Some of the lame stuff Amy Grant has given us many moons ago is almost nonexistent on her 1991 recording, Heart in Motion, a worthy achievement.  It isn’t overtly Christian except in the gospel-pop song at the end, “Hope Set High,” but implications of belief plainly abound.

“Good For Me” is a walking-on-sunshine ditty with no-nonsense percussion.  “Baby Baby” is as feisty as it is pleasant.  The charming “Galileo” is sort of a grade-school song with midtempo hooks (and it’s a love song:  “You are starlight / I’m Galileo”).  A heartfelt item with verve, “Ask Me” is not so much about the sexual abuse of a child—although it is—as spiritual deliverance through conversion.

The hit track, “Every Heartbeat”, is a good tune but vocally Grant can’t quite manage it.  (She’s an imperfect singer.)  Unlike “I Will Remember You,” which satisfies, “You’re Not Alone” is a bore, and a couple of others don’t cut it either.  Still, this may be Amy’s best album.  The finest cut on it is “That’s What Love Is For,” whose melody and harmony Gershwin and Irving Berlin would have envied.  It comes on strong but not ill-fittingly so, and it boasts a decent lyric:  “Sometimes I wonder if we really feel the same / Why we can be unkind.”  It is only in the mind of a genuine and concerned Lover that such a thought springs up.

Heart in Motion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)