I’m struggling with this song because P&W songs are prone to the risk of being emotionally manipulative, and my instinctive resistance to this song is that without amazing restraint it could easily fall into the shallow love song to God genre – over sentimental etc etc. In many of the versions I listened to the voices were not broken enough to match the obvious sincerity of the lyrics. The medium subverts the message.
There are also echoes of Whitney’s Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” in the refrain, which doesn’t help.
In my imagination it would work if sung by Tom Waits.
The text is here. It can be purchased at various sites on the net including sheetmusicplus – who have a handbell version, which I would love to hear.
This is obviously the single most popular song ever recorded judging by the number of versions on YouTube. I’ll just put up a few versions to see if I can find one that doesn’t go over the top:
This is the version – guitar, harmonica, the songwriter with a more broken voice – perfect:
Oh.. and I found the handbell versions!