from a lot of similar songs - "You violently chase me down to embrace me, engulf me in who You are" - but then as it goes back into the chorus she lifts the song, basically taking the high harmony line instead of the standard melody, while at the same time bringing in another guitar line right after "we long for You to come" - BANG - just like stepping up a gear, lifting the song and the listener in the process.

There are other examples of it - to me I hear the same thing in Dire Straits "Tunnel Of Love" guitar solo towards the end, prior to the twiddly bit there's a gear-shift style lift; Grieg's 'Morning' from Peer Gynt also does the same thing at the crescendo. But this, maybe because of the lyric that precedes it, stands out very strongly above those as the primary example of the musical gear-shift that lifts your soul.

28: My Deliverer - Rich Mullins/Rick Elias

Ok, so I said only one Rich Mullins track made it into the Top Forty at Forty. Technically this one is by Rick Elias. I can get away with it.

It was written by Rich Mullins and recorded as a demo, a muffled effort with Mullins banging away at an old piano, as with the rest of Mullins' "Jesus Record" project tracks. Mullins died in a car accident prior to getting into the studio to record the final version - so his industry friends, along with his usual band, got together and recorded the tracks between them. Rick Elias drew the short straw - the stand-out song of the group by a mile, which is good except for the fact that when you know a song is that good you HAVE to get the arragement right. And they did.

Musically it's a little like a mini-opera in itself, comprising several sections but with the same driving rhythm through the majority of it. Lyrically strong as well ("He will never break His promise, though the stars should break faith with the sky") the song is six minutes long and feels somehow longer, but in a good way. I could talk about the lyrics and even the music - nothing exciting chord-wise but smart use of a swelling string-section - but there's no real need to disassemble the song.

They took their time and they got it right.

29: River of Dreams - Billy Joel

Continuing the theme of secular songs with a spiritual feel, Billy Joel's last real Big Hit has such an infectious gospel groove it's hard not to be caught up in it. While the lyrics themselves aren't massively Scriptural (I don't think the 'Jungle of Doubt' features too often in the Psalms) there's an expression of a deep fascination with the world of dreams and imagination and the spiritual aspect that people ascribe to that kind of stuff. The lyrics in the final tumbling bridge section are, while still filled with doubt and questions, undoubtedly also filled with a hope and an understanding that there's something there to explore, to experience and to become immersed in:

"Not sure about a life after this, God knows I've never been a spiritual man;
Baptized by fire, I wade into the river that is running to the Promised Land."

Add to that a good dose of foot-shuffling rhythm, gospel-blues notes and Joel's always-strong vocal and it's easy to forget it's basically just a song with three chords, repeated over and over (bridge excepted). And there's even a version - the "original" studio version according to the box-set I have - which seamlessly incorporates the theme from 'Goodnight My Angel' (from the same album) into the song. I couldn't find that version on YouTube or elsewhere, so here's the original video from the single.

I don't think it's physically possible to listen to it without at least slight movement of the head and taps of the feet. See if you can manage it.

30: Piano in the Dark - Brenda Russell

Another favourite from Late Night Sou' West circa 1988 that has stood the test of time, at least in my playlist. I've never done a great deal of investigating into the song itself - I think lyrically it's pretty straightforward with no surprises: the lady in question in the song wishes to walk out on her relationship but the gentleman's piano playing keeps drawing her back. And as I understand it the other 'stand out' track from the album was "Get here" which was later covered by Oleta Adams with greater success.

But what Russell accomplishes with the piano solo sections (and I don't know if she wrote/ad libbed those or if the other track co-authors are responsible) is something amazingly evocative, and probably is actually the start of my musical journey into the weird and wacky instrumental stuff, some of which makes its way into the list.

There's the bridge solo before the final chorus - that's one thing - but the end of the song has a gentle skimming-and-dipping solo that continues even as the rest of the musicians drop out, and the piano just carries on - metaphorically, if not literally, in the dark. You can almost see the rest of the musicians packing up their instruments, heading out the door, turning the light off, and the piano continues.

And the 'radio edit' version fades. That annoys me so much. I knew - from very occasional radio play of the album version - that there was a full version with another minute or so at the end, and nobody ever played it, or if they did the bleddy DJ talked over it so I couldn't hear it (yes Langmore I'm looking in your direction). So the version above is the full version that I found on YouTube rather than the official video of the radio edit.

And let the piano just take you into the dark, into that evocative place, and the start of a journey that has led me to, among other tracks that didn't make the Top Forty At Forty, "Angels and Eskimos" by Kate Moody and "Walk In The Sun" by Jeanette Alexander.