Chapter 9: Heart In Motion, 30 Years Later

          Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with me (okay, maybe ten, I’m still an introvert after all) knows that I am now — and always have been — a fan of Amy Grant. Most of my current circle of friends and co-workers (which isn’t very large) have never heard of her. But, as soon as I tap the ‘play’ button on my phone and the bouncy, bubbly synth pop introduction of Baby Baby starts playing on the stereo at work, their eyes widen and they say, “Oh! I know that song!” Some of my younger co-workers, however, wrinkle their noses and shake their heads. “Never heard that song before,” they say.
          2021 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the greatest pop albums of that glorious, schizophrenic decade known as the 1990s. Amy Grant’s Heart In Motion was released on March 5, 1991, and its debut single, Baby Baby, spent 32 weeks in the #1 spot on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary Charts. That’s no small feat for an artist at that time who was famous only in the Christian arenas and churches where she got her start in the late seventies. Heart In Motion was one of the first albums by a Christian artist to successfully cross over into mainstream success, and it’s not hard to see why. With the exception of the last song, Hope Set High, the whole album has that very distinct synth pop sound that was a hallmark of the late 80s and early 90s, before Nirvana ruined the rest of that latter decade. The first four tracks plus I Will Remember You spent time on the Billboard charts throughout ’91 and ’92, and the album itself peaked at #10 on the Billboard 200.
          It was spring of 1992, when was 13, that I finally got around to buying a cassette copy of Heart In Motion at my local Christian bookstore. (For you younger readers who have no knowledge of cassettes, go ask your parents what I’m talking about. And count yourselves lucky.) When I got home I popped that cassette into the stereo in our living room and when that tat-a-tat-tat-tat drumbeat opening of Good For Me exploded forth, I was hooked. I played that cassette so much that the lettering on the exterior wore off damn near completely. (I also scrimped and saved to buy a boombox for my bedroom so my parents and siblings would no longer be tortured with my love for Amy.)
        From the infectious, bubbly joy of those first three tracks, to the brutal honesty and heartache of Ask Me, to the driving rock beat of You Are Not Alone, to the deep longing of I Will Remember You, to the quiet, soulful intimacy (and foreshadowing) of How Can We See That Far, and, finally, to the plain, simple beauty and spiritual resolution of Hope Set High, the whole album feels like that perfect bridge between Amy’s success as a Christian artist in the eighties and the mainstream success she achieved — deservedly — in the nineties and ever since.
          And guess what? This album holds up remarkably well thirty years later.
         As you all know from my previous blog entries, my adolescence was a little rough, and this album — along with Michael W. Smith’s Change Your World — got me through a lot of it. I dare you to listen to Baby Baby and not feel the immediate desire to jump up and just cut loose. (Interesting side note: Amy wrote this song for her daughter, Millie, who was born less than a year prior to the album’s release. Amy once told an interviewer that her initial concept for this song’s music video was to have her singing it to a room full of newborns. But her 12 year old niece informed her that that was a terrible idea, and so Amy nixed it. The niece was right, of course.)
        This is one of the few albums that stayed with me over the years. It was one of the first in my CD collection to be burned into iTunes, and all eleven tracks have been played a sum total of more than 10,000 times. (That’s a rough guess, I didn’t actually go look. But I’m certain it’s close to that number.) Amy has always excelled at translating her soul into music, and Heart In Motion is, in my opinion, where her soul shine’s brightest and best. Yes, there is more seriousness and depth to Lead Me On, Heart’s predecessor from 1988, but this album is where Amy allows herself to cut loose and have some fun.
          The other night, as I was driving home from work, Hope Set High started playing. As a kid, this was the one song of this album that never really resonated with me. It almost seemed like an afterthought, a token track for Amy’s Christian fans who might be unhappy that most of this album was meaningless, worldly nonsense. And, quite honestly, I’ve always skipped this track. I never had any use for it before.
          But when it started playing that night, I didn’t skip it. Instead, I allowed the beautiful, spiritual simplicity of the melody and lyrics to wash over me. With everything that’s been going on with me just now, this was another case of the perfect message at the perfect time. I was in tears by its end, and I had to hit the replay button two more times before I got home.
      One more reason that this album and its artist, are, quite simply, the best.
        And, for a 13 year old gay boy in Twin Falls, Idaho, who often needed to just cut loose and dance, Heart In Motion was also perfection.
         30 years later, it — and Amy Grant — still are.