More Songs for Him
Music Monday with the Imperials, featuring songs that definitely impacted my walk with God
It’s awesome to see that songs pioneered by the Imperials are still being covered, like this song above.
I don’t really know what drove me to start writing these Music Monday posts. Maybe it’s because I’m writing a novel series about a musician, and find it challenging, not being a musician? Maybe it’s because I was told several times, “I can’t possibly see how Christian rock music could help someone in their spiritual life,” and I thought I could make people see how it’s aided me. I suppose it’s helpful to see a point-by-point way in which particular songs have formed a particular person.
But please don’t thing I was only formed in my faith by listening to Christian music. Thanks to my parents, I had an excellent formation, steeped in the study of Scriptures and in prayer. In other essays, I’ll share some of that formation, which included an intense Catholic high school and a faithful Catholic college. So Christian music served as a personal affirmation of what I was already learning, but provided more imaginative and emotional scope for my faith. I believe most of us build our identity, especially as teens, through our media choices. We see this on social media profiles when teens put together a profile of the music, books, and movies they like, in hopes that others will understand them. So I can say this: Christian rock music helped me build my identity as a Christian. It also kept God on my mind, much as love songs help keep a relationship alive.
As someone who grew up in the 80s and has no particular nostalgia for the era or its secular music, I’ve been intrigued by younger generations who love 80s music. I keep wondering why. I think it might be the energy and glitz of the thing, the synthesized music (many teens I know have nostalgia for video game music), and a bit of a feeling that good times had come round again.
The 80s, like the 50s, was an era of prosperity for many, and the accompanying drunkenness and promiscuity hadn’t yet taken its toll on the youth. Between Reagan and John Paul II, there was a sense that strong leaders with a plan were taking care of things, so the rest of us could party for a bit. The grunge and dank of the 90s and the millennial War on Terror was yet to come, and I wonder if kids who grew up in those years look back on the 80s as a time of relative sweetness and light. Please comment if you have knowledge or a theory.
I know that as an 80s teen, many of us looked back at the 1950s in that way. Films like Grease, Back to the Future, and even vintage elements in the Karate Kid franchise reinforced that feeling of nostalgia for the 50s, an era we had never known, except in stories from older relatives and tv show reruns. That’s my best guess as to why my own young teens fill their Spotify playlists with select 80s tracks.
Anyhow, if you like the 80s, you might want to give this next album a try, which looking back, is probably my top album, based on how many of the songs are my all-time favorites. The 1979 album One More Song for You moves from disco to the more upbeat and synthesized keyboards that were an 80s signature, but they keep the horns and the harmonics of their own identity. The cover is definitely 80s pop style, for sure, and not one of my favorites. But hey, you can’t always judge an album by the cover.
Like Sail On, this nine-track album feels short, but it’s full of memorable tunes, most of them written by the husband-and-wife team of Michael & Stormie Omartian (she later became a best-selling writer). Michael is a producer who, like the Imperials, was to make significant contributions to both secular and Christian music, winning a Dove award for this album and later becoming the first producer in recording history to chart a number one album in three successive decades—seventies, eighties, and nineties. His secular work would include producing and writing for legends like the Jacksons, Barbara Streisand, Donna Summer, Peter Cetera, and more, but his Christian albums remain classics. This is one of them.
Probably one of my all-time favorite Christian songs is this opening dance song by the Omartians, featuring an exuberant Russ Taff. Like many of Taff’s songs, this is a servant song, but not a melancholy surrender ballad: more like secular songs celebrating the beauty of friendship but moving from there to offering joyful service to Our Lord. It captures the energy of the era with a upbeat kick to the melody line, filled in with keyboard, strings, and bass.
Well, it’s taken all this time
Just to see what I really had
in knowing someone wonderful as You.
You’ve done so much for me,
far beyond what a friend would do—
Now I just want to know what I can do for You!
I just want to know what I can do for You.Seems that most of my life
I was thinking about myself,
even when I learned to call on You.
And no matter what I did,
You were always there to see me through—
Now I just want to know what I can do for You—
Oh yes, my Lord, I just want to know what I can do for You.
Murray’s tenor soars on the bridge over background vocals from the others.
I will give You my time, and all the love that I can find,
I’ll just lay it on the line like You did once for me—
I will change all my plans, put my life into Your hands—
and I’ll try hard to understand what You want me to be—
The singer seeks the whole-hearted gift of self to God with specific details. These words never get less relevant to me, because so many times I’ve felt greedy with God, asking for everything and offering so little. This song has reoriented my perspective time and again, leading me to tell God:
Well, it’s taken all this time
for my heart to be taught to say:
“Whatever You want, that’s what I want too.”
And it won’t even up the score,
but it’s the least that I can do,
Lord, I just want to know what I can do for You!
Oh yes, my Lord, I just want to know what I can do for You!
Songs celebrating God’s forgiveness are a staple of the Imperial’s lineup, and this one keeps the beat going after that rousing opening track, but it makes it more syncopated. This song speaks to the cradle Christian, who has only recently realized their need for God. They’ve been leading a decent but unexamined life until through a miracle, they surrendered, and like the older brother, discovered their God is generous and loving:
From the start You held a place in my heart,
A place that no one else could fill.
But sin kept Your Spirit from working in me:
I couldn’t look at life honestly—
Until the day that my will gave away
to the Truth that I found in You!
I never knew just how good it could be
To stand in Your presence totally free!Now I’m forgiven!
Now I have a reason for living—
Jesus keeps giving and giving—
Giving till my heart overflows!
Again, this is a great reminder to those who think we know God that there is always a deeper surrender. And there’s nothing to stop us from celebrating like the prodigal son even if we are the older brother.
I told myself I should really do a shortened form of this album, but it’s difficult to find what tracks to skip, since they’re all touching on my walk with God. This is another surrender song, and I remember it being played on a Catholic high school retreat when the participants were asked to give their lives to Christ more fully. Jim Murray sings this masterfully crafted love song.
All my life,
never knowing what I was reaching for,
Never could I find any reason for,
Always feeling somehow there must be more—Then there came a light—
Searching out my heart in the blackest night—
Touching me with love that I knew was right—
Lord of All! Filling all my life—
All my life.Looking back,
Jesus, through my life, You were everywhere—
Picking up the pieces I’d scattered there—
Holding them for me till my heart could care—
You gave me life!
You made my spirit new—
Now I give all my life
to You.Yes, my Lord—YOU were everything I was searching for!
YOU were every dream I had dreamed before—
Now every day in life is worth so much more!
You gave me life—
You made my spirit new—
Now I give all my life
to You.
The singer recognizes Christ not as a stranger but as a Someone Who has been a shadow hovering over his life, watching over him, caring for him. A beautifully realized song of surrender and acceptance.
In a change from the upbeat first songs, this track by Murray slips into a slower beat and a minor key with bass line and electric snaps. The singer imagines his life without God, and the dire tones reflect this without getting dark. He echoes the tone so many secular breakup songs but his shudder is the relief of being saved from a life of emptiness.
Not far from something tragic,
my fate was changed like magic
By Your Grace…
I never lived or loved till I met You.
And if I had to live without Your Love, what could I do?
Oh, living without Your Love
Was like not ever living or existing…
Living without Your Love, O Lord,
Was like not ever living at all.
This is pretty much my walk with God. I keep telling people, “I’m actually not a very nice person. If you think I am, what you are seeing is Christ, not me.” And I’m not joking.
I watch so many people
Keep going 'round in circles, lost in life
Their goals hold no true meaning—
It seems they're only living just to die.
A reflection of my life in them I see
Until You came and gave me love
That proved to me
That living without Your love—
Was like not ever living or existing!
Living without Your love—
Was like not ever living or existing!
Living without Your love—
Oh, Lord, was like not ever living at all!
The singer’s humility keeps him from judging those who live without God, because he understands “If not for the grace of God, there go I.” Yet at the same time, he yearns to share with them the gift he has experienced. Until I analyzed this song, I didn’t realize how much I could relate to it.
This is a more poetic and less straightforward song, so poetic that it feels less like a Christian song and more like a secular seeker song. Written by Russ Taff and his wife, it became a fan favorite even if I find parts of it obscure. Musically, the song seeks to imitate the flight of an eagle in a synthesized alternate melody weaving around the main one, picked up by the keyboard in the bridge. I’ll just reproduce the lyrics here without comment: feel free to tell me your thoughts on them.
I stood and watched an eagle fly—
He spread his wings and soared across the sky,
So gracefully he flew—
Rising effortlessly,
I wanted to know just how to be free.Tiny fingers curled 'round mine,
Perfectly formed, newborn, the image of two—
Infinite mystery—
I wanted to know where life comes from.What human intellect can't sway
Must be explained away—
Earth wisdom, religions of men
Searched without end to fill
The spirit house within—
Simplicity of God somehow escapes man.I reached for the Eternal One—
Creation He was waiting to reveal
His purpose in me—
He said this is where life begins:
I’ve made your spirit to glide on the wind.
Come, let’s glide on the wind!
So much for skipping tracks! Ok, I have written the lyrics to this song in my teenaged prayer journals more than once. I appreciated it because, as a Catholic who, by the grace of God gave their life to Him at an early age, I loved songs that acknowledged that salvation is a journey and there is always more of Christ to find.
Every new day brings another way
Of knowing just who You are.
The more I see of Your love for me,
I see my love just goes so far.
That kind of summed up my relationship with God. Once I got serious about following Him in my teens, I found that the more I knew God, the more I realized how I fell short of Him in every way. But (again, grace), this didn’t lead me to become dour or despondent. Instead, I was led to do what this singer does:
So until I meet You face to face
I'm gonna take Your hand
And travel on—
On and on
Where peace is full,
And strife is gone—
To know You,
To love You,
I always wanna feel I'm
Closer than ever to the heart of You—
Now that I realize
There's more to You than what You do—
This is an important point made in more than one song by the Imperials. Our relationship with God is not just “what He does,” about asking for and getting favors: it’s also about sitting at His feet, listening to Him, marveling at Him, loving Him for Who He is.
Knowing You better
Means loving You better too—
Closer than ever, Lord—
I'm closer to the heart of You.
And isn’t it funny that this Protestant singer echoes the devotion dear to Catholics, closeness to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?
We are never done with knowing God and loving God until heaven. Re-reading these lyrics and recalling my teenaged self, I find that it was relevant to me then and still is now. I still want to not just feel but be closer than ever to God, more and more, each day that I am granted to live.
And I’m grateful for these singers and this song.
Even the minor songs on this album, the ones I didn’t like as much, are still really lovely. This is one of those songs that could be a human love song, or an audience love song, as Amy Grant termed her track Say Once More. But again, it’s a love song to God. I thought Casting Crowns did a cover of this song, but it turned out to be a completely different song, which is a shame, because I like this one better. It kind of sums up the mission that the Imperials perceived themselves as having, and by extension, any Christian musician:
As long as there is time,
And one breath left in me,
There will always be one more song for You.
And as long as there is room
For one more voice in praise,
And a need for a word of love and truth,
To help my brother through—
There'll be one more song for You.
It kind of sums up what every Christian artist seeks to do, even in a work that is not explicitly Catholic: praise God and offer words of love and truth to ease the burdens of others. It’s also a work that involves the entire person, and fills the artist with purpose, as the verses say:
Love is in the air around me,
Hope abounds everywhere—
Living life in the arms of Jesus,
Learning how to really care.
Every day is filled with purpose,
All the old is made new—
And I know I owe it all to You.
So as long as there is time,
and one breath left in me,
There will always be one more song for You.
I think this track is another great use by Russ Taff of the harder rock sound, in a song that thunders like a waterfall. Since waterfalls in dams power electricity, it’s a nice bit of image association—metaphors of water, mist, turbines all suggest that when we stop fighting and surrender to God, we engage with the true Higher Power. A lot of the song is clearly the group just having fun with the music and the concept, but even so, it’s a masterful production.
I am, I am I realize
Just where I want to be—
Learning, living, loving, giving
For eternity!
Oh, that sweet surrender
In my darkest hour—
Letting go, submitting
To my higher power!As the misty morning
Of my lifetime disappears,
We look on to the afternoon
Golden in our years—
Oh, it's supernatural!
Heaven can be ours,
When we turn it over
To God's higher power!Turn it over, turn it over—
Turn it over to the Higher Power!
Turn it over, turn it over
Turn it over to God's Higher Powеr!Inside of the fury
Of a thousand waterfalls,
Thеy thunder down the river
As the mighty ocean calls—
Can you see it rushing
Closer every hour?
It's letting go, submitting
To a higher power!
The last song is a simple coda and a simple prayer to the Lord for deeper conversion, sung by the entire band:
Come and take my hand:
Show me how to follow You—
Lead me in Your way.
Come and search my heart:
Show me where the darkness hides—
Make it as the day.…Come and search my heart:
Help me to be more like You
Everyday.
And almost imperceptibly, against a background of “Hallelujahs”, the band choruses a prayer to their Savior:
More like You—
That's what I wanna be
More like you
And always less of me...
I can’t think of a better way to sum up the message of this album than these ending lyrics. Thanks for reading and listening! And if you are enjoying, please share.