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.