Every Heartbeat

Album: Heart In Motion (1991)
Charted: 25 2
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Songfacts®:

  • "Every Heartbeat" is one of the most carefree, upbeat pop songs of the '90s. It's about meeting someone and having everything click with no friction. The song had all the makings of a hit - jaunty melody, uncomplicated chorus - and it delivered, going to #2 in America, held off by Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You."
  • Amy Grant is huge in the world of Christian music but started venturing into secular pop in 1985 with the single "Find A Way." That one stalled at #29 but her 1986 duet with Peter Cetera, "The Next Time I Fall," was a #1 hit. Her 1991 album Heart In Motion really hit the pop music sweet spot though, with anodyne hits that radio stations were thrilled to play in lieu of hip-hop or grunge. The first single, "Baby Baby," was a #1 hit; "Every Heartbeat" came next, followed by the ballad "That's What Love Is For," which reached #7, and then another happy-fun song, "Good For Me," which reached #8. That's four Top 10 hits from the same album, a feat even Madonna achieve in the '90s.
  • The first verse has some language that harks to Grant's Christian music roots:

    Let me give this testimony...
    I've got a witness happy to say


    It sounds like she could be singing about God, but then we learn this is very much a love between two humans when she sings:

    Classic case of boy meets girl
    Moving in the same direction
  • Grant wrote the song with Wayne Kirkpatrick and Charlie Peacock, who are both known for their work in the CCM genre. Peacock produced Switchfoot, and his song "In The Light" was covered by dc Talk. Kirkpatrick had worked with Grant before, including co-writing her 1988 song "Lead Me On." He went on to produce Little Big Town.
  • The music video is as bouncy as the song. Grant shows up singing in front of various backdrops, intercut with scenes were an attractive young couple have a meet-cute in a laundromat (people really did meet this way in 1991). The video was directed by D.J. Webster and the woman is played by Musetta Vander, who later appeared in the movies O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Wild Wild West.

    Note that Grant doesn't sing to a guy in the video. She did that in her video for "Baby Baby" and it upset some of her fans because she was cavorting with a guy who wasn't her husband. She did it again when she sang with Vince Gill in the video for their 1994 duet "House Of Love," but this time the gooey glances were real; Gill and Grant both got divorced a few years later and married each other in 2000.

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