Reviewed by Mike Rimmer

Released in 1982, this clocked in at number four in Britain's mainstream album chart and was the follow up album to 'Wired For Sound'. Four years previously Cliff had released his first set of contemporary Christian music songs and he had begun to include Christian songs in his pop concerts as well as do specifically gospel tours. For this album he wanted to release a set of Christian songs but not advertise them as such. The ploy worked and people took the album as an ordinary pop album even if he was pretty blatant on the TOTP performance of the first single from the set, "The Only Way Is Out" with a well-chosen point upwards towards God at the appropriate point in the lyrics. There are some top writers here. Aleksander John and Nick Battle penned "First Date" and Chris Eaton has three songs including his rewriting of "Little Town" which became Cliff's first Christmas single to be released. Eaton's song "Discovering" is one of the cleverest Christian songs ever recorded. To the uninitiated it sounds like a love song but has a deeper meaning. The classic Paul Field song "Thief In The Night" is given the Cliff treatment and became a dramatic live favourite. Ultimately this album continued Cliff's run of success in the '80s. I wonder whether it's time he did another "Christian" record with the songwriters working today. There would be a rich seam to mine.

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